How Impossible Art Thou, Bubble Bobble End Boss??

I was visiting a friend in Cleveland over the weekend, and his roommate ended up downloading Bubble Bobble on the Wii's Virtual Console. We both used to play the game like crazy as younglings, and proceeded to power through most of it without any trouble. Some of the stages are a bitch, but with persistence, we got to the boss. I vaguely remember fighting the boss as a kid, but what I didn't remember is that--like so many other NES games--the end boss is bitch hard.


Though there are better known bitch hard NES bosses, I'm surprised nobody brings up the dude from Bubble Bobble. Here's the set up: you have to get to the top of the stage to get those lightning bottles. They allow you to blow bubbles that, when popped, shoot lightning. The "80" you see at the top is how many hits it takes to bubble the last boss so you can then pop him.

As the boss cuts through the room in his 90 degree patterns, he throws out waves of bottles. GameFAQs informs me that the boss is known as "Super Drunk" which is kind of funny now that I think about it.

Not so funny is the way I can't beat this boss. Keep in mind I'm playing this on an emulator and a keyboard is hardly the ideal way to play the game, but I didn't fair much better with a partner.
You'll see this a lot. After 20 minutes of trying, the lowest I got him down to was 64.
The reason this boss is impossibly hard is a combination of the mechanics of the game and the unfairness of the fight. Quite often you'll find yourself cornered by the boss and wave of bottles, and the bubble blowing and popping is shaky at best best. You never feel like you have enough time or control to set up your attack as you'd like, so it's left up to luck how well you come out each attempt. Other than this boss, the game is about bubbling enemies, popping them, and trying not to get killed. There are also various items you can get to help you, and that experience is a lot of fun. The game's mechanics weren't really designed for a boss fight like this--at least, they don't feel like they were--so that might be a lot of it. Of course the fact it takes 80 hits to kill him--and then you can still screw it up if you don't get to him to pop his ballooned self in time--is just the cherry on top.

As children, we had all the time and bloody mindedness necessary to conquer challenges like this. However, nowadays I have neither time nor bloody mindedness for unfair, rigged crap like this. For its time, Super Drunk was par for the course, but seen through modern eyes he is an antiquated game design element that is both difficult and difficult for bad reasons.