I've got a few questions. What are some bosses in video games that can be killed the fastest in speedruns? How long does it take the average speedrunner to defeat them? Are there any special strats for defeating them quickly?
Capra Demon in Dark Souls. As long as all the orbs hit, it's just one cast of Dark Bead to deplete his entire HP bar. It's literally "Hi Capra Demon, bye Capra Demon." He's meant to be an early-game boss (any of several skips render him moot -- or no skip at all, a casual player could very well not fight him) but the all-bosses run always goes to him late with ridiculous damage.
I suppose the same is all true for Pinwheel as well, but even casual players tend to regard that boss as a joke.
In the Santa level for Spongebob's Truth or Square (don't remember the exact level name), the end boss is called Tendy. The speedrun uses a trick to get a height boost off him to hit an insta-kill plane near the ceiling. 10-20 second kill from room entry if you hit the plane first try.
In "Arzea", you are supposed to grind levels to be stronger and be able to kill some enemies more easily. In the last boss fight, the game expects you to be at least level 45 to have a chance at a manageable battle. In a speedrun you are highly under-leveled, so you can just snipe the boss from the side without triggering it. Here is a demonstration.
In Mercs (Genesis) Original Mode, one of the critical moments is the Desert Tanks boss in Mission 5. It used to take about 12-13 seconds when you had bad RNG. Three tanks go right across the screen, central then the outers. You have no space to fire across all of them without taking massive damage - and then they start moving up and down in concert with fireballs and missiles. We found a trick that we think was not intended, and switch character from Rifle to Laser. His weapon is narrower and concentrated. It alone can damage the outer tanks while they are off-screen. There's a blind spot you can hide in and fire across two of them, then you used 2 Megacrash bombs (having picked one up at time cost) to gain i-frames and go inside the third to finish them off and just end the fight with barely any health left, and now it takes about 7 seconds. We then found a higher blind spot that meant more firepower throughput and reduced it down to just 1 M required. It also saves time because you aren't using the Megacrashes that Rifle otherwise badly needs for other tight spots, saving travel time to get more in the levels.
