Nobody designs boss battles quite like Hideo Kojima. I know that hundreds of artists, coders, engineers, and other talented developers actually build his games, but it's no coincidence that almost every game the industry veteran has directed—especially the original Metal Gear Solid—features some of the best boss fights in the history of the medium. Picking a favourite from his PlayStation-defining stealth game is difficult. Sniper Wolf, Gray Fox, Revolver Ocelot, Vulcan Raven—all brilliant, clever, and memorable in their own ways. But it's the incredible fourth wall-shattering battle with levitating oddball Psycho Mantis that has stuck in my mind the most over the years.

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It's an understatement to say that Psycho Mantis had a rough childhood. His mother died giving birth to him and his father hated him for it—to the point where he frequently thought about killing him. Mantis learned this when he developed psychic powers and was able to read his old man's mind, which drove him to kill him and burn down the remote Russian village where he grew up. Metal Gear Solid is a series where every villain has a tragic backstory that informs their personality, beliefs, and abilities, but this is one of the bleakest. Psycho Mantis didn't even really care about Liquid's grand plan for capturing Shadow Moses. In his own words, "I just wanted an excuse to kill as many people as I could." Damn.

Metal Gear Solid

However, it's not the character's dark history that makes this boss battle great, but the fight itself. After possessing Meryl and failing to turn her against Snake, Psycho Mantis and our reluctant hero engage in combat. But this is no ordinary battle. Before the fight begins, Mantis makes a show out of demonstrating his psychic abilities. First, he'll analyse your play style up to that point. Get spotted by guards a lot and he calls you careless. Kill a lot of people and he'll say you're a great warrior. Collect a lot of hidden items and he'll say you're methodical. This alone is genius, but the creepy psychic prying continues when Mantis turns his attention to the memory card you have plugged into your PlayStation.

If you have save files for Azure Dreams, Suikoden, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Vandal Hearts (all Konami games) on it, Mantis will comment on them. "I see you like Castlevania." "So you like Suikoden?" "You enjoy role-playing games." It's a simple trick, but there's something quietly unsettling about it—elevated by the surreal, dreamlike atmosphere of the scene and the eerie music. In the Japanese version of MGS he also has lines for Policenauts, an early Kojima game, and Tokimeki Memorial. In 2004 GameCube remake The Twin Snakes, Mantis detects saves from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Kojima is well known for bulldozing the fourth wall at any given opportunity, and this is one of the most imaginative examples of that. To end his demonstration, Psycho Mantis instructs you to place your controller on the floor in front of you. He then moves it with his 'mind' (in actuality, by making it vibrate) and then it's time for the fight to begin—where the gleeful fourth wall destruction continues. At random intervals the screen will suddenly turn black, with the word HIDEO appearing in the top-right corner—riffing on the way old TVs would display VIDEO when they lost signal. The idea being that Mantis is so powerfully psychic, he can reach into your own reality and switch your console off.

Metal Gear Solid

Attacking Mantis is pointless. He can read your mind, so anything you attempt he's able to anticipate. But not if you switch the controller to another port. In the battle's final moment of fourth wall-smashing brilliance, doing so means he can no longer predict what you'll do next. This is widely considered to be one of the finest 'Kojima moments' in the series, and I bet the suits at Konami were very nervous about it. "You want people to get out of their chairs? To switch controllers?" If it was a battle to get this included, I'm glad Kojima won. It's inspired, and one of many reasons why Metal Gear Solid is a classic. I'd be amazed if a publisher let a developer get away with something this unhinged today.

The Psycho Mantis battle is everything I love about Metal Gear Solid. It's an example of how much imagination, creativity, and clever design Kojima and his team were able to squeeze into a single moment—in a game that is absolutely heaving with them. It's wonderfully self-aware too, mischievously playing to the interactive strengths of the medium. It's something only a video game could do, which makes it feel extra special. Boss fights in later games involve similar fourth wall-shredding fuckery—Snake Eater's The End hilariously dying of old age if you set your system clock forward being a killer example—but none are as bold or subversive as the invasive psychic profiling of Psycho Mantis.

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