/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6802939
Area Guardian sounds cooler.

I remember kids referring to bosses as "big bad guys" when I was very young in the early 90s

>>6802939
>>>/v/

>>6802939
Boss means leader/master. It's a pretty reasonable use of the word. There are other more convoluted naming in video games, although i can't think of any atm.
Thx for the alina li pic.

>>6802939
What's that shooting out of her hand?

Final boss

>>6803041
Spiderwoman,
Spiderwoman.

Does whatever
a spider can!

it's like trying to discover the origin of bread.

Everyone uses it and no one knows where it came from.

I remember using it at 3 when playing smb so maybe it was in the instructions for that.

>>6803079

I assume its based off the fact that you often fought minions or thugs up until you got to a certain enemy so boss would be a fitting term.
I'm honestly a bit curious as well

>>6803004
Nigga what? Where did you grow up. Also, boss has minions, and he tells them what to do, so he's called the boss OP.

>>6803173
TIDE GOES IN TIDE GOES OUT

>>6802939
common english usage - the leader of a group is commonly referred to as the boss.
Work gangs, crime gangs, kung fu movies, it was everywhere.

https://youtu.be/bmfudW7rbG0?t=90

All I can say for certain is that the term predates 1987 at which point it had spread so much and was so ubiquitous that it was being used in a parody way and puns in Japanese games like Metal Gear.

>>6802939
Stop horny posting

I think Legends of Localization has an article on the first use of the word 'boss' in a game manual.

>>6802939
smol tiddies > big tiddies

>>6803334
It was at least not so ubiquitous that every game used it. The Zelda manual called the bosses "ringleaders" while Super Mario Bros. 2 called Wart the "big boss." So the terminology was in flux around the time.

>>6803204
yer, that. Hong Kong cinema brought focus on the concept of taking on the boss hand to hand, i reckon. Before that it would have been goldfinger-tier stuff.

Did anyone else used to call the final boss the "boss of the game"? That was common in my friend group as a kid, but I've never heard anyone else say it.

>>6803521
That was something we would hear, yeah. It's a little wordy though so "last boss" or "final boss" was more common but "boss of the game" was tied to the idea of "beating the game" which didn't really exist as a concept prior to Super Mario Bros.

>>6802939
It's four easily readable letters and communicates the idea that the enemy is important.

What was the first boss fight ever in video games?

Hasn't this always been used? I mean everytime you talk about the leader of a crime syndicate or mafia gang you can him crime boss or mafia boss. It's basically a term for the big baddy from the antagonist group that's been used for ever

>>6803413
I remember distinctly that the SNES manual for Gradius 3 referred to end-stage enemies as Mayors. I've seen a bunch of different terms for them in manuals before, but I don't recall seeing Mayor anywhere else.

>>6803724
The earliest one I can think of are the dragons in Adventure on the 2600. Though I doubt they were ever called "bosses" back then.

>>6803458
yep -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdv62Z9BpSE

It's reasonable because it's the shorter and easier way to call a "leader", as >>6803010 and >>6803204 said. What's interesting is how the Japanese use the same term: ボス

First instance I remember hearing boss was the TMNT on NES instruction manual. I was like, how is Rocksteady their boss, these other guys aren't even from the show, he doesn't pay them. So even at the time I thought it was weird but it just caught on so whatever, I went with it.

>>6803067
Not even a partial rhyme. I suggest Spiderma'am.

>>6802939
Good thread. It's about time.

Doesn't it namely come from a lot of early games referencing Dungeons and Dragons? Stuff like atari games were heavily inspired by table tops since the creators were a bunch of nerds and dorks. So if you're looking for the origin you'll probably have to find out why larger monsters were called boss monsters in dnd likely what >>6803204 said though.

>>6802939
I've actually always wondered that.

>>6803004
In my country, when I was a kid, we'd say "leader", I guess because they were generally perceived as some sort of powerful commander of the lower tier mooks or something.

>>6803010
Makes sense.

>>6803173
>>6803193
FOOD GOES IN, POOP COMES OUT
*YOU* CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT

alina doesn't look very happy. Im not believing it look at her
>>6804385
early Atari was great because of their DnD fascination. same with From Software. DnD was a huge contributor to ALL of gaming in the late 70s and early 80s, right next to arcades and Atari

>>6803790
>mayors
Lmao that’s one of the most hilarious terms for a boss I’ve seen

>>6802939
I want to be her boss

>>6803790
>>6805438

>>6805441
Is this trolling parodying new people to /vr/ or are you legit 12 years old? Seriously, what is all this shit.

>>6803521
I used to say it until someone in my group got triggered enough to ask "WHAT!? DID HE MAKE THE GAME OR SOMETHING? HE ISN'T THE BOSS OF THE GAME THEN!!"

>>6805461
I like the style, it strikes me as one of those working design’s style “creative translations”

I called them Bad Daddies

>>6805504
That's pretty lewd.

>>6805461
That reads like a bad translation. Like someone looked up the Japanese word and "mayor" came up instead of boss or leader.

>>6802939
Boss comes from Yakuza boss and Mafia boss as in boss of the family so for example Koopa is boss of the Koopa family, Eggman is boss of the Eggman family etc.

>>6804385
I had never seen that expression used on D&D. Is it from the original edition?

>>6802939
I think we used to refer to them as "The Big One" before boss became commonplace here

ENDGEGNER

>>6806016
They used mayor in the Life force manual as well.

>>6802939
There have been a number of investigations of this, and the answer is, people just agreed that there are ordinary mosnters and their boss, hence the name. Like there are mobsters and a boss thereof. There really is nothing to this beyond the surface logic.

>>6806053
Looked more into it, it comes from a game based on dungeons and dragons called dnd, ran on plato systems and came out in '75. No clue where the actual term came from though. It's like people asking where 1-up/extra life came from theres no real definitive source, it just slowly became the term.

>>6806071

This

German is nice and pragmatic. A plane is a thing that flies and therefore a "fly-thing", and the big guy is the enemy at the end - the "end enemy".

глaвapь
as in leader, or literally head, of a mafia
now we just say "бocc" but in my childhood that creative translation was floating around

>>6802961
you are such a fucking retarded, cringey cunt.

>>6803079
>food analogy
fuck off cunt.
Fucking sick of this neo /v/ bullshit.

>>6806283
No it wasn't, you fucking mong. We always called them "boss". Both Dendy and Veliky Drakon called them bosses from day one.

mistranslation of Renegade were every enemy with a hp bar was named boss

>>6806315
Was that a food analogy? I though the redditot was just saying that he didn't know where bread came from and the last time his mommy brought him a sandwich was at 3 then he was playing super mario. Pretty sure you're reading too much into this. It's just a dumb kid who doesn't know his mom gets bread from the supermarket.

>>6806270
>A plane is a thing that flies and therefore a "fly-thing"

Do Germans seriously?

>>6802939
>

>>6803217
Exactly what I was gonna post.

When I was growing up in the 90's, everyone I knew would call them "masters". It wasn't until I got the internet that I saw people call them "bosses". Same thing with "levels" which I used to call "boards".

Here in Russia we called bosses "глaвapь" (glavár) which means "gang leader".

Playing Disgaea for the first time I thought it was weird how the one guy was called Mid-Boss. I always heard them referred to as mini-bosses before that, or maybe sub-boss.

>>6806019
This is probably pretty.close. The Japanese probably called them Oyabun, people in the 80s translating the manual translated it as boss which is as close a compartive word as we have, the end.

>>6808731
Mid-boss was usually reserved for situations where you were forced to stop for a fight mid-stage like in some Mega Man games. Mini-boss and mid-boss were always interchangeable but I never heard either used in RPGs. They were usually all just "boss". Maybe if the music was different like in Chrono Trigger we'd refer to "boss" and "major boss."

>>6808050
In Sweden we say "flygplan", ergo, "flying plane", or "fly plane". Germans also call shotguns "flinte" (like a flintlock), while in Sweden we say "hagelgevär", ergo, "hail rifle". European mainland Germanic is funny like that.

>>6808050

Well, "Flugzeug" is more exactly like "fly-stuff".
"Zeug" is better translated as "stuff", broad term for something unspecific, "thing" for an unnamed but more concrete object would be "Ding", and it's not a "Flugding".

>>6808528
Are you a homosexual?

For that matter why does English use airplane/aeroplane to differentiate it? Is there another type of plane I'm not aware of?

>>6808647
Yeah I remember called them "boards" too in the early 90s. The last boss was the "end guy". And you didn't beat a game, you "conquered" it.

>>6806016
>That reads like a bad translation.
Because it is. English manuals were often full of made-up bullshit, especially the Konami-made ones.

>>6809351
hydroplane

>>6809459
Fair enough, but wikipedia says those were invented after airplanes, so the point still stands why was it called an airplane first and not just a plane?

>>6803004
My dad just called it the "big guy" when we played Sonic 2
>inb 4 you

>>6802939
what are some retro games with knee socks

>>6809394
>end guy
I've also heard it referred to as the "governor" or "president" (because he's the boss of the mayors)

>>6803413
You're wrong. Ringleaders are the enemies that cause all the other ones to die. It's not the boss of the dungeon.

>>6809606
To explain, sometimes if you kill a bat the other bats in the room all die. That's because you killed the ringleader.

>>6809509
you know, I read further after I posted and you're right. Besides some suspect etymology about "planing" going back to 15c france, there isn't much out there about it.

>>6809605
stop

>>6809605
No the president is the one you have to rescue (after getting kidnapped by ninjas).

I'm trying to recall games that used health bar displays for bosses, but every one I check uses "ENEMY" in their place.

>>6803790
This is the post that is now going to turn this board to shit for three weeks. Thanks for mentioning lmao funnyyy mayorrr

>>6802939
Did she left her tits at home?

>>6809769

The first one I can remember right out of my head is Starfox64, where explicitely BOSS stands beneath the health bar.
So quite late in gens.

>>6809769
Adventures of Batman & Robin for Genesis flickers "BOSS TIME! PLEASE WAIT!" when fighting bosses (as the other player can't jump in during the fight). So at least 1995, I think.

>>6803079
What's more confusing is the origin for some carpentry terms. Like a dado, there an architecture usage but it describes something different and borrows from the Italian word for dice. What's weird is a dado is a cross grain joint, if you make a dado going with the grain it's called a groove.

>>6809803
>turn this board to shit
>now

I don't know if you've been around here for the past few days, but someone taking a quirky term from old games and running it into the ground is the least of our problems.

It must come from beat 'em ups surely? You go through all the plebs, and then you reach the level "boss", ie. the guy who's in charge of all the others. 1995 my hiney:

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_Game_Boy//Manual/formated/Double_Dragon_-_1990_-_Tradewest,_Inc..pdf

>>6803819
correct answer

>>6803790
>>6803413
These are interesting, I wonder if they could be translation variants from Japanese? Boss is a synonym for 'Ringleader', but 'Mayor' is a bit of a stretch.

I always heard Boss growing up in magazines/friends, but I do recall seeing guardian used rarely as well.

>>6806257
Actually that's another interesting one. I remember the Disney games on Mega Drive and I think a few others referred to 'lives' as 'tries'.
Maybe that was conscious to avoid the idea of 'death' in a Disney game?

>>6809256
yes

>>6810641
>Boss is a synonym for 'Ringleader'
Ringleader != boss. see >>6809606 >>6809624

>>6806016
that's literally what it is.

>>6802939
Kung fu movies "The Big Boss" and Japanese gangs, gangsters.

>>6810668
>Maybe that was conscious to avoid the idea of 'death' in a Disney game?

Yeah I've heard that's exactly what it was. Disney didn't want kids to get the idea that Mickey could lose his life and die so a life was called a try instead.

We called them "the monster" in my native language, at least in my region.

boss was a generic term we picked up later. we used to call them by their name if we knew it. I think we started using the term boss as games became more homogenized.

I come from the northeast. Always called them mayors.

in spanish we used to call them "el jefe", literall translation to "the boss"

>>6811336
el alcalde

>>6802939
Felix The Cat: The Movie.
It also established who *is* the boss: The Duke of Zill of course.

>>6811354
What does that translate to?

>>6811354
el mayor

We always called the levels "plantations" and the end big bad guys "masters" because dey beat us

>>6811402
translates to "the mayor", I find it a really weird way to call the bosses, in Mexico "jefe" was the only way we call them, and we still do lol

>>6811437
Why is this nigger so smug

>>6811454
because it makes you seethe

>>6811271
It’s an upstate new york thing

>>6802939
Its actually because i am God incarnate and its the word i chose.

>>6811437
funny how wojak looks like an actual nog

>>6806283
Also глaвный гaд which is "main jerk" except the word "гaд" is much more archaic and rarely used than "jerk". But about as fucking chorny

>>6803204
>crime gangs, kung fu movies
I think these two are the key to the mystery. Belt scrollers / beat'em ups with a street fighting theme were very popular at a certain point in the 80's. In those games the big dude at the end would typically be the literal boss of the gang.
And since it's, as you say, a generic term that can be used in many contexts it was easy for it to slip into general use in gaming regardless of genre or theme.

>>6802939
Gross. She fucks black guys. Take that shit back to /gif/

>>6809351
a plane is already two other things (a horizontal surface and a tool for shaping wood) and iirc the aero/airplane is named by analogy to the tool because of the way the wing cuts through the air.
sort of like how you can just call a motorbike a bike in many contexts, or more like the now-redundant "motorcar" (car originally referred to any wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, so one with a motor had to be distinguished.).

>>6805462
cry harder simp

One I always wondered is when and how did "dungeon" become the go to name for underground catacombs as you'd frequently find in RPGs and Adventure games. Funny enough, the game you'd think would have popularized it, Zelda 1, never refers to its ruins as "dungeons"- the game only uses Levels, while the manual itself strictly ever says "labyrinths".

>>6808647
>Same thing with "levels" which I used to call "boards"
Me and my friends also did this, we would call the bosses at the end of them the "chairman of the board".

>>6813817
We'd call them 'tracks', basically, if translated to English, like race tracks.

>>6813649
...from Dungeons & Dragons

>>6814012
...I may just be retarded.

>>6811575
Well I'm from Utica, and I've never heard that expression.

>>6814012
Actually, going a step further back on that same line of thought, I’ve always kind of wondered how dungeons came to be a concept for adventurers to explore to begin with, honestly.
IRL, a dungeon is where you lock up prisoners, traditionally under a castle but not necessarily.
Where on earth were there underground prisons so grand that an entire party of explorers would be needed to navigate them without getting lost, so advanced that we began to romanticize them as having booby traps, puzzles, and undead guards, and so prolific that we just sort of accept the idea that “Oh hey, a new dungeon has been discovered, guess we better round up a small team of warriors or a Chosen One to navigate it and steal its treasures or smite its boss.”

>>6814661
Oh, not in Utica, no; it's an Albany expression.

>>6809803
I'm glad people are force-meming this, I wouldn't have clicked on this thread otherwise and the manual page photos were worth it.

>>6815362
Caves and labyrinths make more sense for exploring and adventures but dungeon is a cool word that evokes malevolence and alliterates with dragon so it became the norm.

>>6814012
>>6815494
I grew up with Oubliettes & Ophidians.

>>6815362
Probably goes back to The Hobbit, a small group infiltrating a dragon's lair/former dwarf city and expanding from there. I don't know if it's the first since it takes a lot of cues from legend anyway but it probably did a lot of the heavy lifting for spreading it in the modern imagination.

>>6806315
Explain what's wrong with a food analogy in thirty words or less.

>>6803521
I did indeed use the term "boss of the game" and never really thought of it being unusual. When did you use this term?

I've been skimming old arcade solicits from the 80s. The term "boss" didn't seem to be commonplace in 1987, since even the adverts for Darius, a game where the massive bosses are a major selling point, didn't really seem to know what to call them besides "huge creatures".

>>6816876
Or to go even further back, some of the old Conan stories like The Tower of the Elephant or The Scarlet Citadel give me really strong dungeon-crawler vibes. D&D's setting owes much more to Howard than Tolkien in my opinion.

From what I gather, it's an old term from early PC game circles. Nintendo Power in 1988 is what made it mainstream enough to become the standardized label for them, though.

>>6803521
For me it was "final mayor" or "high comptroller"

>>6816984
Must've been pretty common by 1988.

>>6816829
Ogres & Oubliettes for me :^)

>>6818073
> In a world where evil reigns supreme, a small band of warriors stands tall against the darkness. This is... Ogres & Oubliettes!
Now that was a good game *sips*

A whole thread wasted with uninformed guesses and pointless arguments. EOPs are truly a sad people.
https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/kikakuthetower/170919

>>6816876
Well, The Hobbit mentions the Necromancer's dungeon, also I think Melkor's dungeons were kinda huge in Tolkien's myth.

>>6817023
Gygax denied a lot that his elves and dwarves had much to do with Tolkien's.
Of course he then has halflings and orcs being kind of a big deal, so you may or may not call bullshit on it.

>>6818073
On the internet, no one knows you're a pony

>>6818003
Very based

>>6802939
>file deleted
For what reason?

>>6817023
>>6818357
I think Gygax was pretty open about preferring Howard over Tolkien by a long shot. D&D has a lot of Middle-Earth elements because Gygax's friends were bigger fans of Tolkien, and yet the Conan influences are somehow much more present in the entire franchise. Whatever he did take from Tolkien, he probably tried to change and modify to be something he preferred, don't green orcs come from him or am I wrong?
Anyways, it's interesting parallel to Tolkien who absolutely hated his books being compared to Wagner's Ring cycle and dismissed any connection between the two.

>>6818459
Pics of real girls aren't allowed trannychan

>>6818459
Probably because of >>6808528 and looked low quality

I like it when games use the word in their games.

>>6818776

>>6818731
I didn't report anything

>>6813506
>car originally referred to any wheeled horse-drawn vehicle

I wonder if that's because car is short for carriage? Could just be a coincidence too.

>>6818038
>bosses being referred to as Wart's moppets

Who was the best moppet /vr/?

>>6818961
Clawglip was quite the ragamuffin.

If I could travel back in time about 28 years and tell my teenage self that his future recollection of an oddity in a game manual would become a forced meme, he would be very confused. This has all been strangely entertaining.

>>6819796
I never played Gradius III for the SNES, but a quick glance at the manual makes it seem like a goldmine written by somebody who simply didn't give a shit.

>>6819812
A lot of manuals from that era were hurriedly localized, much like the games. Some things stuck more in my memory than others.

>what we call it
mayor
bigdude
comptroller
foreman
moppet

>zoomers
boss
guardian
gatekeeper
story climax

major and leader have same pronunciation in mandarin
major is spelled as mayor in spanish
leader is synonym with boss

>>6818203
damn seeing yaruo and yaranaio makes me feel nostalgic.

>>6821558
>I' AM
What ESL country made this?

>>6818559
>don't green orcs come from him or am I wrong
Not sure, but I think I read something about Tolkien's orcs being greenish. Pig-faced orcs are all D&D I think, though.

>Anyways, it's interesting parallel to Tolkien who absolutely hated his books being compared to Wagner's Ring cycle and dismissed any connection between the two.
Huh, had heard a couple times it was an inspiration, never thought he'd deny that.

>>6818459
>>6818636
And shit like >>6803462 has been up for days.

>>6818203
Would you care giving us troglodyte, brainlet, little folk the summary of this, o mighty and intelligent one?

>>6803790
>>6805461
>>6809605
Ackshully, unlike >>6803413's ackshual alternate, in-flux terms for "boss", Gradius' mayors and Clash at Demonhead's governors are context-sensitive terms for the places those bosses rule in their respective games (ie, mayors pf the planets, governors of the towns and Tom Guycot being governor (head, "chief") of the other governors. That said, the new mayor meme is funny as fuck, and I support it!!!! \m/

>>6803173
>>6803193
>>6805103
>Fox News bad man uses a subtextual statement to infer that God is behind precise physical processes that cannot, in any plausible way, have happened by random chance much less continued to happen
>OUTRAGEOUS, I'M TRIGGERED, etc.
>Conclusion: let's be chucklefucks for the rest of our lives and ignore anything else from people we don't like, circlejerking each other along the way
I'm happy atheist boomers and their isms are dying out as expected. O'Reilly has said some cringe and retarded shit in his time, and Catholicism teaches even more retarded and illiterate shit in general, but your typical tactic of apelike mob-piling on a straw man is indicative of either desperation not to deal with the actual argument of your ideological opponent or extreme stupidity that comes with the side effect of not being able to detect context or subtext.

>>6822584
>i'm socked that mods are pedoweebs
You must be new here

>>6824505
I'm not sure what the point of your blog was but it sounds like you're mad so that's funny. Are you the kid who doesn't know where his mom buys bread?

>>6802939
bithead is that you?

>>6825012
Again, I'm happy, because you've unintentionally contained yourselves.

>>6825012
You're a bit slower than I thought.

>>6823447
Sasuke vs Commander (1980) featured "bosses" and "dons".
Galaga (1981) is what popularized the word though.

>>6803790
birth of a meme

>>6825650
According to your dickhole random nip website

>>6825070
>no u
Cool fail bro

called final bosses "main baddies" in my childhood
bosses before final boss were "mid way opponents"
t. eu esl

>>6825012
anime website

It's weird. Even as a kid who didn't speak English. We still called them a boss