Favorite Boss Tracks!

As I’ve gotten into watching games being speedrun on Youtube, I’m reminded on how important music is in games. While it may be fun to interact with a game and experience the challenge of overcoming its obstacles, I’ve found that it’s the character themes and overall scores that stick with me more than anything else. This is made even more apparent when you’re watching somebody play an old classic and you have the game audio lowered to accommodate for commentary. It’s just not the same and any stream that lets the original soundtrack play is improved by leaps and bounds.

This got me thinking about my favorite tracks in games, in particular boss themes. So here are a couple of my favorites, in no particular order. Note that these will mostly, if not complete, come from RPGs since that’s the genre that I’ve delved into the most.

Final Fantasy X: Fight With Seymour

I’ve been pretty vocal about my casual disinterest in FFX in the past. I thought it had a fun take on fighting and leveling up, but I didn’t like a vast majority of the cast. I didn’t like their writing, I didn’t like their voice acting and I didn’t like their overall design. This extends out to a ponce named Seymour. He’s one of the main antagonists that you face several times and might be one of the worst things that character designer Tetsuya Nomura has created. Here’s his ugly mug:

Thankfully, the music used for his fights is some of the best stuff from a game that already has some really good music. It gets you hyped up, there’s a level of pomp to it that fits the jerk that you’re fighting, and it generally feels like a big encounter. Basically, all the things you need for a song of its type.

Persona 3: Master of Shadows

Persona games in general have excellent soundtracks, but their combat music is something else. With Persona 3, you have a suitably dark and somber track, compared to bombast that is the main theme of Mass Destruction. It’s a little slower while still keeping the energy high and comes at the end of the month-long arcs, so you know there’s trouble when the theme starts up.

Chrono Trigger: Boss Battle 1

Another old-timey Square masterpiece, I could fill just about every list I ever right with the music from its soundtrack. Hell, I could put a couple more entries on this list alone. However, I stuck with the standard boss theme out of sheer posterity. Yes, the Magus boss theme sounds more momentous and the Lavos theme embodies the on-coming apocalypse that will occur if you fail, but the standard boss theme works so well over and over again. It sounds more desperate and frantic than the fighting theme, but not so much that it outshines the special boss themes later on.

Final Fantasy VII: JENOVA Absolute

Hah, though I was going to put One Winged Angel, didn’t ya? Well, as famous as Sephiroth’s final theme is, it isn’t my favorite in FFVII. That honor belongs to the third to last boss fight in the game. What’s interesting here is that Jenova already has its own boss theme for prior encounters, appropriately titled JENOVA. That theme is pretty great too, but JENOVA Absolute feels epic. That term does get thrown out a lot, but the track feels like this is it. This is the last time you’re going to stab this stupid alien in the face after chasing after it for the last 40 odd-sum hours.

Earthbound: Pokey Means Business

Earthbound is famous for many reasons, but high among them is its ability to play with players expectations. That extends to the track for the final boss. It begins as a normal sounds 16-bit track, but about 50 seconds in transitions into a hard-hitting, almost metal finale. It matches with the fight you’re having, as you’re technically facing off against the boss from the first Mother game, but on a much more intense scale. Yeah, you’re also fighting that punk Pokey, but he’s small potatoes next a being so evil that it has to be contained in a giant machine.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Oh hey, it’s finally a boss theme from a non-RPG! Yep, and it’s from one of the most powerful final bosses in any game I’ve played. This is kind of cheating, as the Snake Eater theme plays in the opening credits and, oddly enough, during a sequence where you climb what’s possibly the largest ladder in any video game. However, I’m willing to budge here because Kojima expertly uses this SUPER cheesy song over a fight that you really don’t want to have. You’ve been following your mentor throughout the entire game and when you’re finally in the last area, she gives you the full run down of what lead to her betrayal and, surprise!, it was all to maintain a cover. Unfortunately, in order to keep that cover and the US out of international trouble, she’s got to take the fall and you have to be the one to kill her. The fight begins silent, with only the sounds of the two of you running through a field trying to vie for better positions. A couple minutes in, the vocals quietly start, building up over time until the theme is blaring loudly. It technically shouldn’t work, but man oh man did it work for me.

Undertale: Hopes and Dreams/SAVE the World

Finally, I had to close out with theme that has dominated my ears since I played it last year. I wasn’t sure about putting this track on here. Not because it isn’t good. Hell, it’s one of my favorite tracks in any game I’ve played. The bigger issue is that while it’s good without context, it’s absolutely fantastic when you understand what the creator is going for. The main developer and composer for the game, Toby Fox, loves using leitmotifs, which is the repeated use of musical lines in songs to invoke emotion. He uses it multiple times in this soundtrack and the culmination of it all is in the dual tracks of Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World. It still plucks my heart strings every time I hear either part of this track.

That’s it for me this time. If you have any particular favorite tracks, let us know here, on Facebook or on Instagram!

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