10 Most Memorable Video Game Bosses Of All Time

8. Mother Brain (Metroid)

video game boss battles
Nintendo

As far as gigantic, mechanized, Cyclops-like, spike-covered brains go, Mother Brain is definitely the most terrifying. Depending on which installment of Metroid you're playing, Mother Brain is either the leader of the Space Pirates, or second-in-command to the flying dragon known as Ridley.

Either way, she's a biological supercomputer, capable of infinitely evolving to keep her disembodied brain alive for all time. So... she wins.

Mother Brain is also the one constant threat to Samus over the course of the whole Metroid franchise, though no final boss battle will likely ever top the mindf**k she deployed during Super Metroid.

Enclosed in a super strong glass case and surrounded by turrets that would like very much to knock you off the tiny platform you're mounting your futile offence from (and into the lava pits below), when Samus finally seems to get the best of the big brain, the real fun is just beginning.

Because now, she's turned into a towering, robot skeleton which allows her to shoot laser beams from her eyeball. And just to prove she really is as cold as the bipedal mech her henchmen concocted, she kills the baby Metroid that was basically Samus' pet.

A brain that doubles as braun, Mother Brain does not mess around.

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Jacob is a part-time contributor for WhatCulture, specializing in music, movies, and really, really dumb humor.