All this discussion of Elden Ring has got me thinking, what is the most difficult game you have finished/beaten?
I think Ms. Splosion Man co-op is the single hardest video game I’ve defeated. My wife and I played at night and at some points, we would even say, “Hey, ready for some more torture?” before we played. Absolutely brutal and it was the kind of game where co-op was its own separate game from single-player and was also much harder than single-player.
What about you?
Ghosts 'n Goblins.
~Max
Ignoring my recent completion of Elden Rings, at a guess, I’d say TMNT at the arcade (though you could brute force it with enough quarters)
I missed most of the era of classic So Hard games (Lion King, Battletoads, etc) due to my gaming trajectory: I owned a Commodore 64 and most of my game library was downloaded cracks which usually came with trainers. Plus I had a lot of games so no reason to bang my head against a wall. When I got my Genesis, I usually rented games so if I wasn’t going to beat them in a couple nights, they wouldn’t get beaten as I’d just return them.
These days I’m gaming on PC and, although my library is now legit and paid for, it’s still really large. So the harder a game is, the more interesting it better be or else I’m eventually gonna move on.
Per this list of hardest NES games the most difficult I’ve beaten is the original Mega Man. Not sure I agree with the ordering because I think that Battletoads, Ghosts N. Goblins, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 are all more difficult. I’ve played and been unable to beat them. Although I did borrow Mega Man for a few weeks, and the others I played on rental or over at a friend’s house schedules, so maybe I just didn’t get enough practice.
I don’t tend to buy games where the lowest level of difficulty is “hard”. But I was looking through my Xbox achievement list and the rarest achievements (in terms of % of players who have unlocked that achievement) are completing The Outer Worlds on “Supernova” difficulty and finishing Desolation of Mordor (a DLC for Shadow of War) with a “Gold” rating.
I remember having some difficulty finishing the Mass Effect games on “Insanity” difficulty. I can’t remember if I finished the Dragon Age games on “Insanity”, but I remember having difficulty with those, as well.
From that list, I finished Final Fantasy (which was long, but at least you could save your game) but it was nowhere near as difficult as TMNT and Gauntlet (I got close to finishing TMNT, but Gauntlet was basically impossible for me).
I would say that Horizon Zero Dawn was the most difficult game that I’ve finished. And by “finished” I mean the main game, not any DLC.
I found some of the battles in that game to be really damn difficult, especially the ones where storming in swinging a big stick would get you killed. Actual strategy is involved? Oh, hell, I’m in trouble.
And those Deathbringers. Aptly named assholes.
I’m terrible at finishing video games, even the ones I enjoy.
I haven’t “finished” Binding of Isaac, which means getting every single achievement and is ludicrously difficult. But I’ve completed a very large portion of it and have completed the standard runs with every character on every DLC except the most recent. I’d say it counts.
I never got close on that one. Ate my quarters way too fast.
Wait, you can finish video games? 
I agree that Final Fantasy doesn’t belong on that list. It’s not any more difficult than the later Final Fantasies, at least those up through X-2, and I’ve beaten all of those.
My list is all NES games. Mega Man was very difficult. Looking back, I’m not sure how I managed. The 11 year old me must have had much better eyesight and reflexes, I recently downloaded it for 3DS and couldn’t even make to any of the bosses, much less beat even one of them. I remember Metroid being really difficult as well. There’s also Simon’s Quest, 8 Eyes, and The Battle of Olympus.
Of course none of those compared to those I was unable to beat, even back then. My murderer’s row of NES games includes Gauntlet, Ghosts n Goblins, Ikari Warriors, Kid Niki, and Legacy of the Wizard,
I’ve gotten to the end of Don’t Starve. Most players don’t even know there is an ending.
Most difficult games I’ve played were Old School titles on the ZX spectrum in the 80s - don’t think that platform was widely known in the US, a competitor to the C64, that era.
Sort of games you used to marvel at as a kid - I can’t believe they created 99 levels! When reality was one guy programming who had a good idea for the basic game, then ran out of ideas / resource at level 3 and randomised the rest. Some insane platformers (e.g. Jetset Willy) that I never got near completing but I remember finishing some of the Ultimate games like Underwurlde and Sabre Wulf that had a bit more design to them. I also did OG Bard’s Tale (1985) which was an awesome game, although was it hard? Felt like it at the time but I think it was big more than anything.
Played a tough game called Swords and Sorcery (PSS) to the absolute death but unfortunately it bugged out end game, I doubt they expected anyone to actually stick with it to that extent.
Modern era I’ve plat’d all the Soulsborne games - but as everyone on the Elden Ring thread will agree, those games aren’t especially difficult 
Done some challenging stuff in them though - Dark Souls 1 pvp is brutal hard and got to an OK standard with it. Barely even good tbh but some of the fanatics on that game play to an exceptionally refined level.
I remember one of the challenges was just navigating. The “3D” frame was very cool for its time but it was literally the same like 4 tiles over and over, like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon background. There are only so many ways to arrange them differently, and the dungeons were even worse, they were literally all the same grey brick tile, with the only variation being the intersections. My brother and I had piles and piles of self-made maps on graph paper (that we begged our parents to buy for us) laying around so we could get around without getting hopelessly lost.
Finish a game? Honestly, I can’t think of any of the games I play that have an “end.” Or maybe they do? I know that Ark has bosses, but I’ve never seen them, and I wouldn’t know how to summon them.
The only game (in this century) that I have finished is Portal Knights, which isn’t really hard. It did feel weird to be done. Like, is that it?
I beat Metroid too. Metroid is not that hard if you have a damn map. But I owned that one, so it’s hard to say. 7-year-old me poured way more hours into this kind of thing than I’d be willing to these days.
Here’s another list of hard games. Most of these I haven’t played, but I did beat Blaster Master, definitely did not beat Ninja Gaiden, and Top Gun is literally impossible.
Any experiences with one of my favourite old classic games, The 7th Guest?
For the sake of nostalgia I installed a DOS simulator both on my Android tablet and laptop so I could experience this again. Aside from the graphical limitations of 1993, it looks as contemporary as ever. It’s an imaginatively done puzzle game with a haunted-house horror theme, fully exploiting the live-action capabilities of the then-new CD-ROM medium. Light-years ahead of anything else that existed in its era.
I beat ET for the Atari when I was a kid. I didn’t think anything of it (aside from it being kind of boring) and was surprised later in life to hear people remember it as unreasonably difficult and confusing. I was a pretty weird kid though, so that tracks.
OK Atari person… What about Adventure? Did you play that one? I remember rumors about some flashy congratulatory screen when you won, but of course, I never saw it. If it existed.
Adventure had the first Easter Egg. You could see the name of the progammer if you happened to do certain things in the game. I happened upon it and had no idea what I was seeing. I thought something was breaking.
ETA: This is what you saw.