I play Axis and Allies and put the Japanese on the Allies and conquor the world with the Germans. Next up, the English reform their empire…
Out of the Park Baseball (one of the best baseball simulations…you’re the General Manager)…
I’m GOOD at this one. So I’ve set oddball goals like:
A) Winning 110 games with the lowest payroll in the league
B) Winning 130+ games with no trades or promotions
C) Having a competitive team with all players making the minimum wage
I love Zuma (it’s wonderful), but it’s difficult enough for me w/o setting any challenges.
Spider - I must clear the board by clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts. It isn’t a “real” win if I get the run of hearts first.
Minesweeper: 10/60/200 seconds to finish the board, or it isn’t a real win… (those numbers go down, if I’m playing a lot). I never mark mines.
I don’t use money cheats in Sims. I think I’m the only person who doesn’t. Consequently, my sims are always poor and miserable…
Final Fantasy X–Revamp the grid to maximize the effectiveness of every node (clearing weak stat nodes and replacing them with +4 nodes, and so forth), then putting every character through every node. Then pick a single character to do the fighting in the endgame, while the others do nothing (except when the story required it). When your white mage can fight through the final area and kill the final boss with a stick (albeit a very nice stick) without ever healing, there’s not much left to do in a FF game.
That was mostly a matter of patience, though. The hardest single game challenge I’ve ever set myself was Ascending a foodless monk in Nethack. For those unfamiliar with the game, Nethack characters eat a lot. If you don’t eat, you start suffering penalties, then starve to death. Playing foodless means not eating anything through the entire game (many days of gameplay); the only way to do it is to be sustained using the Pray ability…which you can’t use too often, because it pisses off your god, and which you often need for other things. Also, many of the most useful powers in the game can only be obtained by eating the corpses of various monsters (or items, if you’re polymorphed into the right creature). This, in a game that’s insanely difficult already, and which only allows one save…a save that gets deleted when you die.
I, er, haven’t managed it yet. My last one retrieved the Amulet and reached the Plane of Air, though.
You know you’re missing out on some good sidequests, right?
Diablo II: No rushing
Halo: No timing; very little rocket launcher use unless getting owned pretty bad, or if I take it off a dead body; no tank/ghost use on BG TS.
Starcraft: Have only one extra outpost for minerals/gas, until one other is depleted (Makes it much more fun); No carriers; No battleships/wraiths (unless getting owned pretty bad or opponent is exploiting my weakness of not having them); ONLY ZERGLINGS AND LURKERS (Very fun tactic:rolleyes: ).
Super Smash Bros/Melee: NO Hammer; use MORE than one character (unlike some bastards who JUST use Marth on melee or Link on SSB, I use Jigglypuff and Iceclimbers, and Bowser, very fun).
Sims: No cheat code; get to last job in each career w/o cheatcode or getting a roommate and killing them ;); Get all the girls on the block to be in love with me :D.
Soul Calibur II: Use of MORE than one move; Use of MORE than one char (like SSBM).
FFVIII - roll the clock over, twice, without cheating (ie, leaving the game on while I slept.). I did it, too, because I worked on building everyone to level 100, getting all the GFs, and stocking up on Ultimas. While USING Ultimas. (Which is a challenge in and of itself.) I might try a no-GF/magic/junction challenge whenever I get my copy back.
FFVII - Getting all Aeris’s limit breaks before the obvious plot point, without completely tanking anyone else’s progression. Succeeded.
FFIX - No magic. Gave up. Got bored.
FFI - Finish the game without upgrading the character classes. Actually I set myself that one by accident the first time I played. ^o^; (Failed. Stupid time-dungeon.)
Super Mario Brothers (all 3 of the NES games) - finding the shortest path through the game. I think I succeeded for 1, ended up cheating on 3, used someone else’s path. 2 I never actually managed to finish, so that’s a failure.
Monster Rancher Advance - winning all the tourneys with a monster created from (nick)name of one of my friends. Succeeded twice, so far.
Any fighting game: I’ll occasionally play with a big-slow-strong rather than my usual small-fast-weak choice, see how far I can get using a completely different strategy. Generally fail. Street Fighter II (original) I managed to master several characters, though.
Warcraft series - No defensive structures, minimal defensive forces (typically only those I haven’t managed to deploy yet). I do pretty well with that, generally as far as I do with more balanced strategies. No Heroes unless I’m forced to use 'em. Generally fail because you ARE forced to use them an awful lot, and I can’t bring myself to claim success under those conditions.
I like to see how many envelopes I can lick in an hour, then try to break that record.
I’m confused by all the self-imposed hardships in RTS games. You all realize that playing RTS games single player is like playing poker single player, don’t you? The whole reason to play an RTS game is to beat other human beings.
Starcraft: Kali Ladder tournaments added enough difficulty to keep it interesting.
Hitman 2: I’m currently playing this one, having loved the first one to death. I’ve only managed Silent Assassin on 2 levels so far. (I’ve finished the first 5 levels…through the biker gang level.) However, I’ve only fired 2 shots and had only 1 alert so far. Also, I’ve only saved once. There are actually 5 saves on my XBox, bt those are 5 different games started from the beginning. I save at the end of each level, just before getting the end-of-level grades. All five saves, one at the end of each of the first five levels, show “Saves: 1”.
Halo: Final mission, the jeep run. I stay in the elevator until the countdown hits 3:30. (It starts at 6:00.) Only then do I start the run. Annoying to wait 2:30 before starting, but damn if it isn’t fun as shit. I easily did 4:30 and then 4:00. It took a while to complete it with 3:45. I’ve come within a few seconds of doing it with 3:30. I will get it, dammit!
I have beaten a 1 City Challenge with a Culture victory on Monarch level, using the Greeks. Basically, the trick is to get a couple wonders really early on(the Great Libary really helps) since after a 1000 years the culture produced by a building doubles. The hoplites were nice too - extra defense, didn’t need iron, and I ended up using them until rifleman - since a musketmen have only 1 more defense point, but cost 3 times as many shields. The resource problem can be solved with good trading.
On regent level, with Germans, I managed to win a 1 City Conquest victory - once I got Calvery(and then Panzers) I went out and destroyed every other AI city. I got lucky though - my one city had both iron + coal, so I could build the Iron Works. (I admit I got all the AIs fighting each other, and used some dirty tricks like the ROP rape.)
Another Civ III challenge(also on Monarch level) was the “Babylonian Peace Corp” domination victory - I didn’t build a single unit besides workers and settlers, and left my cities completely defensless - but I built enough temples and librarys to eventually culture flip enough AI cities to win. 
This strat works best on a Pangea map.
Another Civ III challenge I beat, with the Japanese, was an always war game - basically, the first turn you come into contact with another civ, you have to declare war on them, and you can never sign for peace.
Reminds me of the one I’m doing in FF1 right now: Never go anywhere or do anything until I have an in-game reason to know to do so. This means a lot of talking to townsfolk, a lot of back-and-forth (I have to go see Astos both before and after the Crown, for instance) and no rushing straight to the Castle of Ordeal as soon as I get the canoe. I can’t even go to a town, until someone in an earlier town mentions it.
Another one: I once beat Hexen with a mage, using no weapon at all except for the wand. No ice shards, arc of death, Bloodscourge, or flechettes, though I think I had to use a few Discs of Repulsion against the Old Master cleric guy. Not too hard, actually. The Old Master cleric and to a lesser extent the mage were the only real challanges, though some things were very slow. And you can just keep your “fire” button weighted down, without worrying about mana.
I’ve tried doing the “Pacifist Necro” thing in D2. The catch is that you cannot kill any monsters except for the bosses - I was following some guy’s exploits off www.diabloii.net . Your main ‘attack’ is terror and dim vision. I found it too tedious and gave up at the Nightmare.
Goldeneye (N64) - Do the whole game on 00 Agent difficulty with throwing knifes and unlimited ammo. Surprisingly fun.
Warcraft 3 - Playing multiplayer games solely using either seige tanks or the Banshee’s possess ability. I have a terrible win percentage, but I’ve seen the whole spectrum of online emotion using this strat.
GTA3/ GTA3:VC - Seening how many missions I can do on a single life. Haven’t managed to finish the game on one life yet.