When did you first notice this? (IE, which Triple Play game?) I played Triple Play 2000 obsessively when it was new and this never happened to me that I can recall.
Nobunaga’s Ambition. Sure, it’s a strategy game rather than a straight video game but it was originally for a console.
But MAN! Of any games that are possible to beat, NA has to be one of the hardest.
To win as a smallholder with only one territory requires both lots of skill AND lots of luck, since you can only do one thing per territory per turn. So if a dam breaks at the same time your enemies are about to attack you, you’re screwed no matter how much money or arms you have.
Unless you buy soldiers the very first thing in the game, in which case, chances are at least one of the 5 surrounding enemies will outproduce you…decisions, decisions.
hmmm killing the zombies at the beginning of Resident Evil 2 was always pretty easy to me, except the very first time I played it, “Hey what is happ…AHHHH!!!”
I remember Battletoads being super difficult.
Yep. I honestly think that the game turned out the way they wanted, it was just they didn’t really think through if a stuntman simulator (as opposed to a game where you just play at being a stuntman) was what the market wanted. Simulators have their market but the game cries out for a lighter touch.
RE4 also suffers from “ridiculously hard boss stage” syndrome. It’s one of my favorite games, until the boss levels. Then it is an exercise is dying over and over, trying to find the stupid little trick that damages the boss, or having to have a stuffed inventory of weapons and ammo and use everything. Even then, it is a silly stupid routine of unintuitive timing and hotspot puzzles to exploit the boss weakness. Don’t have enough ammo stocked up when you get to the boss? Sucker, you get to hope and pray you have a save game you can retrace from! :mad:
Oh man, I totally disagree. I found the bosses to be completely thrilling, and often terrifying, for some of the said reasons (low ammo, for one). I thought most of the bosses had a fairly inventive and intuitive means of beating them.
I nearly peed my pants at the ‘Right Hand’ boss (the one where you have to freeze him with the liquid nitrogen). Holy crap that was scary, especially when I tried to simply evade him for the entire 5 minutes while running, and finally made it to the escape elevator…only to find the bastard waiting in it for me! I actually yelled out in fright. Yeah, perhaps not my most shining moment, but damn was that game intense.
Comes out on Wii in two days btw, with new controls 
Huh, I actually found Zelda 1 pretty easy, once I figured out some key tactics (like manipulating the monster respawn when you left a room and came back). And Mega Man 1 was nigh-impossible if you played the stages in the wrong order, but get them right and it was a cinch (though admittedly it took a lot of trial and error to find out what the right order was).
In the vein of “hard for the sake of hard”, it’s hard to top the final boss fight in Mega Man 2. You only had one weapon which could damage the boss at all (your weakest one, naturally), and it could only affect monsters below you, while the boss was continually flying around above you. So you had to jump at just the right time while he was in the lowest point of his swooping, to slam-dunk a bubble on him. Which, if you hit, took away a half of one of his hit points.
That, and the title monsters in the original Metroid (possibly the others, too, but I haven’t played them). You can’t kill them, and if one touches you at all, it starts eating your brain, and it’s impossible to get free before it takes off over a hundred energy. Oh, and they move faster than you.
You can kill Metroids; freeze and five missiles IIRC.
(Deep breaths…deep breaths…)
I really don’t understand this apparently bulletproof meme that games were always harder back then. The NES was a family system without a memory card, which meant, for the most part, managable games finishible in one sitting. The ones that weren’t intented for one sitting had codes to save your progress, making victory a snap once you figure out all the challenges. (If you’ve never completed Metal Gear, you weren’t trying.) It was at least three years after I got my NES that the Game Genie came out, and I never saw a desperate need for it. (Compare that to the PS2, where a cheat device was the very first thing I ever looked for. BTW, Codebreaker is the way to go; Gameshark is garbage.)
Anyway, as long as we’re talking old:
Mega Man series: The funny thing about this. When I first played MM1 (a rental), I struggled like crazy. I got killed everywhere. I couldn’t accomplish a damn thing. Then I got used to the quirky but managble system and started making all kinds of progress…and finished it in the second day. It was a similar story with MM2 (it’s been a long time, Chronos, but I’m certain you’re doing something wrong; there definitely is an effective weapon against the last boss). MM3 was the only one I actually needed my Game Genie for, and even then only because I had no idea which weapons were effective agains the “shadows”. It’s all careful memorization and figuring out what works against what. Once you have that, it’s in the bag.
Battletoads: I hated this stupid game. Just the third level was completely ridiculous. There’s been so much talk about how this was the hardest NES game ever, the little issue of how the freak that was a good thing got swept aside. It’s a miracle this franchise lasted as long as it did.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out: Not a blisteringly tough game (for the most part), but completely make-or-break in what it took to win. It’s lighting reflexes or crushing defeat, plain and simple. I actually consider Mr. Sandman the toughest opponent, and it was a flat-out war taking him down, believe it.
Final Fantasy: I’ve never been a fan of tasks where you have to take on a serious of tough, life-draining challenges without any opportunity to recover. Needless to say, my quest stopped cold at the volcano stage, and I bow to anyone who’s ever made it past that, much less to the end.
Master Blaster: Yeah, this was a marathon. Funny thing is, though, while it’s certainly grueling, I wouldn’t call it difficult. Most of the tasks are pretty routine. Blast the enemies, power up your weapon, restore your health, beat the boss, get the upgrade. If you need a break, hit pause, turn off the TV, and take one. (It’s an NES; don’t worry about overheating.)
Ghosts 'n Goblins: Ridiculously diffcult port of a ridiculously difficult arcade game. What can I say, early Capcom had a lot of weird stuff. Would be a lot easier, actually, if you didn’t get thrown back to a checkpoint every time you died (true for a lot of other games).
Castlevania: I mention this because of something that always drove me absolutely bananas…the completely friggin’ impossible FINAL BOSS. Giant bat? A pushover. Medusa? Easy beans. Mummies? If you fight smart, they’re easier than the giant bat. Frank 'n Igor? Getting tough now, and you need the right weapon, but not incredibly frustrating. Death? Now we have a challenge, and it’s almost certainly going to take a number of tries, but keep at it and he’ll go down. And then there’s Dra…oops, “The Count”, who teleports all over the place (including right on top of you) and throws fireballs in threes. You need to get 16 hits before you take 4 to knock his head off…and expose the REAL final boss, who also takes 16 hits. And of course, you don’t get to recover in between. I know Konami’s been hit and miss in its long history, but I never expect even the lowest end of the intelligence-o-meter to dip THIS low.
The hardest? Well…I’ll have to think about that. See, the problem is that I need to make a distinction between games that are difficult and games that are horribly broken and unbelievably stupidly designed (anything called “Defender of the Crown” falls into the latter category). And how to rate a game that’s a pain from beginning to end between one that’s fairly reasonable for the most part but has a few areas that are absolute murder? This’ll take a while.
I’d have to say the hardest video/computer game ever created is probably Deep Blue, or whatever the name of the computer chess program that beat Kasparov a few years back is… as it’s presumably impossible for 99.99999% of the people on earth to EVER beat it.
That aside, I will put in a vote for the arcade classic Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts. I know everything there is to know about it, have beaten in on one quarter, and if I go for a while without playing it I still will frequently be unable to get past the first level. It’s INCREDIBLY unforgiving at times. When it first came out, my friend and I would get $5 or $10 worth of quarters and still be unable to beat it.
Heh the final level is a huge dungeon with no save points that you have to fight all the endbosses of the game + huge stages filled with the most powerful monsters. I remember beating that as a kid then getting the total WTF? ending and being very pissed.
The gameboy advance had FFI and FFII released on some type of classics deal I got it and was shocked how easy it was. Then of course I found out that it was a much easier version and not the original at all. Ahh well.
If you play the way the storyline guides you, you’re correct. But if you make a detour to the Castle of Ordeal and pick up the Heal Staff, then every single battle is an opportunity to recover. Really, the only truly challenging fights are the Wizards guarding the Crown in the Marsh Cave, which are just way overpowered for the level and equipment you have at the time, and the Eye guarding the Floater in the Ice Cave, which has a long list of save-or-die spells you have to survive. Even so, though, you can still save at the beginning of those dungeons, and restore from that point as many times as you need. Eventually, you’ll get past them, and then it’s smooth sailing.
Battletoads; IIRC, there was a speeder-bike style vhase level, that threw al manner of pitfalls and obstacles in your way. You simply could not play using skill; you had to play, die, play, die, getting a bit further every time, until you could instinctively rhyme off the sequence of obstacles, and pray you had the dexterity to swerve/ avoid/ jump them.
Not so much a game; more of a high speed memory test.
Funny, I played through that game earlier today, and was reminiscing on how difficult it was (especially in one player mode).
While The Legend of Zelda is an easy game for everybody who’s beaten it a million times, a friend of mine played through it for the very first time earlier this year via Wii Console, and I dared him to beat it without ANY help. I was actually surprised he didn’t have any trouble finding level 7 (the #1 most asked question in Nintendo Power Counselor’s Corner history) but he never found 2 of the hidden hearts, and got REALLY stuck when he missed the bow in level 1 and assumed that there was only one item per level. And to this day, those friggin red bubbles still make the second quest hell (and you’ll NEVER find all 9 levels without help!)
Mega Man 1 is definitely the hardest of the Mega Mans, but aside from the rock monster and clone bosses, is a piece of cake for me now. Those Gutsman moving platforms used to annoy me so much that I’d play Elec Man’s stage twice just to go back for the magnet beam so I could wizz by that section. Chronos, you’re exaggerating the last boss of Mega Man 2 a bit. The bubble lead actually does a good amount of damage to Dr Wily’s alien, and he isn’t really that hard to aim at, but if HE hits you, you’ll lose 1/3 of your own energy. I remember the first time I beat Mega Man 2, and I was swarming through my entire arsenal trying to find something to hit him. By the time I was trying to use Number 2’s on him, I realized that just MAYBE I missed him with Bubble Lead the first time.
The original Final Fantasy, while definitely beatable, was a challenge in that many of the mechanics of the game were buggy, so that half of the spells didn’t work (which sometimes worked in your favor too) and the so-called Ice Sword didn’t even do any elemental damage. Not to mention that you can a random encounter every 3 steps and you need a lot of luck (or a Thief) to run. Oh yeah, and even at level 50, the max # of times you can cast a spell before going to an Inn is 9 times, and you couldn’t cast LIFE or SOFT during battle. Oh yeah, and anybody who has ever played the NES version has seen the word INEFFECTIVE enough times to drive themselves batty. The GBA remake fixed many of these problems (as well as making the Gas Dragons NOT the most evil enemy in the history of RPG’s anymore), and compensated by giving all enemies more HP. It becomes a much more enjoyable game, in my opinion.
I still stand by The Adventures of Bayou Billy as the hardest beat-em-up game. I dare you to try to beat that game. Battletoads is like the original Double Dragon compared to that game. As far as shooter games go, Legendary Wings was legendary for its challenge. Two games that you’ll need mad skillz just to finish level 1!
I can guarantee that nobody on the face of earth has ever beaten The Mutant Virus.
Sigh. It’s amazing how they just don’t make hard games anymore. I can’t remember the last current game that I was unable to finish out of challenge, rather than losing interest.
For modern games, the action-RPG Odin Sphere is gaining a reputation for being very difficult. Fortunately, it has a very forgiving revival/replay system, but DAMN is it hard!
My thread about Odin Sphere. At this point, I’ve all but stopped playing it completely - it’s just too frustrating and I don’t have time for the sort of game that makes no effort to pace itself or scale its challenges. Also, it seems like every - EVERY - enemy in the game inflicts poison on you with one hit. Infuriating.
In 3 (Snake Eater) you don’t have a radar at all, even on the easy settings. Combine that fact with the large, open outdoor environments, and it’s quite tricky indeed. But you do have the camouflage system to help you hide. It’s pretty unrealistically executed (you pause the game, select the camo you want, then unpause it, basically - and we’re to assume that Snake has the ability to carry 20 different uniforms with him at all times, in addition to all the other shit he has including cardboard boxes) but then those games have always been unapologetically unrealistic. It’s a great game with amazing cutscenes and beautiful looking environments, I recommend you play it.
As for Resident Evil, I think I am the only person on earth who LIKES the traditional control scheme and fixed-camera perspective in the Resident Evil games. I actually wish there were more games like that!
Really? The Arbiter mission? That one isn’t nearly as bad as the one where you have to fight swarms of the brute/elite honor guard. That level has shitloads of snipers and, on Legendary, they might miss the first time, but they get a headshot that second time EVERY time.
That first level on Legendary has possibly the hardest battle in the entire game with the second time the enemy docks into the hangar. That battle, on Legendary, is a bitch. The first time they dock is also in the top five as well.
Great game. I don’t recall if it was the first or second one (you had to take all of Japan) but that one was harder and a more complex game.
God, whatever happened to those historical simulation games? Ghengis Khan would be fucking amazing if they added some complexity to the city building and got the battles more painful.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms as well. That game could also get to be a motherfucker. Definitely a marathon, as opposed to a sprint.