Stationary Boss

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    A Boss Battle where the boss remains in one place. It might be because the boss is too big to move and be a fair fight or because it's merged with something and can't move. Most often overlaps with Puzzle Boss or Background Boss. If the boss is edging ever closer and you must defeat him in a time limit he may also be an Advancing Wall of Doom. In older games, large bosses were largely stationary due to sprite limit count (and having to use background tiles as an alternative) and difficulty to animate background tiles.

    Compare Pivotal Boss. Contrast Get Back Here Boss.

    Examples of Stationary Boss include:
    • Dr. Peace functions as one, simply shooting at the player from the pitcher's mound in the arena.
    • The Chernabog battle and World of Chaos in Kingdom Hearts.
      • Marluxia's final form in Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories: Marluxia remains immobile while his large, angelic specter attacks.
      • From Kingdom Hearts II we have Thresholder and Xemnas' odd knight-like form in the final battles.
      • Darkside, the first boss in the series, remains stationary then and during every other time you encounter him.
      • Oogie Boogie as the mansion did not move (being a mansion and all,) and in the previous battle, he didn't move all that much.
      • The Parasite Cage in Monstro was pretty stationary, too, the first encounter with it being a Pivotal Boss.
      • Ice Titan and Rock Titan, on account of both being nearly too big to fit in the arena, let alone move around it.
      • The Cave of Wonders Guardian, being rooted to the ground.
      • Basically, this series has a lot of them.
    • Malus, the sixteenth and final colossus from Shadow of the Colossus. Because of this, some consider him an Anticlimax Boss.
    • In Resident Evil 4, the castle boss. Castellan Salazar and his left hand man fuse with a giant random plant (that is stuck to a wall) in order to make a giant talking plant........with tentacles
    • All Orochi battles from Okami.
    • In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, one of the mid-game bosses is a huge goat-headed monster locked into a giant pillory. It can't move, but attacks with summoned projectiles.
      • Symphony of the Night has Beelzebub, a stationary, giant rotting corpse on hooks that attacks with flies and maggots.
    • Balore in Dawn of Sorrow is lying on the floor, with only his upper body visible. Only his arms move (and his eyes fire laser.
    • In Psychonauts, the death tank operated by Coach Oleander's brain didn't move.
      • In her first few phases, the Hulking Lungfish from Psychonauts doesn't move. She stays on one side of the arena, attacking you from there. However, in her later phases, she does walk around the arena... and trap you with an Advancing Wall of Doom...
    • The Thorian in Mass Effect, an enormous plant... thing. "This may be... problematic."
    • Metroid Fusion also has an "enormous plant thing" boss. It's stationary, but it spews spores and things.
      • Metroid does this a lot. Heck, the original Mother Brain fight was one!
        • And there was the Parasite Queen and Flaaghra bosses in Prime too.
      • Metroid Zero Mission has one too: a large cocoon that hangs from the ceiling and doesn't move. After you shoot the things holding it in place it falls down to the room below, where you fight the insect boss that hatches from it.
      • Other bosses from Metroid include the Hive Mecha and Fire Drone from Prime, the large worm that grants the Charge Beam and Mecha Ridley from in Zero Mission.
    • Gooper Blooper in Super Mario Sunshine.
    • The Legend of Zelda has a lot.
      • Barinade in Ocarina of Time, sorta. At the start of the battle, the main body is linked via tentacles to the ceiling. You must chop it free in order to send it into a suicidal frenzy and kill it. Morpha kind of also counts, depending on whether you consider the strange water in the center of the room to be part of the boss or not.
      • Twilight Princess has one boss, Diababa, that is stationary (but has a very long reach), and at least two, Morpheel is stationary in its short first phase before deciding to get up and actually fight.
      • Kalle Demos in The Wind Waker uses vines to do the damage.
      • In Oracle of Ages, though, there's one hugely puzzle-tastic Puzzle Boss, King Thwomp (yes, like the ones from Mario) who stays completely in the middle of the room, save for one dropping attack. He attacks by throwing bombs and fireballs and rocks at you. He's one of the weirder Zelda bosses.
      • Gleeok from the original, Oracle of Seasons and Phantom Hourglass.
      • Vitreous in A Link to The Past begins immobile, and only starts moving once all its mooks are dead.
      • Link's Awakening has Facade, which is just a face in the floor that attacks with flying tiles.
    • GLaDOS from Portal
    • The final boss in Doom II is a demonic face on a wall that fires cubes that spawn demons on impact with a surface (or Tele Frag you if they land on you). If you use the no clipping cheat it turns out that the core of the boss is programmer John Romero's head on a stake.
    • The Final Boss of the Final Fantasy XI expansion Treasures of Aht Urghan, as well as the Final Boss of the Add-on A Crystalline Prophecy. There are a few other Boss Fights and not-so-normal enemies that are like this, as well.
    • Devil May Cry has the Leviathan heart. Three stationary targets to be exact.
    • The large plant-like Tentacles in the Rocket Silo in Half Life that relied on sound rather than sight. They are later encountered again in Xen.
      • There are two of these bosses in the expansion Oppossing Force. One in a sewage pipe when you had to fix a gearbox and turn a valve and at the end when you have to shoot a creature half way through a portal.
    • The final fight in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's.
    • Plenty of bosses in the Fire Emblem series never move, and just sit in one location that usually provides terrain benefits, but not always, like Bug in 7 who just sits next to a forest tile instead of on the forest.
      • The general sign that you're playing the Hard mode in Fire Emblem is when the bosses start moving. That said, there are some who aren't content to wait for you - in Rekka no Ken, the boss of Level 12 will start moving after a few turns (after chewing out his mooks for not getting the job done themselves).
    • Princess from the mansion in Time Splitters:Future Perfect was immobile and highly disturbing.
      • The Machinist's Robot from Timesplitters 2.
    • The enormous "Metal Gear" DomZ in Beyond Good and Evil stamps its feet, but it otherwise remains in the exact center of its boss arena.
    • The final boss of Monster Rancher EVO, Muu, stays in place. Your monsters are the only ones who move, which is nice, at least—it means you can choose which attacks you want to use yourself, and don't have to jocky with him for position.
    • The Brain of the Many and SHODAN in System Shock 2
    • Star Fox has plenty of stationary bosses, although some only in relation to the player. Free-range bosses usually move around, but Assault has several exceptions, most notably the aparoid queen in the first form.
    • World of Warcraft: Ragnaros is completely immobile, as are other beings with the same model. He still needs to be tanked though.
      • Same goes for Murmur.
      • Kologarn of Ulduar, who you only fought the torso of due to him standing in a massive abyss to fight you.
      • From first glances, the final battle against Deathwing, who stands from the torso up in the maelstrom as his power rips him apart and the raid finishes him off.
    • Half of the Mega Man final bosses. And some of the fortress bosses. Rangda Bangda!!! *shakes fist*
    • We also have a huge live 'processing plant' in Quake IV.
    • The final boss of Silent Hill 3 was immobile, too. Not to mention the strange growth in the apartment complex level of the same game (Glutton?), which was a pure Puzzle Boss; it even did not attack.
    • The final boss of Obs Cure was also immobile.
    • Every 3D Sonic game has a boss that simply stands in the same place and shoots at you from a stationary position. In this case, it's a matter of getting around them to their hidden weak points.
      • Sonic 1 for the Game Gear has a final boss, which is basically Robotnik standing in a tube while jet blasts shoot up from the floor in a pattern and an occasional energy ball flies across the screen.
      • Sonic 2 for the Game Gear had a first and a last boss like this, the former being down a pit and the latter being Robotnik himself in a wall-mounted gun emplacement.
      • The Quartz Quadrant level of Sonic CD features a twist on this kind of boss. Robotnik stands on a platform over a conveyor belt that threatens to throw you into spikes if you stop running and he drops spiked projectiles onto you. After you hit him once, the boss is beaten by running towards him at full speed, eventually forcing the conveyor belt to break.
      • A fair few in the Sonic series. Volcano Valley, The Biolizard, Ghost Kraken, Ghost Titan, Ghost Pendulum (all 3 ghosts from Sonic Rush Adventure), Crystal Egg (with the tubes around it and spinning flower beam things), and undoubtedly many more.
    • The Kirby series has quite a few:
      • The iconic Whispy Woods who makes an appearance in the majority of the games.
      • The Combo Cannon, the Halberd Reactor, and Computer Virus, all from Kirby Super Star (Ultra). Computer Virus deserves an explanation: The boss is stationary because it's a parody of an RPG battle.
      • King Golem, from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror.
    • Several bosses from Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword and no doubt the other five Ninja Gaiden games..
      • The original NES games had several of these, too. In the first game, fighting the Masked Devil sort-of counts, as the actual target (which does most of the attacking) is a stationary statue. The final demon boss is also stationary, too. In Ninja Gaiden 2, a boss about midway through the game is stationary, as are two of the three forms of the final boss. Ninja Gaiden 3 only has one stationary boss, being the second form of the three-part final boss.
    • Old Marwood in Kameo: Elements of Power.
    • Most (if not all) the bosses of Gauntlet (1985 video game) 64 were immobile or moved in an extremely limited way. Same with, again, most of the sequel bosses although a few of them (Lich?) could wander about
    • City of Heroes (and City of Villains) has the giant amoeba monster Hamidon, which is game-mechanically not so much a critter as a zone. The Thorn Tree is also stationary, as are the giant monsters Lusca and the Hydra. I may be missing others.
      • Lusca does move, or at least relocates, several times during any battle with her.
    • World of Mana's immobile bosses:
      • The two Advancing Wall of Doom bosses in Secret of Mana.
      • The boss guarding the Luna tower in Seiken Densetsu 3 (except for some very brief attack animations, he is never off screen); ditto the mask boss guarding the Shade stone; ditto Genova, the fireplace boss; ditto one of the final bosses.
      • The last boss in Dawn of Mana.
      • Tropicallo in Legend of Mana is not only immobile, you can't even hit it directly: you have to wear its HP down gradually by attacking its sprouts. This gets very tedious in the harder modes. This was only partially the case in its appearances in Secret of Mana, where it would occasionally tunnel to different spots on the map.
        • Gets very tedious? No, it was tedious the first time around; unless you use the various crafting systems to wind up with a complete Game Breaker, you're going to want to throw your controller at the wall before you've whittled its HP down to 50%. Oh, and you may have to fight it at least twice.
      • At least one in Children of Mana
    • In Nippon Ichi games, most bosses don't move unless your characters are in range to attack in one turn, so you can game this to your advantage by having your magic casters stand outside of this range and nuke them with spells.
      • Disgaea 2 features Makai Kingdom cameo Zetta as a truly immobile boss.
      • All of the World Eaters in Soul Nomad are immobile. They make up for this by being able to zap you from far away with very powerful attacks.
    • Maple Story - Zakum is more or less immobile, attacking with his arms.
      • As are Pianus, Horntail, and the Balrog.
    • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army had perfectly-mobile enemies, except at the very end - the final boss's last two forms did not move (much) because they were too big.
    • Contra featured a number of immobile level bosses.
      • In the first game, they are fortified entrances to the enemy bases, but in all other games, they are various CosmicHorrors.
        • The boss of the Waterfall stage in the first Contra was a stationary Cosmic Horror as well.
    • In Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver the spider based boss was grafted to a wall over the years and completely unable to move even if he wanted too.
    • The Plutonium Boss in the original Blaster Master. It moved its head around to spit bouncing projectiles around, but otherwise stayed in the same spot for the duration of the battle.
    • In Cave Story, Heavy Press and Ballos' last form, though in the latter's room everything you can step on either moves or damages you.
    • The Greater Guardian in Eternal Darkness stays at the far end of the room behind several magikal shields while attacking and summoning mooks.
    • A handful of boss-type monsters (MVPs) in Ragnarok Online are immobile, though they can attack at range and their slave monsters have no problem with motion.
    • Ecco the Dolphin has seen a couple; the biggest were the Vortex Queen and the Foe Queen's heart.
    • La-Mulana has Baphomet (whose only motions are to cast spells or to protect itself with its wings) and Tiamat (whose only motions are to turn around to avoid you, flick its tail at you while otherwise remaining stationary).
    • Devil Gundam from G-Gundam fits this perfectly, while not as bad as Kira, it had a nasty slew of tricks to use. When he attacks, he fires a powerful motion wave gun that cleans 1000s out like candy and has two gundam heads which act as his invincible shield generators when he takes a certain amount of damage. Once he goes a lower level of health, he switches to a sweeping version of his attack (weaker thankfully) and summons a G-Crossover capable of hitting horizontally or Vertically. He is a nightmare for melee mechs.
    • Poison Ivy in Batman: Arkham Asylum, having merged with a giant mutated plant while under the influence of the Titan formula.
    • In the arena of Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Crushtoad stays in the middle of the arena and turns to face you. This doesn't mean you can afford to be sloppy, though; his machine gun makes a spray of shots that can be tricky to weave between, and he can either suck in air to try and inhale you, or blow air to push you off the edge of the arena. He only moves when entering the arena, and jumping out during tag-team battles.
    • The first boss in Adventure Island 2 for the NES was one of these. It was a huge pulsating... something resembling a plant that filled the entire edge of the screen. It'd slowly grow tendrils to get at you while you wailed (ideally, with the help of the Pteranodon) at its pineapple-like core.
    • Mother in the game Prey at the start is stuck within a massive ball of screens as she oversees the world you're currently stuck on.
    • Shub-Niggurath, the final boss of Quake, not only doesn't move, but doesn't even attack, relying on its minions instead.
      • Chthon, the first boss, also counts.
    • The Hell Atsche of Warship Gunner 2 is a fortress with a giant laser cannon on top.
    • Odium has Messiah, who's pinned to a wall (and is annoyingly immune to all attacks that aren't done from up close), and Puppet, who for some reason cannot walk or even turn around. Which means that you can simply make all your men walk behind him and render him a Zero Effort Boss.
    • The DeepDive boss in An Untitled Story, who also doubles as Segmented Serpent.
    • The World from House of the Dead 4.
    • Zeus, the Big Bad in Will Rock is sitting on his huge throne at the top of the tall, monster-infested arena and will summon huge thunderbolts across the area to smite you. The safest way to kill it is to reach him, go right between his feet (where you're out of range from many enemies) and shoot him to death.
    • The recurring Keeper's Core, aka Gun Wall, among other bosses, in the Gradius series.
    • While Radiant Historia usually gives you the freedom to knock most bosses silly around the battlefield, good luck doing that with any of the giant spiders. Or the final boss, once he goes One-Winged Angel.
    • In Drakensang some bosses are unable to move, including the Evil Tree in Moorbridge, the Linnorm and Jafgur in the first game and the Newt Kraken and the Water Dragon in the second game.
    • Tomb Raider 3 has two clear examples in Tony and that guy in Temple of Puna. Being hit by their respective fiery rain and lightning bolt is certain death, so it only seems fair. Sophia Leigh is also mostly stationary, and doubles as a Puzzle Boss.
      • The final "boss" of The Last Revelation consists entirely of escaping the level while under constant fire from an angry Egyptian god.
    • Prototype has Elizabeth Greene in a massive subterranean organism that bursts out in the middle of Times Square to swat military forces(and you) with its Combat Tentacles and more.
    • The Roarmulus Twins do this until they've been damaged enough.
    • Based on demo's shown so far, the larger bosses in Guild Wars 2 like The Sunless or Shatterer make a Dramatic Entrance, then remain in a single spot for the entire battle despite an Asura Wave Motion Gun being aimed at his exact spot. Then again, there would be no way to defeat him if he just flew around.
    • Von Toad II's machine in Something Else can't move, and the only way to harm it is to jump on the ball projectiles it shoots out and bounce up to the cockpit.
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