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Prepare For Trouble, Make It Double

While Team Rocket's James makes strides in the WVGCW as the most dangerous manager ever to grace the pseudo-pseudo-sport, I figured we'd take a look at famous duo bosses from the world of video games. These guys always attack as a pair, and whether their skills reflect or complement each other they've created some memorable boss fights in upping the challenge by coming at you simultaneously.

Well, I say "I figured", but this was @video_game_king's idea. He did suggest tag team bosses, but it's harder to come up with a list where boss characters alternate their assault outside of Fighters. We won't be covering any Fighters in this list, for the record. Too easy. I've also tried to shy away from boss fights where you're fighting two carbon copies of the same creature, or multiple clones a la Pinwheel or Fool's Idol. I tend to favor the "complementary polar opposites" set-up, because it's an interesting scenario to balance for a designer.

But as always, this list is representative rather than comprehensive, so there'll be many instances of this particular boss fight set-up I either forgot or haven't encountered personally. That's what the comments are for, you wonderful helpful VG aficionados. Do my work for me.

List items

  • Can't really go much further without mentioning Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough, affectionately called "Pikachu and Snorlax" by fans. Not that they have too many. Ornstein and Smough represent perhaps the crest of Dark Souls' strictest manifestation of its difficulty, insofar as their boss battle is all skill and very little cheesing or pattern memorization. It's also a tense battle between two opponents that will take you down very quickly if you lose sight of one or both of them. It's a fight that requires caution and reflexes and tends to trip a lot of newcomers up. Hint: Kill the little one first.

  • The penultimate boss fight of the game puts Link against Ganondorf's "mothers", the Gerudo witches Koume and Kotake. The real boss fight only begins after Link's had some practice reflecting the fire/ice spells of one witch at the ice/fire-aligned other witch, before they join together and create the far more challenging Twinrova. A classic example of a pair of bosses who are secretly each other's worst enemy.

  • Mr Shine and Mr Bright, anthropomorphic manifestations of Planet Star's sun and moon (respectively), are a recurring duel boss and the only real "tag team" boss fight on this list. What's neat is that when they switch roles between aggressor to bystander, the bystander sits in the sky and changes the arena from day to night depending on who's taking a breather.

  • It's not quite clear why Slogra, a skeletal pteradon wielding a spear and Gaibon, a gargoyle-esque demon, decided to team up, but the pair of them together make for a formidable team. They're able to control the ground and air between themselves, and it's hard to damage one without tangling with the other. Since their first appearance in Super Castlevania IV, they've appeared again and again to test the descendants of Belmont.

  • Gauche and Droite are the henchwomen and adopted daughters of flamboyant weapons merchant Yeager. Their names are French for "left" and "right", and are always seen together as Yeager's left-hand and right-hand accomplices. Though the boss fight with them is strictly an optional one that becomes available towards the end of the game, when so much side-content is traditionally unlocked in a JRPG, their battle does help shine a light on their enigmatic boss and his backstory.

  • One of a few pages in our wiki database that features a pair of characters, Zorn and Thorn are a pair of recurring Final Fantasy 9 bosses that resemble a wisecracking harlequin version of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey's Station. Their true form is actually a single powerful entity, but it prefers to spend its time as two beings who rephrase each other's statements. Final Fantasy 9 was an unapologetic retrospective on the franchise from which it hails, and Zorn and Thorn felt like a shoutout to FF6 villain Kefka's brand of colorful nihilistic lunacy in particular.

  • Though Super Smash Bros' perennial antagonist Master Hand is usually fought alone, special circumstances can summon his screwy southpaw sibling Crazy Hand. Crazy Hand has a completely different moveset from his brother, one that generally favors randomness and erratic movements. Alone, Crazy Hand is a dangerous and unpredictable opponent. With Master Hand, they're a considerable challenge.

  • Masa and Mune are two odd characters who represent the power of the Masamune blade, a weapon created from the same dreamstone instrumental in many of Chrono Trigger's big events. They test the party's courage when they come to collect the blade on behalf of Frog, who had previously made the journey to recover the sword with his knight friend Cyrus some years previous. Fought independently, and then united into one being, it's never quite clear if Masa and Mune are spirits, Mystics or both.

  • Balio and Sunder are a pair of unicorn brothers who make life very difficult for Ryu and his friends for most of the first half of Breath of Fire III. One of those recurring bosses like FF9's Beatrix where you're almost always scripted to lose, Balio and Sunder are responsible for a lot of the game's early tragedy and their eventual defeat, after somehow forming the combined entity Stallion, is something of a "hell yeah!" turning moment for the game. To say they're a pair of colossal jerks is a major understatement.

  • Perhaps considered the 16-bit version of Ornstein and Smough, the wife-husband team of vampires that appear in the Underwater Continent of Mu - already a bit of a headache as far as the game's difficulty goes - is a major hurdle for many players due to how effectively they cover each other's backs. The tough fight against Jack and Silvana is not helped by having a strict time limit, in the guise of the hero's friend Eric tied up to a comically large explosive (as if there's any other kind of giant bomb than a humorous one). If anything about this game can endure in the ol' memory banks for over two decades, it's probably this bear of a fight.
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