author=seiromem
It's just me probably, though.

Probably.

My standards are pretty high, y'know. I'm the kind of person who's quick on the "scrap it" finger. So you should concentrate on making one good level than 3 okay ones. This is a "Masterpiece Set" after all.

Because Mother Brain takes 10 hits to kill and is a pain in the ass. I even disliked the Mother Brain fights in Talking Time Bros*. They add nothing for me personally except to look amazing, some of 'em are just extended cut-scenes when you think about it.

You have to realize that Mario bosses aren't like RPG bosses: You shouldn't necessarily make "fights" out of them the same way you would in other games. The boss itself shouldn't be the focus, it should be the terrain you fight the boss in, the hazards that accompany the boss. Look at the original Super Mario Bros, Bowser was just a dragon over a bridge. That's it, and that's perfect for a platformer like Mario because it adds a sense of tension, feels like an event, and is satisfying to overcome. Without making a huge ordeal of it that went against the grain of Mario's established gameplay. It was a simple bridge in the first castle, and each time you encountered him, a new hazard or obstacle was added to the bridge setup to make a simple boss a little trickier. It's also important to make boss fights short and simple to beat: Mario includes fast-paced platforming and you shouldn't make the player stop for too long. Which is another reason I don't want Mother Brain. Most importantly though, boss fights need to be short cuz Mario can only take 2 hits. Think about Bowser at the end of Mario 3. Think about how that was the final boss. It shouldn't be anything more complicated than that.

Treat bosses more like glorified roadblocks than fights. They're just another hazard that's part of the overall castle, instead of a ball-to-the-walls fight to the death. If they go on too long they become boring.

*I could just be an old codger who doesn't know "awesome" when he sees it. But thems the breaks.