There were bosses in games ever since 1975, and I don't think I really have to define 'boss' here. But how did the word get stuck? And when was the first time when the challenging enemy was referred to as a 'boss'?
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From what I can find, the term's origin has been lost, however I did find some interesting details.
- The earliest usage seems to be from around 1983 in Joystick magazine, as discussed on Wikipedia.
Take a wild shot in Galaga-- you might fire (at) the Boss
- The term "Mini-Boss" appeared in the "Metroid" Instruction Booklet (referring to Kraid and Ridley, on page 15) when the game was released in 1986. Note that "Mother Brain" is not referred to as a "Boss" where she's discussed in the manual.
- "Boss" was spread more broadly by Nintendo Power, starting around 1988. I have a feeling that the term was coined inside of Nintendo as the magazine writers needed a term for the end-level baddies.
- The (translated) term "Boss" is also used in Japan. It might be that the term originated in Japan, but I have not found any information to back this up.
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When you say it's used in Japan, do you mean a translation of the word? Or the actual syllable 'boss'? – Clyde Oct 26 '11 at 19:57
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@Clyde - I don't believe the difference matters. Where it would matter is if it's a word that is known in multiple cultures (eg, Nintendo, Samsung, Sony, etc) -vs- a word with a natural translation (house, boss, door, car). – Brian Vandenberg Oct 26 '11 at 20:00
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7Given the earliest reference you can find being from Galaga, which has swarms of enemies acting together, "boss" as in "leader" makes perfect sense... You have to kill the underlings before reaching their boss, after all... – Izkata Oct 27 '11 at 03:30
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@Pubby, make sure you're cool with my edit - found written evidence I'd remembered earlier than the Nintendo Power you referred to, but your answer was too good to want to add a new, competing one - hopefully you're good with the addition. – Jaydles Jun 30 '14 at 17:26
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@Clyde: Yes, it's the actual English word "boss", though Japanese-ified: 「ボス」 "bosu" (the "last boss" is often called 「ラスボス」 "lasu bosu"). Japanese has a lot of English loan-words, and this is just one of them. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Dec 04 '15 at 14:25
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@Clyde this is also known as "transliteration", where one takes a word from a language and puts it in another language's characters as close as possible. – zr00 Dec 03 '18 at 15:41
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I find this immensely interesting, and have done some deep digging and made a video about the topic:
The earliest source I found is from a 1980 arcade operating manual of Space Panic, mentioning bosses. Another enemy in that game is a 'don'.
In early 1980's Japan, "bosu" (loanword from English) had a derogatory connotation to do with Mafia. Translating "bosu" would give you "boss", but in English the negative meaning is not present.
Old Kung Fu films use this term for mobsters too (Bruce Lee in The Big Boss).
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1Accepting your answer since your researched all the way to the linguistics missing piece... and went through the trouble of making a video :) – Septagram Dec 04 '15 at 18:30
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It could be that the word boss meant something different in a Japanese or something and since they didn't have a proper word for it in English, they just used the word boss. In the same way that Naruto says "Believe it!" in the anime Naruto, when in reality, it means something more like "Yeah!"
Another possibility, and don't quote me on this, is that a lot of the original bosses had minions or underlings working for them, think of king dedede and the waddle-dees/doos, Bowser and the koopas/goombas. When bosses first came out, no one questioned it, it just was so.
Maardvark
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1Seems like a reasonable line of thinking (paragraph 2), but it's only speculation. – Brian Vandenberg Oct 27 '11 at 15:01
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I will have to quote wikipedia on this one!
The first interactive game to feature a boss was dnd, a 1975 computer role-playing game for the PLATO system. One of the earliest dungeon crawls, dnd implemented many of the core concepts behind Dungeons & Dragons. The objective of the game is to retrieve an "Orb" from the bottommost dungeon. The orb is kept in a treasure room guarded by a high-level enemy named the Gold Dragon. Only by defeating the Dragon can the player claim the orb, complete the game, and be eligible to appear on the high score list.
The page in question is this one.
I hope that answers your question!
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2Before you down-vote, perhaps you should do some digging to determine whether 'dnd' used the word 'boss' to describe the end-of-level or end-of-game character. – Brian Vandenberg Oct 26 '11 at 19:53
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14@BrianVandenberg If it did, the answer should be edited to explain that. As it is now, it doesn't look relevant to the question. – Adam Lear Oct 26 '11 at 23:02
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15@Brian: Perhaps author should "do some digging to determine whether 'dnd' used the word 'boss'" before posting an answer? – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Oct 27 '11 at 01:01
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1@BlueRaja - The author did do some digging, and found something that could be useful in tracking down the origins. It gives a good baseline; no known example of a 'boss' prior to 1975 is known to exist. Since the earliest example posted about in this thread is 1983, that gives you an 8 year span to search, as opposed to the period of 1972 (creation of 'pong') through 1983. That's still a valuable contribution, even if it doesn't give the correct answer. – Brian Vandenberg Oct 27 '11 at 14:57
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@BrianVandenberg, I agree, this is a valuable contribution, but the point is that it is probably the 'righter' answer, than the currently-most-voted-for. But it's not finished. A quick digging on the web shows that yes, there are bosses in DND (http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/the_10_greatest_dungeons_dragons_end_bosses.php), but I completely fail to find where bosses appeared first: in DND or in videogames? If we had a solid prooflink that bosses came from DND (like DND definition of boss, or mentions of bosses anywhere before 1975), this answer could become accepted with some editing. – Septagram Oct 27 '11 at 15:42
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@Septagram - DND /is/ a video game, though. PLATO was a computer system designed for use in educational institutions -- hence the various games created for it were often deleted as they were viewed as inappropriate material to have on a school computer. What we need is proof that the word 'boss' was actually used to describe the boss. My point in posting is that the answer was downvoted inappropriately. While it may not be the best answer, it still adds something useful -- something I don't believe the author should be dinged for. – Brian Vandenberg Oct 28 '11 at 13:48
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1@Brian while it does add useful information, it does not actually answer the question. If it does not answer the question, it should be a comment, not an answer. – Beofett Oct 31 '11 at 12:50
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1For reference the dnd wiki page says "dnd is notable for being the first interactive game to feature what would later be referred to as bosses" implying that this was definitely not the origin of the term "boss" to refer to bosses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game) and thus this isn't actually a valid answer to why they are called that. – Chris Dec 04 '15 at 14:57
boss. – CyberSkull Oct 27 '11 at 03:38