For Ghosts and Goblins
Not only that but the first time around you can kill the end baddie wit any weapon but after that you have to use the shield(some versions had a cross instead) which only had a range of about 2 inches. How do I know this? Well I was very good at that game. 
For me it was Sinistar. That games was a bitch
Nethack deserves some mention. No reflexes needed, but even with full spoilers there are SO MANY ways to die instantly and randomly, with no saves (unless you cheat) and so on.
Tetris - the only way to win in not to play. Those blocks will keep falling, and falling, and falling, and you’ll never, ever get a line. No, you’ll get those stupid squiggly blocks that never fit anywhere. Screw those.
I also remember Heroes of Might and Magic 3 could get tougher than nails on higher difs, and on maps where you faced an alliance of 3+ AIs - not only did they cheat their hearts out, but the AI itself was very, very good. Made you pay for every little mistake.
For adventure games, I’ll go with KGB. Not only can you die in a variety of creative ways (including on the first screen, in a discussion with your office buddy), but the game is timed - that is, some people show up at time X in zone Y, or people don’t expect their contact before time Z and will shoot you before that, etc…, and the timing of actions to finish the game is pretty tight. No mistakes allowed. And of course, even if you’ve buggered yourself completely (say, by missing a conversation you were supposed to eavesdrop on), the game goes on, though it’s now unwinnable. Hope you saved earlier, in 80 different spots just in case.
The original Nobinaga’s Ambition. Most of the time you started off with only 1 territory, and you could only do 1 thing per turn. If you built up your army, chances are one of your 4 opponents in the surrounding squares would outproduce you. If you invested the first turn chances are you’d be invaded. And even if you built up your army and were invaded anyway, and you managed to win (which, granted, wasn’t that hard,) you’d be so beat up that the next invasion would finish you off.
And that’s assuming you weren’t hit by a flood.
Defense of the Ancients.
At any particular time, you need to watch 4 places at once and the number of ways all of the elements of the game can interact is insane. It’d take months to start having a handle on what’s going on.
Ah, Sinistar. God, I loved that game.
Shingen the Ruler might have been worse. You were tiny Shingen Takeda, the weakest daimyo in all of Japan based on your skill. You were RIGHT NEXT TO Nobunaga Oda, the strongest daimyo in all of Japan. If he decided he didn’t like you for whatever reason, game over. There wasn’t a thing you could do to stop him. I’ve tried building up to insane levels of troops to take him on, but no. His bullets and arrows go through you like they’re coated with acid.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. At some point it stopped being fun and turned into watchmaking. Just no room for error.
I don’t know if it actually counts as PLAYING, because I followed the walk-through from the beginning, but Varicella is insanely tightly timed. I had to start over because I went west instead of east once, and that messed up the timing for all of the other parts. I can’t imagine the process that would have gone into actually playing the game start to finish, or how many save-games it would require.
Any Ikaruga masters here? That game’s so insane, I can’t even get into it; it just knocks the crap out of me too fast.
Yep, this is the one I was coming to contribute. Still haven’t beaten that one.
Oh, nothing’s hard or wrong about it. If you like strategy games that happen to require you to personally control your unit[del]s[/del]. And a save system designed by Torquemada.
But in fairness, it is an awesome game. When I could play it.
I’m not sure if you guys are talking about Ghost ‘n’ Goblins (which I never really played) or Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts… but Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts is an unforgivingly difficult game. I’ve played it enough that when I get into practice I can beat it on “one quarter” 25 or 30 percent of the time… but if I don’t play it for a year or so I sometimes won’t get past the first level.
I see that Turtles is in here, I never got up to that level to even begin with. (We are talking about the underwater level, and the seaweed, right?)
E.T. well, what can you say for a game that was more or less the poster child for the Video Game Crash of 83 ?
Then again, I’m not that good at games to begin with, and I wanted to start simple, with a NES game, so I could, in theory, work my way up with practice to current / next gen games.
The game I chose to practice with? Mega Man.
My regimen lasted that one night. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
I hate Dead Rising simply because of the load screens. Didn’t know that it was a harder game. But that’s ok, – my nearly month old 360 is getting a lot of play from another game:
Mirror’s Edge.
Not the hardest I have played, but it is just enough of an uphill battle, to keep me playing, even if I have my hind quarters handed to me. I’ve made it to Chapter 7 though, and I believe that most people have problem with Chapter 1.
Tetris can be beaten. The Make 25 Lines level at least.
Where does the original Myst fit in with this category?
This summer I went with a friend to an arcade and spent almost all of my coins/tokens playing Mushihime-sama. Fun, but damn hard. Here’s a gameplay video (note that this is on the hardest difficulty setting. But even on the easier one’s it’s no walk in the park)
Um - why is that game enjoyable? I guess I can’t tell what’s going on - but seems to be a game where you get your ass handed to you for 12 seconds, you put another quarter in, and that pain continues. Is there a strategy or something I’m missing? Because the screen is filled with ouch.
I don’t think this should count, because it was specifically designed to be nothing but cheap and brutal.
It’s not a game that anyone is expected to ever buy.
I mean, I could make a “game” that’s theoretically playable but functionally unbeatable just making a square change color from red to green for 1/60th of a second and expecting the user to hit the spacebar during that time, but that shouldn’t qualify for this thread either.
“Bullet Hell” shooters are their own special little niche. They’re not really “games” so much as they are pattern-recognition exercises. There is a correct and very precise way to maneuver through each situation, and in general, the situations don’t really change from playthrough to playthrough - enemies appear on screen (possibly in one of a couple fixed possible locations) and attack using the same pattern of bullet spam.
Also, generally, the margin for error is slightly larger than it appears because usually your ship/flying person/butterfly/whatevertheheckyouhave can only be killed by a “direct” hit to the center, and bullets that contact your wings/broomstick/long flowing hair/whatever don’t do anything and continue on their merry way.
Still not my cup of tea, but not, in fact, as insane as it appears if you think the person is playing strictly on reflexes.
I’m surprised that E.T. is showing up here. It’s such a simple game. The difficulty with the pits is vastly overrated. The design sucked, but the game isn’t hard at all. I’d do it in a few minutes and post it if I could ever figure out how to do it.
The hardest game I ever beat was Super Return of the Jedi for the end scene where you have to escape from the exploding Death Star (it took me hours), but that was probably just me. I’ve never played a game that I couldn’t beat given enough time, save one:
I still haven’t beaten it 24 years later, and I can’t find a walkthrough that has the correct path. Lots of people have claimed to have beaten it, but I’ve never seen it done before.
Again, it’s probably just me.
I agree with the first (it was intended to be cheap and brutal), but I disagree with the second.
The game designer most certainly did intend people to actually play and enjoy his game. It is cheap, yes, but it is also beatable. In fact, it is possible to beat it without dying once! A truly cheap game would have randomized deaths or superhuman segments, but IWBTG does not. And the creator specifically addressed this in his FAQ: