Occams Presents: 10 Weirdest Bosses in Beat Em Ups

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One of the things I have always loved about beat ’em ups was that, as a genre, they’re a blank canvas. The formula is set, you just have to build the where, why, and how behind it. This lets the developers really go wild when making some of these games. As a child of the arcade heyday, I have fond memories of classic games like Final Fight and X-Men. But one element that always stood out to me was just how batshit crazy some of the boss designs were.

You could just tell that the developers wanted the biggest, weirdest thing to show up and make the players go “wow”, and it worked. It works so well in fact that decades later I’m here to tell you the top ten weirdest bosses in beat em ups. So put your quarter up and read ahead as we trip the light fantastic in front of the warm glow of the CRT. Let’s get weird. 

A robot knight wielding a lance with some kind of fancy stand mixer affixed to his back stirring a demon pot while riding a two-headed snail monster. That is a sentence I am happy to be able to write. Ten-year-old me would have thought this was the coolest thing ever. In an alternate universe, I have this tattooed on my neck just above the scars from a shark bite. I have to give credit to the designer here. To take all these disparate parts and be able to create something cohesive yet so fantastic is a real credit to them and a testament to just how much fun these folks designing bosses back in the day.

Splatterhouse was my first horror-themed beat ’em up and still an absolute favorite. A ‘roided out not-Jason Vorhees kicking the guts out of all manner of demons and monsters is just gaming catnip for me. There’s a lot to digest in a game like Splatterhouse but out of everything, the one thing I bring up every time