Top 10 Hardest Nintendo Bosses (NES)

The Nintendo Entertainment System brought us countless hours of sitting in front of that TV, making your way throughout each dungeon or stage.

Carefully inching towards that boss, palms sweaty, your mom yelling at you to come eat dinner after slaving for four hours cooking thanksgiving dinner! The sight of the game over screen. All that energy and work, ruined, wasted. There are a ton of options for hard bosses on the NES, here are ten of the hardest Nintendo bosses of all time.

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10. Death - Castlevania

Be ready to die over and over again with the death boss. He flies around you in true taunt like fasion, with his scythes chasing you around constantly. Castlevania is one of the hardest NES games of all time!

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to catch him in a loop with the upgraded holy water. Don’t even try this fight without the holy water, you’re just asking for trouble.

9. The Joker - Batman

Raising his hand, lightning coming down at will, shooting that giant gun, the Joker is no joke.

If he gets too close to the wall, He’ll sprint to the other side like some sort of Olympic athlete. Lose all your lives and back to the final stage.

8. Yellow Car - RC Pro AM

Like in most racing games, RC Pro AM starts off extremely easy. You’ll be in first place while laughing at the other cars. Until you hear this zipping noise.

When you actually do, get ready, that yellow car is coming for you like a bat out of hell!

7. Yellow Devil – Mega Man 3

I know what you’re thinking, the yellow devil in Mega Man 3 is easy once you know how to beat him. But yeah that’s the thing.

For today’s standards, being able to google any boss fight will show you to how how to take on anything. All we had is the Nintendo Power from 1991!

6. Shadow Link – Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Alright time to finish off Gannon, wait, what the heck is this shadow? That was my initial impression when seeing shadow link for the first time.

Let me tell you, he is tough! You’ll be hearing the sound of links shield and sword over and over again for this one.

5. The Technodrome - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Before we got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Arcade game, a fantastic beat 'em up on the NES, we were stuck playing this. The original TMNT game gets a lot of hate for not following the series well. I put that all aside and loved this game. Hopefully you have all of the turtles going into this fight. With the increased difficulty TMNT offers, it's no wonder it's considered to be one of the hardest nes games that are still fun today.

The Technodrome rolls in and has an electric charge to shoot at you. Then you have to deal with these two guns attached to it’s body while members of the foot clan are jumping out to make things worse. All this and you have to hit it’s eye in order to get some hits in after the guns are taken out. God I hope you have Donatello for this fight.

4. Dracula – Castlevania

The fight starts off where you have to hit Dracula’s head while jumping over his string of fireball attacks. Getting the timing down isn’t an easy task. When you finally do get him down to zero health, his head pops off revealing his final form.

Lucky you can abuse the powered up holy water and get him in a loop, if you’re lucky enough to bring it that far.

3. Jason Voorhees – Friday the 13th

Jason needs to be beat three times on three separate days. He’s a royal pain in the ass and has two possibilities to fight him. In the cabin where you’re fighting him from the third person or on the road where he constantly runs away.

You start off severely underpowered and most of the councilors are slow. To make things worse, Jason switches between speeds inside a cabin making it insanely hard to predict when to dodge his attacks.

2. Jaquio – Ninja Gaiden

Most gamers who have the NES consider Ninja Gaiden to be the definition of NES hard. Jaquio is the reason why most consider Ninja Gaiden to fit that title. Where do we begin with Jaquio?

Is it the movement speed being quicker than it’s projectile? You have three platforms you can try to use to get in a hit or two but it never seems enough. You can try to hang onto the wall and get a hit in as he comes close. Ah, this makes me want to smash a controller just thinking about it!

1. Mike Tyson – Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

Now before you even clicked on this video, you probably had an idea that Tyson would be high on this list. Making for a notoriously hard final boss in the rhythm game disguised as a boxing game Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.

Get used to typing in that password, Mike Tyson will knock out Little Mac in one hit. Your timing has to be absolutely perfect during this fight.

The majority of these NES Games can be found on the NES Classic Edition console