The Plight of the First Boss

So you're a giant beaver with an obvious weakness to being jumped on and you're sitting in the office of your prospective employer who's a crocodilian king with a lazy eye. He's looking over your CV, mumbling to himself and tossing your quizzical glances from time to time as he does so. Is it true that your own attack damages you in some way? Is your special ability jumping, or the fact that you carry a pocket knife? Do you have a gigantic glowing weak-point?

If so then you're gonna have to face it- you're probably a first boss.

The plight of the first boss is one which will be retold throughout the ages- not by anyone that matters, admittedly, but they'll still remember you. You're that joke who gave the big speech about how you're going to kill the hero and how he could never defeat your asinine special move- hell, you're probably ugly too because who wants to make the first boss the cool looking one?

At the very worst end of the spectrum you're the end of a tutorial, flailing helplessly as you attempt to chip away at the health bar of the robot/plumber/rodent/spacemarine combating you, all the while getting weaker and weaker until you're just a flashing sprite followed by a lazy death animation and health power-up. At best you're that wall from Contra, shooting dots at Sylvester Stallone as he frontflips and fires his gun simultaneously. Either way, you're killing no-one.

How would you feel if you were sitting there on your podium, minding your own business when some arsehole climbs up next to you and hits your obvious weakpoint- which is probably glowing or flashing red so as you can't even hide it under your clothes. You'd feel pretty bad. They probably didn't even have to try to get to you either- maybe jump on some slowly waddling goombas or punch a couple of biker-punks in the neck.

Life just plain sucks for you, doesn't it?

I guess the first hurdle is the easiest, but look at how good some bosses have it- by the end of Megaman 2 your thumbs are ablaze because you've had to fight a giant dragon which not only breathes fire but also flaps about over a bottomless pit. What do you get for being any of the eight Robot Masters? I'll tell you what:

Locked in a small room with a guy whose ability is acquiring weapons which are used to kill you.

Sure, if you're the first guy Megaman's going up against he doesn't have any of those yet, but he's still faster, smarter and cooler than you- and add to that the fact that your power is probably to shoot bubbles or something. Bubbles don't kill anything, ever- unless whatever you're shooting them at is either retarded or allergic to soap.

All of this aside the worst part- and I mean the absolute worst part- of being a first boss is the fact that it's more than likely that a different-coloured version of you is going to show up later in the game as a regular enemy. There's nothing more soul-destroying than your cackling soliloque being made utterly redundant by your purple-clad twin showing up later on and still dying in a couple of lazily-thrown punches. Why even bother showing up in the first place? You may as well let those Double Dragon kids through because you're not gonna do anything to them anyway, and you'll get another crack at them later on after you've dyed your hair.

Better yet, rather than unlocking the door for the guy who just killed you and letting him out of the room why not just keep the door locked? You're dead anyway, and it's only going to be a few days before they die of thirst, so screw it- don't give them a teleport back to be start of the dungeon, just leave everything locked and be done with it.
First bosses are either really stupid or just plain hate themselves.

I'm going with the latter.

Toby Ellis