The Last Boss

The Last Boss: Michael Jackson vs Stray Dogs

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When I heard that the new Michael Jackson video games for Wii, DS and Kinect were going to be dance games I was hugely disappointed. “What else would you expect them to be?” you may ask, and that is a fair question. I knew it was unlikely, but a small part of me was hoping that we would see some kind of follow up to the classic Sega title Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. That game had it all; a Michael Jackson soundtrack, scrolling beat-em-up action and some great boss fights, not least of which was the legendary Stray Dogs. Yes, there was a video game where you used Michael Jackson to kick the ever-living shit out of a bunch of dogs.

Why this game doesn’t have a sequel is beyond me…

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The Last Boss: Red Eye

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Red Eye is an unwilling agent for the notorious Redrum gang (Try reading that backwards! Mind blowing right?) from Sega’s 1996 fighting game Last Bronx. In a move befitting an evil organisation with such an evil name, their method for recruiting Red Eye (formerly known as Ken Kono) was to offer him something called the Redrum challenge (which I can only assume is a blind taste test of various cola brands). He refused them, and so they naturally set him on fire, causing him to go insane and rather than suffering horrible burns, his skin just turned an odd shade of bright red. He also got a pair of cool night vision goggles, giving him that little bit of extra weirdness/style to cement his image as the ‘crazy evil guy’ of the game.

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The Last Boss: Captain Onishima

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Lieutenant Columbo, Inspector Zenigata and Dirty Harry.

Just let those three names roll around in your head for a bit. They’re all really great characters aren’t they? Now imagine them all combined into one person, cell shaded and then put into a video game.

Now go change your underpants and come back to read about Jet Set Radio’s Captain Onishima.

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The Last Boss: The Magician

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Welcome to the first ever ‘The Last Boss’, where I’ll be covering a different Sega Boss Character/Fight each article. It’s something I hope to do on a semi-regular basis, and as you well know there are a lot of unique and great ones to cover. In an ironic fashion, lets dive into the First Last Boss, The House of the Dead series’ Magician.

The Magician, like all other bosses in the House of the Dead Series (barring Overkill) is named after a Tarot Card. In Tarot cards, the Magician is representative of ‘creation by willpower and desire’. In the House of the Dead Games, he is representative of lots of fireballs and repeatedly inserting more money into the machine as he kills you again and again. And again.

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