Ornstein & Smough from Dark souls .... the definition of epicness

Mr. Sir Henry Motherfucker - No More Heroes
Alice Twilight - No More Heroes 2
Ganondorf - Zelda TP
Da Ilohm - Zelda SS
Bad Girl - No More Heroes

N°1: BOWSER
N°2: BOWSER
N°3: BOWSER

AHRAHRAHRAHR....

Fighting Mouser in Super Mario Bros 2 was fun, but so were all the boss battles in it.
Donkey Kong Country 3: the battle with the Snowman boss on the Ice mountain was cool (no pun intended).
Metal Gear Solid against Psycho Mantis which involved a unique tactic.
Yoshi's Island the fights against Raphael the Raven and the Spiked ball (forgotten his name, sorry).
There are so many but I can't go through all of them.

Now, I've never played Sonic Generations and I don't intend to, but as someone who has had the misfortune of playing Sonic '06, watching that whiny prick get crushed by a giant ball of debris brings me immeasurable amounts of joy.

As for boss battles that I've actually experienced at first hand... Well, the final boss of Metal Slug 3 is the first that comes to mind. Couldn't find a video of it, though. (At least one where the player didn't suck miserably or make liberal use of the invincibility trick [Where's the fun in that?!])

Hmm... hard to categorize definitively, as different fights often play out differently in context, and some of my favorite games i may not have especially loved for their boss fights, and similarly some fights, while quite difficult, may not be my "favorite"

Tossing out a handful of five that come to mind, we have:
Jhen Mohran (Monster Hunter Tri): Monster Hunter was all boss fights, all the time (unless you were ore-mining), and yet Jhen Mohran truly felt like a boss among them, even compared to the other "legendary" monsters of the game, Alatreon, Deviljho, and Ceadeus. A huge and thrilling fight that incorporated strategy more deeply than any of the others in a game that was all about huge and thrilling fights

Metroid Prime (Metroid Prime): Here was a boss with fairly simple tactics at its disposal, yet who remained compellingly difficult and was just plain satisfying to smack down, especially as you yourself received your ultimate weapon (Phazon Beam).

Egg Emperor (Sonic Heroes): He was the final boss of the main story lines, preceding the boss of the "final" story, and you saw something rather interesting here in terms of beat-down satisfaction and the ability to fully test the limits of the team combat that Sonic Heroes set forth. Although Heroes was fairly far down in my list of top 50 games, this fight stands out.

Goht (Majora's Mask): Having never owned Majora's mask and only loaning it from a friend, Goht stands out amongst all of the franchise that i have played so far (though Koloktos and Demise from SS, as well as Zant from Twilight Princess also are worth mentioning). Goht just created tension in the most delightful way.

Bowser (Super Mario 3D Land): it may merely be because this fight is fresh in my head, but this fight really put a lot of good stuff together compared to other Bowser fights from other games. Bowser fights have always been good about creating a sense of urgency, but 3D Land's final fight stands out because it is more varied and manages to really keep you on the edge of your seat. NSMBWii also did a good job of this, but less so than 3D Land did, now that i really think about it.

I'm gonna say the boss run on Mario galaxy where you cant get hit even once, that took a lot of patience.

Yup, that's the guy!

2000cc said: Yiazmat (final hunt) in Final Fantasy XII, It took me 18 hours 20 mins (to beat him alone) but the last few hours when he is in critical at double level (Level 150 ish I believe) taking only 2/3rds damage and killing a (lev 99 with ultimate equipment) party member almost every hit is just epic, such an intense fight. Plus add the hardest monster from any given monster hunter game in here, their toughest is always a blast regardless of the monster hunter game/version. But that basically IS why anyone plays the game Speaking of which I need to buy a Japanese 3ds so I can get M.H 3G....

Oh dear...18 hours? And I thought I took it the slow way by taking 5 hours on my first attempt (later, with the proper gear for a 3-party, managed to get it under 90 minutes) xD. I bet solo-ing would be harder (and thus longer), but it would also be a big matter of chance since he starts spamming Death Strike after he's down to 60% of his total health and even with proper gear, the probability is still high (25% chance of it connecting).

Omega Mk. II Solo or Zodiark Solo on the other hand...now those would be some pretty insane fights

OT - My favourite boss battle of all time is probably the secret boss of Parasite Eve, Maya. Nothing could prepare you for that fight (both in context for the history of the game and the sheer difficulty of it), even though you had gone through boss battles on the Chrysler Building that made both Eve and Ultimate Being look like child play (especially the Queen Bee and Cockroach bosses).

But Maya...Maya was in a whole different level:
- Able to combo you to death easily if you didn't have an armour rating of over 200 (which was only achievable if you carefully fused armours through two entire gameplays).
- Able to put every status effect on you in every hit of the combo (thus you needing to also fuse armours carefully to have 8 slots for status protections).
- You could barely do over 100 damage to her if you didn't have a weapon with over 400 attack (this was almost impossible to get if you didn't went through the extremely tedious job of gathering 300 Junk pieces for forging one of the ultimate weapons, the AK-47 for me).
- Couple that with her 40000+ HP stat and the ability to heal for multiples of x000 each time you hit her when a fac-simile doll of her was on screen (hit her enough times and you'll heal her for 9000 HP a piece, which was basically gameover for you)
- And if that wasn't enough, she could do an Energy Shot type of attack that was instant death, no matter your protections or HP, after she was under 50% of her total HP and that attack took 90% of the screen size (you could only dodge it by staying so close to Maya you could smell her).

Basically she's like the mother of any superboss I've ever faced xD. She needed Two playthroughs of careful and planned preparation and even that was not enough to guarantee your survival of the Chrysler building itself, much less victory in that battle.

Unfortunately, couldn't find any youtube videos of the fight which aren't either someone overlevelled to 99 (which takes an absurd amount of time to do in this game, over 100 hours of fighting to get from 37 to 40, or via cheating device) or someone who has cheated his/her weapon&armour stats to godly stats, which are impossible to get in EX Mode 1.