Boss (video games)
In video games, a boss is a particularly large or difficult computer-controlled character that must be defeated at the end of a game or a segment of a game. Bosses appear in many video games, particularly story or level-based first and third-person shooters, platform games, CRPGs, and most shoot 'em ups.
Many single-player games feature a level/episode structure, the game becoming progressively harder as the player advances. Bosses are a consequence of this structure, appearing at the end of a level or episode and being the hardest enemies to defeat. Other games have a storyline instead of a level-based structure, but they still feature boss-like enemies at various points in the story or at the end of the storyline.
The boss battle generally marks the climax of a dramatic buildup resulting from the player's anticipation and anxiousness. Game designers often add design elements, such as suspenseful music, that enhance this effect. A common method is to make the boss much larger than the player's on-screen representation, as opposed to normal enemies, who are more commonly smaller than the player, or at most roughly equal in size.
Games make bosses difficult to kill by giving them more hit points (amount of damage they can sustain) and more effective attacks. In complex games (particularly role-playing games), bosses also have "special" attacks, such as stunning/freezing the player, teleportation, inflicting curses on the characters that decrease their abilities, and so forth. Bosses are often immune to certain abilities that the player possesses, and often can only be defeated by specific attacks and strategies, or by using the environment or their own attacks against them.
A weaker version of a boss that appears earlier in the game is called a miniboss.
The first boss in a video game was created for a Dungeons and Dragons-derived game called "DND" on the Plato computer system in Urbana, Illinois.
List of famous or noteworthy bosses
