Big Bosses

Why did so many classic games have giant bosses?
Post your favorites.

Giant sprite means more detail and conveys the difference between the mooks and a boss.

ur mom has my giant boss

Your two examples don't explain it much, but large bosses simply provide more possibilities for gameplay.

Specifically I was talking about how normal human characters seemed to double (or more) in size once the boss battle starts. Take Malth for example.
I kind of understand this sort of thing in RPGs but it even happens in action and adventure games too.

Only shitty western games slack giant bosses.

metal gear

It's most likely because it makes for a more challenging and fair boss fight in that regard. If the boss was about your size, or even smaller, you could pretty easily get past them without any problems, and at the same time getting to hit them(especially in games where precision always an option like Mega Man X/Zero, GnG, Ys, whatever) would be difficult and annoying.

I guess the question is then why didn't all games do it?

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Also size conveys ideas of grandure and power.

What are you referring to?

I always figured it was something like this. There's also the fact that it makes them harder to jump over so it causes the boss to actually apply pressure on you during the fight.

Take Mega Man for example.

Your answer to that is in Mega Man 3's Doc Robot fights. The dude is slightly larger than MM and as such it's pretty infuriating to dodge collision damage with him. With X and Zero they could play around more with this because X and Zero are more mobile and have a vertical element to them. But on the other hand I remember either MM7 or 8 having really large sprites and I was okay with those games.

Megaman robot masters were made the same size than Mega but they kept this in mind when designing their attack patterns with lots of windup time and telegraphing of attacks, so the skills involved are pattern recognition and dodging. Latter bosses are larger for dramatic effect and to involve jumpnshoot more.

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Big bosses are a good idea for 3d games too. It can make their animations much easier to read, very useful if they have a large variety of attacks. It also means you're unlikely to lose track of them for even a second, even if you get really far away. Mario Oddysey has some pretty satisfying bosses because of this imo.

The bigger they are…

The more they're used for rape animations in rule 34?

off the top of my head

You're thinking about Video games WAY too hard.

right? what a nerd LMAO xP

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I don't particularly mind menacingly big bosses, but when did the "bosses explode into pieces, more explosions, coins/banknotes and/or lighting effects" gimmick fall out of fashion?

for you

Bram Stoker's Dracula got really ridiculous in this regard.
I love this shit.

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i don't remember yama tsukami being that big.

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Gogmazios/Dire Miralis/Atoraru-ka were fun fights and all pretty huge but I have no clue in the slightest how they are going to pull off zorah magdolos.
That fucker is ridiculously massive
It would make sense if it would play like the jhen-mohran fights

The most simple reason I can think of is that a larger boss can have a more detailed sprite. For sidescrollers in particular, if everything else was as big as the bosses, there would be less room on the screen, which means simpler level design and the player has to move slower in case an enemy comes from offscreen.

In my defence, G-Darius was the first Darius game I played and Eclipse Eye, being the first boss, was always the most iconic, for me at least.