I didn’t read the second page, I just had to respond to this.
Alice is ridiculously easy. If you can strafe, you can win. I beat it once on nightmare using only the knife the entire game, just to prove that I could.
'course, the knife (the first weapon you get) is the 2nd best weapon in the entire game, so…
Well, hell.
It’s been a whole truckload o’ moons, but IIRC, the ball opened and closed its mouth as it bounced. You had to stand in just the right spot, and hit the button just right, to catch the thing with its mouth closed.
Then ya just use it yerself, and it eats her down to her shoes.
Somewhere after that, the game got weird.
I know I finished the thing, as I recall a mild spoiler about the endgame, but for the life of me, I don’t remember much a’tall about the gameplay itself.
You were a patient on an operating table, and the whole game was your mental struggle to survive the surgery you were undergoing. Or something like that.
There’s the rub. I’ve read the relevant section of the hintbook that came with the game. I’ve read walkthroughs from all over the web.
I STILL can’t get the ball.
What exactly was Wierd Dreams like, anyways? and was it any good?
Weird.
Seriously, it was profoundly strange.(I shall avoid spoilers. The descriptions below are obvious to anybody who plays for 5 minutes. )
The game came with a novella explaining that the game’s protagonist is the victim of a demon who has slipped him a mickey. The nature of his brain, mind, and especially his dreams are changing. His dreams seem to be taking him to alternate realities and altering reality. Finally,(Don’t know why this was in spoiler box, since the novella is meant to be read before the game is played) the man must be rushed to surgery.
In the game, you are a man in black and white checkered pajamas. You begin in a giant cotton candy machine.
Next is a carnival miday where you are pursued by a giant bee. The bee clutches what looks like a reel of film. It soon becomes obvious that you can get the film(it ain’t easy). But, what do you do with it(I personally don’t know. And I do NOT want anybody to tell me)?
Fleeing the bee, you enter a hall of mirrors. Walk into one.
One mirror takes you to a lovely garden. The roses reveal huge fangs and bite you if you get to close though. You can kill them and walk to the next screen. Take too long and a lawnmower will dismember you. Succeed and you move on to the $#%FGGH_&% girl. She smiles and pushes a soccer ball your way. She holds a BIG knife behind her. The ball reveals eyes and sharp teeth. Find a way to turn the ball on her. Otherwise, the ball will devour you or the girl will stab you.
Take the other mirror and you enter the desert. Fish swim idly in the sky. Jump up and grab one. You’ll need it to defend yourself. The box describes the monsters as “totem-pole-headed kangaroos”. They do look something like that. However, dildos with legs is more accurate. They jump. They thrust. And one touch kills you. Should you battle past screen upon screen of them(It’s very tough. They have a habit of coming onscreen as you are about to walk off.), you find yourself at the edge of a river of quicksand.
I have never gotten farther. I LOVE this game. The novella is wonderfully written(it reminds me of Douglas Adams). The concepts are wild. But, it is the MOST frustrating game I have ever played. Death comes easily. Intricate planning and timing are required. You get three lives and no continues. As I said, I’ve seen tips that claim to give you infinite lives. But, I can’t get them to work. HOWEVER, one screenshot on the box proves that it can be done. Instead of a group of dolls in the lives remaining box, there is the symbol for infinity.
Re-operating table- When you die, there is a scene looking up at a hospital ceiling and doctors. You hear and see en ekg flatline. It starts up again and you return to the game. Unless you’re out of lives. Then, the screen fades into blackness.
Weird Dreams was made 13 years ago. However, you can obtain a copy at Home Of The Underdogs. Linking to that site is forbidden by SDMB rules. But, ignore Home and Of. Put a hyphen- between the next two words. Stick an org on the end. Bookmark the page.
Oh, and let’s not forget…
Super Dodge Ball (arcade; the NES port was a cakewalk). POW. Buster Brothers series. Sega Ninja. Renegade. Cheyenne. Combat School. Gunsmoke. NARC. Anything named Pitfall (seriously, has anyone actually ever finished one of these things before emulation?). Enduro Racer. Soko-ban and all its variants. Any Keyboardmania. Warcraft series. Lode Runner series.
And the scary thing is, I know there are others. 
In general, unbelievably hard games have one or more of the following features.
Little footnote…I think we need to differentiate games that are freakisly hard from games that are simply horribly designed (Puzzle Bobble series, Mocap Boxing) or that contain a few incredibly glaring flaws (Master Blaster, Riven [two words: marble board], Silent Scope).
Re. Ghosts ‘n Goblins: You have to beat the game TWICE to complete it. The same is true for Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, plus you absolutely must have the fireball weapon before the final stage.
Who was it that mentioned Metal Gear? There’s nothing in it that I found especially difficult; it’s mostly a matter of going to places and doing things in the right order. There’s a big map with the game that tells you about 80% of what you need to know; a cheap hint guide (I heartily recommend Jeff Rovin’s excellent How To Win At Nintendo series) can easily take care of the rest. And while there are a few things that can kill you with one hit (like those pits…very nasty until you know how to deal with them), a simple bullet isn’t one of them.
As for The Ninjawarriors…try the arcade version sometime. After the first level, an incredibly frustrating deathfest. About half the enemies look like they were designed from the ground up as wallet-emptiers.
Sunsetriders isn’t all that tough. The reason Scalpem’s super-tough in the SNES port is that Nintendo screws everything up. In this case, they completely nerfed the slide, making avoiding the knife throws next to impossible.
He’s called WIGWAM, not SCALPEM.
Pitfall 2 was quite easy, and I could finish it in well under 30 minutes. All the others were very hard, though.
There was also a Pitfall game released straight to Win95 (not emulated) which was rather easy, but campily fun. And the Warcraft line is fairly easy in the missions, and fair at worst in multiplayer (including against the computer): There are some glaring holes in the AI that you can take advantage of.
Twisted Metal Black has also given me a ton of trouble. At first, I loved the “frantic action feeling” previously only seen in Serious Sam, but as the number of enemies grew higher and higher and I still only had 2 lives, I decided it was unbeatable.
Cooperative mode only made it harder, because both players have to share those 2 lives.
I hate you. By showing me this you’ve completely destroyed my productivity. Any hope I ever had of finishing that article or revising my tabletop game is gone forever. I’ll be playing and replaying the games I remember from yesteryear until my fingers bleed.
hebesphenomegacorona - Sheesh, was the arcade scene always this bad? It was originally Scalpem. The reason Nintendo changed it is…well, this is Nintendo we’re talking about, the whole family-system junk. (Note that there are also no, erm, “Native Americans” in the stage, while there were plenty in the arcade original.)
Also, Soda Popinski was originally Vodka Drunkenski. And Laurence B was orignally Laurence Blood. And Mortal Kombat actually had a point. I know, I know.
And is also impossible to complete due to a bug in the very last puzzle of the game.
It’s tough, but not impossible. It requires perfect timing, but I have seen it done.
I used to know someone who completed the original Gauntlet. It ends after level 512, apparently. There’s a short end sequence in a treasure room, and then the credits, and I think that’s it.
Hardest game ever has to be Aliens vs Predator for the PC - no ifs, no buts. The first level is impossible to complete even with invulnerability turned on; you fall down a pit about aminute in and eithe rget trapped or diced by a fan.
We’re talking Exodus: Ultima 3 here, right? The one where you have to find the four cards and put them in the computer to kill it?
You could play that game without levelling up?
My strategy was to race to the “Rot” spell for my wizard, and then everything was pretty much easy since then. There is an island on the SE corner of the map with a town on it. In the town are a number of merchants with a ton of chests ready to be stolen. What I would do is go to the southern-most merchant (there was a back passage to his store/chests), steal all his chests (gold, weapons, armor, etc), kill him, and then make my way out of town. Re-enter and repeat.
But you have to have the Rot spell to do this, because the guards are TOUGH! The Rot spell would reduce all monsters hit points to 1 (even guards), making them one-shot stops. Since you regained one spell point for every “step” you took (and since rot took appx. 75 spell points), you would have to move back-and-forth to regain your spell points (the monsters mimic your movements, so if you do it right you don’t have to worry about them getting to you until you are ready).
Anyway, once you left the town you could go right back in and do the same. But the second time and beyond, you also had the added pleasure of selling your items back to the merchant that you stole them from. After you sell him the goods that you stole from him, make your way into the back room again, rob him blind, kill him, and repeat, repeat, repeat. Finally you get so tough that you don’t have to worry (much) about anything.
IIRC, every venture into town would net me about 10,000 gold.
(Or, if you really want big bucks, go to that town that only appears when both moons are full (or new, it’s been a while since I played.) The merchants in that town would pay a LOT more than any other merchants.)
“Since you regained one spell point for every “step” you took (and since rot took appx. 75 spell points), you would have to move back-and-forth to regain your spell points (the monsters mimic your movements, so if you do it right you don’t have to worry about them getting to you until you are ready).”
I should note that you have to do this for EVERY group.
mrr?
How is puzzle bobble horribly designed? It’s one of the best games ever made! (Or are you referring to the player-designed board collections that pop up as an option in some editions?)
I’m shocked to get this far and see no mention of “X-Com: Terror from the Deep.”
The game wasn’t buggy or impossible - it was just unbelievably hard. Just due to the way the game was, you could have an entire squad slaughtered just because the door of your ship opened in an unlucky direction, and bang-bang-bang, three guys are toast before you’re even given a chance to make your move. Tremendously hard game that required a huge number of save-and-reloads.