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[jwk5]

Symphony of the Night has some great ones.  My two favorite, of course, are

and

.

Especially if you're using Richter.

[Ego_Shiner]

im agreeing about mischief makers. the first time i fought cerberus alpha completely blew me away, especially when it got to the part where he started grinding and pulling off street fighter moves at like 80km/h

[Virtanen]

Yeah, Metal Slug all the way.

[RobHaines]

For 2D, Cybernator on the SNES had some great boss moments, in particular fighting a boss halfway up an asteroid being driven into the atmosphere with giant engines. It's brilliant due to context; you don't just need to defeat the enemy, you need to destroy him with enough time to take out the engines before they irreparably alter the asteroid's orbit and kill billions. Hell, and that's only the third mission. Awesome game, often overlooked.

3D, my favourite boss battle ever is th Crimson King in the flawed yet brilliant Otogi: Myth of Demons. believe it or not, there doesn't seem to be a single video of this fight on Youtube - only its inferior rematch in Otogi 2 - so I'll attempt to explain. Raikoh, the main character, is an incredibly strong demon, capable of smashing his enemies through walls, scoring furrows in the ground as they crash to earth, blasting them with flaming phoenixes fom his outstretched hand. So is the Crimson King; except CK is slightly stronger, just a little faster, a close enough match that you always feel in danger, but not impossibly so. They meet in a fully-destructible snowy bamboo grove, divine in its untouched perfection. Five minutes of clashing blades, hurled magic and teleporting mid-air strikes later, the glade lies in ruins, craters and furrows revealing dented rock beneath snow, shattered and sliced bamboo everywhere, the iced-over stream cracked and running with clean water where your fight tumbled down its banks.

On a technical level, I think this fight works on a number of levels; you face on enemy with all your skills, but with a slight advantage in each of them, so it feels like it was player skill which won the battle. The setting also plays a huge part, a relatively simple battleground, but one which is very visibly and intrinsically affected by your battle.

[Lukas]

The 2D-Final Fantasies (Especially IV, V, VI) had some pretty epic shit in them.

The Final Bosses (Neo-/Exdeath, Kefka...) were particularily impressive...

[Dustin Smith]

when i was three i thought yoshi's island bosses were epic.

+1 to the konjak and treasure love.

[Inanimate]

if there was a massive war between bosses from 2d games

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA

[Nitromatic]

I recommend 2D, as I am not big fan of this "three-dee".
And besides, two-dimensional, may it be platformer or top-down game, if done well they can be good gaming experience than 3D.

... Not sure what I am writing, dead tired, see?

[gunswordfist]

EDIT: Posting that video has reminded me why the Oracle games were amazing.

Brings back good memories. I still need to play Ages.

[gunswordfist]

see also, from the greatest action game of all time.

Nope, it'll always be 2nd to this game:

[moi]

Contra hard cops is amazing, it has enough bosses for 10 games. And there are alternate routes, actually I don't even remember fighting this boss.

anyway, something more ancient, one of the first mega bosses:

[paste]

Legion from the Castlevania games, for sheer creepiness factor.

This is one of my favorite bosses of all time.

[Strife]

With regards to your choice between 2D and 3D, I would definitely recommend 2D to start things off. Since you don't have to worry as much about that third dimension (except when pulling off visual stunts), it's easier to make a visually impressive and intimdating boss that keeps players on their toes.

As for examples, I think everyone here hit the nail on the head. xD If you're looking for a decent list of awesome boss fights, the Best Boss Ever page on TVTropes may be worth a read:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Awesome/VideoGameBosses

[Glyph]

The Nightmare or SA-X from Metroid Fusion. I can't think of more perfect examples of epic 2D fights.

[Strangeluv]

Nuff said!

[superflat]

Revenge of Shinobi

[McMutton]

Revenge of Shinobi

I could never get to that boss. I always ended up lost in that damned maze.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I completed it around age 14.
Hardest fight was the Master, if you lost one life you didnt get another chance, it was curtains.
His color changing wig was a dangerous weapon.

So much copyright infringement going on there, not just Godzilla but the Terminator, Spiderman and Batman.  They didnt seem to care in those days, considering indie games werent in existence and so AAA games just 'got away with it'.

Music was epic in that game too.

[archagon]

The

, especially 1-3, has some incredible boss fights. Most of them are pattern-based and very predictable, but oh-so-much-fun! My favorite, or at least the one I remember most, is the climbing thing from Metal Slug 2/X, stage 2 (Egypt).

Apogee's Stargunner is another game with great bosses, one for each stage. (About 30 total, IIRC.)

That's one of the things I miss from the 2D days of yore. Most 3D games just don't have the same sort of ginormous, what-the-fuck-style bosses, nor the immense feeling of catharsis you get from beating them. It was fun to go through each stage knowing that something terrible was lurking at the end, wondering what horrible tricks the designers would unleash upon you this time. Half-Life 1 is the last 3D PC game I remember that did it well. (Half-Life 2 utterly sucked in that regard.)

EDIT: Oh yeah! For more intelligent boss fights, see the 2D Zelda series, especially Link's Awakening and Minish Cap.

[Strangeluv]

Actually, probably every boss from Gunstar Heroes, especially against "Green" in Expert Mode