7 Hardest Video Game Mini-Bosses That Wrecked Players

As everyone worth their Hadouken knows, fighting games are built on Rivalries (especially Rival Schools, what a game am I right lads, it's literally in the title, etc, etc), and as such your quest to give the world a good fisting is made all the better when you can then give your hated foe a middle finger as well.

More often than not these rivalries will eclipse that of the threat of the actual main boss of the game, as instead of some random cheap-ass fighter being thrown in to maniacally laugh about world domination, this is a simmering storyline that has sometimes been gestating over several games. As you might expect, many games utilize this rival system to offer you your final challenge before the end boss, and as such pump up the challenge accordingly, however, when it comes to any game after Tekken 5 in the series, the difficulty spike can often end up impaling players completely.

The reason for this is that the game uses ghost fighter data to inform what moves your opponents will use, and the better you are at dispatching earlier combatants, the harder the ghost data used will be as you progress, and when it comes to the rival encounter, the game applies a pseudo-multiplier based on your score or time and picks a challenge setting accordingly.

Suddenly your moves are being read before you've even hovered over the inputs, and now your hated rival is spin kicking you with combos that you're sure might as well come with Nelson from the Simpsons laughing at you with each hit. On lower difficulties, Rivals might present a firm challenge, but on higher settings, this can become a death sentence.