10 Video Game Bosses Beaten By Their Own Arenas

Sonic's ovate adversary Dr. Robotnik is clearly one very smart egg, as evidenced by the array of ingenious robotic inventions he designs and deploys across Mobius. He's also indefatigable; how many other video game villains make personal appearances at the end of each and every level?

Unfortunately for Eggman, this extraordinary intelligence is accompanied by a whole flying fortress of arrogance. What other explanation is there for the wily doc trundling his most basic contraption all the way from Scrap Brain to Green Hill, when he could so easily nip Sonic in the bud right from the off? It has to be that he doesn't take a blue forest critter seriously.

Further evidence of his eggstreme ego: the only thing these Egg-o-Matics are weak to is the balled spikes of a hedgehog. It's too obvious an oversight to be anything but intentional.

There are a few times throughout the Sonic canon where Robotnik thinks, "you know what, I'm tired of this prickly prick", and unleashes a mechanical menace impervious to his opponent's arsenal. Unfortunately, it's in these instances when his impetuousness trumps his intelligence.

The regular end-of-level boss of Sonic & Knuckles' Death Egg Zone sees the put-upon prof repeatedly fire little trundling spiky robots at Sonic out of a big metal machine - a machine which can only be harmed by said robots. Too bad, then, that it all transpires in a room where Sonic can flip the gravity, sending the robots crashing down onto it.

The arachnid invention of Sonic Mania's Flying Battery is similarly sent swinging into its chambers totally unnecessary spikes - the only way to harm it - and what of the iconic wrecking ball baddie at the end of Green Hill Zone? If Robotnik had chosen to confront Sonic just ten yards earlier - ie, where there wasn't two handily placed floating platforms - the whole series would have ended right at the start.