5.) M. Bison

You can't really have a final boss list without at least one fighting game. And while Street Fighter II may be a fairly old game, It featured what is probably the bitchiest boss of any fighting game: M. Bison.

Anyway, he looks like a badass with a glowing fist. Big deal. Lost of people have glowing parts. Like Cyclops and his glowing eyes. Or Rudolph the Reindeer and his glowing nose. Or Ron Jeremy and his glowing... anyway, we're not impressed by glowing parts.

What we are impressed by is having a power move that just kills anything. And in this case, that's M. Bison's Psycho Crusher.

For you to accomplish this move, naturally, required a bit of time charging. For the computer to accomplish it, there was no downtime. None. While you were fighting M. Bison, he could walk towards you and then immediately launch into 5 psycho crushers in a row. And this was a problem, because they would set whatever they touched on fire, including you:

Many people called this move "cheap". But the fact remains that you have to respect a boss who can repeatedly turn into a blazing bullet of flaming death. Someone like that simply has to be a final boss. After all, if he were your protagonist, games wouldn't be much of a challenge:

4) Bowser

Bowser is old school. One of the original Final Bosses, you fought him at the end of every single castle in the classic Super Mario Brothers for the NES. The princess may have been in another castle, but Bowser was ubiquitous.

The stuff of nightmares

He's not terribly scary in this initial form, since he's roughly your size, and looks like a small dog with back pimples. And he's also not terribly difficult to defeat, since all you have to do is run past him and touch the stupid switch. And if that was where bowser stopped, he'd never have made this list.

However.

Bowser soon set off on a course of self-improvement, and understood what it takes to be an evil villain worthy of final bosshood. He acquired some crazy mechanical throne devices, since everyone knows that a final boss must drive some sort of evil robot, even if it's an evil robot clown copter:

If the Joker had a helicopter throne, it might look like this.

Bowser also started working out, and bulked up considerably. No longer looking just like a retarded turtle, he finally managed to end up as a properly-sized monster to serve as the final boss in later Mario games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. And it's much more satisfying to beat a large dragon/dinosaur monster that it is to beat a retarded turtle. Otherwise we'd just pick on Strom Thurmond.

Bowser after bulking up:

Bowser after too many steroids:<

Anyway, if nothing else, at least he's reliably unkillable. Bowser has been back probably more times than any other final boss in video game history. And there's a simple reason for that: Mario doesn't have any fucking weapons. No guns. No swords. Not even a cheap-ass switchblade. Until Mario learns to stop bringing a winged cap and fluffy tail to a gunfight, Bowser is going to keep coming back.

3) Ganon

Ganon is another one of those classic final bosses from back in the 8-bit NES days. You fought through nine dungeons filled with traps and enemies, all so you could face off against this evil pig-beast:

His powers including posing as a white house reporter, writing as a conservative columnist, and posing for gay websites. Link entered the dark room, and wowed by Ganon's large trident, repeatedly thrust his "Master Sword" into the pig, along with the occasional money shot-- woops, that's Jeff Gannon, and we wanted Ganon von Ganondorf:

There's our pig-faced boy. Anyway, Link entered the dark room, and wowed by Ganon's large trident, repeatedly thrust his "Master Sword" into the pig, along with the occasional money shot from the silver arrow. The trident soon became old hat, however, and Ganon got bigger and more bad-ass:

In spite of the increase in size, Ganon's diet managed to make him look like less of a pig, with the result that he was now capable of carrying a sword without getting stuck on a roast. And he just kept getting more and more badass. For Ocarina of Time, he picked up a second sword:

And by the time Windwaker came around, Ganon had gone all ninja, and completely towered over the heroes:

From Pig to Ninja. It'd almost be a wonderful disney movie.

2) Diablo

Diablo is the Lord of Terror, and one of the Prime Evils (the other evils being Hate, Destruction, and Telemarketers). Unlike the various other minor characters on this list, Diablo is an evil force from an ancient time, rather than just a random guy who happens to be evil and wants to take over the world. Diablo already is the world, which is why his name is on the box:

Who's the hero? Who cares! Rather than having a hero face various perilous quests with a different enemy to fight each time, the Diablo series has a constant enemy with new heroes each time. This is not about a Superhero saving the world from an endless series of villains. This is about a Supervillain destroying the world in spite of an endless series of heroes. In spite of being killed and trapped in a soulstone, Diablo always manages to take over again, and you can have all the character classes you like, because none of them have names, and few if any of them will return in the next installment.

Also, in terms of being a giant horned monster, Diablo pretty much puts Bowser to shame. He's much larger, much scarier, and rather than being a bumbling planner, he just destroys everything. His castle doesn't have lots of cute puzzles. It has a fuckton of enemies and a giant pentagram. And he doesn't spit a tiny fireball at you. Diablo IS fire. He'll put fire everywhere:

I went down, down, down, in that burnin' ring of fire.

In the original Diablo, his fire attack automatically hit you no matter where on the screen you were. In Diablo 2, his fire was complimented by a deadly stream of lightning. And as soon as Diablo 3 comes out, no doubt more ass will be kicked.

1) Sephiroth

It's quite possible that this pick for number 1 doesn't surprise you. Nor should it; Sephiroth is pretty much universally acknowledged as one of the most bad-ass characters in all of videogaming. You could run down the bad-ass villain checklist, and Sephiroth passes every category with flying colors.

Huge sword? Check. Wears lots of black? Check. Government super-soldier gone wrong? Check. Bizarre genetic creation? Check. Bad-ass theme song? Check. Part ninja? Check. Part alien? Check. Callous disregard for human life? Check. Willing to burn down your hometown just to taunt you? Check. He's well-nigh a demigod. And as if all that wasn't enough, when you're fighting him, he throws a fucking planet at you:

Calculus can kill.

Destroying half the solar system and dropping a planet on your year is probably out of the realm of possibility for all other supervillains, let alone videogame final bosses. But Sephiroth will do this a few times in the same battle. It's no wonder that in Kingdom Hearts, long after you've beaten the game, you can still be levelling up forever and not be able to face Sephiroth in the arena without getting your ass kicked in 10 seconds flat. He's not the final boss of Kingdom Hearts, because the creators figured someone might want to have a chance in hell of beating the game.

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