The hardest videogames of all time!

Cafe Society
101

[QUOTE=Secret Volcano Lair]
Another game that frustrated the hell out of me was Cobra Triangle for NES. It was made by Rare, the same company that went on to make memorable titles such as Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.

It was a weird speedboat racing/combat game. One of the hardest things about it was that the stages all had time limits that were nearly impossible to beat. Never made it very far in that game even though I had it for a few years.
[/QUOTE]

Great game. I made it pretty far in that game, I’d venture to say most of the way, but I don’t think I beat it.

102

[QUOTE=Scuba_Ben]
Rogue, Nethack, Moria, and the rest of the Rougelike games were designed to make death count. Yes, the games are evil like that. But it makes winning all the more sweet.

(No, I’ve never won.)
[/quote]

And those who do win under those conditions go on to be hailed as “Liars.”

When you’re talking to these purists who insist that they’ve ascended without backing up saved games, be sure to pass on my standard response of a crude gesticulation with accompanying sound effect.

Even being now quite familiar with the spoilers, so I know most techniques available for survival in Nethack, I couldn’t survive one a one-chance basis. All it takes is one level with a bee hive that’s been spitting out bees for a good while before you even get to see it’s there and you’re fucked. It takes a long time to get tough enough that a swarm of bees or ants isn’t a threat, and futzing around trying to get to that stage gradually will only result in starving to death.

103

[QUOTE=Johnny Angel]
And those who do win under those conditions go on to be hailed as “Liars.”
[/QUOTE]
That’s pretty extreme. Yes, Roguelike games are hard, with many ways to die, some of them instantly, and with no legitimate ability to try again. But even under those conditions, winning IS possible - hence the various Yet Another (First) Ascention Posts on rec.games.roguelike.nethack.

104

[QUOTE= Scuba_Ben]
That’s pretty extreme. Yes, Roguelike games are hard, with many ways to die, some of them instantly, and with no legitimate ability to try again. But even under those conditions, winning IS possible - hence the various Yet Another (First) Ascention Posts on rec.games.roguelike.nethack.
[/quote]

I concede that it’s possible, though the sheer time it takes to get to the end game even if you’re backing up your saved games makes me highly skeptical of unprovable claims to have succeeded without cheating in spite of the thousands of things that could go wrong even if you’re doing everything perfectly. Ultimately the game is more fun and still extremely challenging if you back up your saved games.

105

Sinistar

106

Anyone else remember the arcade game Rolling Thunder?

It got insanely difficult toward the end, with one-hit kills and bullets flying everywhere. My brother and I always wanted to see the ending of it, but we could never finish it. The machine we used even let us choose the last series of levels from the start screen, but it was far too difficult.

107

One game I haven’t seen mentioned yet (or maybe it’s because it’s so pitiful, but hey, it was hard!) is Friday the 13th for NES.

Did anyone ever beat that game? Did anyone ever WANT to?

108

[QUOTE=Mahaloth]
Anyone else remember the arcade game Rolling Thunder?

It got insanely difficult toward the end, with one-hit kills and bullets flying everywhere. My brother and I always wanted to see the ending of it, but we could never finish it. The machine we used even let us choose the last series of levels from the start screen, but it was far too difficult.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, the weird-shaped black Nintendo cartridge. I’ve beaten it.

109

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Sinistar
[/QUOTE]

Oh yes.

And while Defender was merely maddeningly difficult to get good at, it’s follow-up Stargate was impossible.

110

[QUOTE=Idle Thoughts]
One game I haven’t seen mentioned yet (or maybe it’s because it’s so pitiful, but hey, it was hard!) is Friday the 13th for NES.

Did anyone ever beat that game? Did anyone ever WANT to?
[/QUOTE]

Friday the 13th is either insanely easy, or insanely hard. It depends on whether you know what you’re doing. I remember I beat this game twice in a row - the first time took a couple hours when I swore that I would not stop playing until I finished the damn game, and the second time took about 5 minutes. Maybe I’ll reexplore this game as part of my NES-a-day Challenge, although I’ve completely forgotten how to finish it.

One thing I do remember about beating the game really fast is to just let all of the camper kids die. As long as at least one camper is left alive (and Jason can’t get around to killing ALL of them for a while) you’re still able to beat it.

111

Games can be very hard just because of lazy programming, or because you have the difficulty level turned up, those don’t count.

I second Battletoads. It was a good game till you got to the third level…threw the controller against the wall…turned it off…5 minutes later you’re back at it. Maybe there aren’t any levels past the third? Who the hell would know?

112

[QUOTE=fusoya]
Friday the 13th is either insanely easy, or insanely hard. It depends on whether you know what you’re doing. I remember I beat this game twice in a row - the first time took a couple hours when I swore that I would not stop playing until I finished the damn game, and the second time took about 5 minutes. Maybe I’ll reexplore this game as part of my NES-a-day Challenge, although I’ve completely forgotten how to finish it.

One thing I do remember about beating the game really fast is to just let all of the camper kids die. As long as at least one camper is left alive (and Jason can’t get around to killing ALL of them for a while) you’re still able to beat it.
[/QUOTE]

You’ve jogged my memory. I think that’s precisely how you do it.

113

I remeber almost destroying my joystick in Commanche 3 for the PC. The game wasn’t that hard, exactly, so much as the AI for your wingman was horrible. The bastard was programmed to line up precisely behind you, and would open fire indiscriminately as soon as he saw anything, which would inevitably be directly ahead of you (you know, because I have this crazy habit of flying at threats to attack them) and he’d destroy you from behind every time. Plus, your targeting computer wouldn’t even lock to him on with air-to-air missiles! I wound up having to shoot him down with rockets at the start of some missions.

114

[QUOTE=Sitnam]
Games can be very hard just because of lazy programming, or because you have the difficulty level turned up, those don’t count.

I second Battletoads. It was a good game till you got to the third level…threw the controller against the wall…turned it off…5 minutes later you’re back at it. Maybe there aren’t any levels past the third? Who the hell would know?
[/QUOTE]

Of course there are more levels! The third level had a warp to the 5th right at the part where it started getting hard. I could still never beat the 11th stage, because you’re thrown onto this stupid unicycle thingy with no explanation of how to make the thing actually go, and two seconds later you get steamrolled by a pinwheel.

Repeat
Level start > splat > respawn > splat > respawn > splat > game over > “Whaaaaa!?”

The third level was always known as the friendship-breaker, due to three factors:

  1. It came right after the second level, where two players almost always ended up wrecking-balling each other over and over in an increasingly hostile game of scorched earth.
  2. The space invader enemies that stole life right out of the bar on the top of the screen and gave it back to the person who killed the enemy (not necessarily the character it was taken from).
  3. Generous put-downs during the speeder bike section: “God dammit, stop wasting our continues and just let me finish this!”
115

[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
Yeah, the weird-shaped black Nintendo cartridge. I’ve beaten it.
[/QUOTE]

I was actually talking about Rolling Thunder on the arcade version, much harder than the NES.

116

Rolling Thunder…bah. A prime, perfect, solid-gold example of a hero who’s sickeningly underqualified for the task in front of him. Someone as well-equipped as Solid Snake or agile and durable as Richard Miller might be able to pull it off, but Albatross was dead man walking from the first step. And thanks to the checkpoint system (you could dedicate an entire subgenre of ultra-hard games to this), a lot of the game was repeating the same impossible sections over and over and over. And don’t tell me about the NES version. I played the insanity-inducing nightmarish NES version, dammit.

(And believe it or not, Rolling Thunder 2 was even worse.)

A few more nominees, all from memory:

Magician Lord - Mazes. Frickin’ mazes in a shoot-em-up. What were they thinking? MAZES, by god. Oh yeah, the hero doesn’t exactly have a thick hide (he’s a magician, after all), his abilities aren’t exactly inspiring, and the timer is extremely stingy, especially for how long it’ll take to get through all the mazes. Plus there are about a thousand ways to die. And those annoying tasks where you have to jump perfectly or take a 200-foot plunge. Did I mention mazes?

Pretty much everything else ADK ever made - Shield-guessing, magic-rationing, nerve-grinding insanity in Crossed Swords. The second most ridiculous invincible untouchable boss ever in World Heroes 2. The Blink-and-you’re-dead system in Aggressors of Dark Kombat. Sheesh, no wonder they went bankrupt.

Bubble Bobble - C’mon, you remember! That clean, wholesome, and, oh yeah, “nonviolent” charmer where you played a tiny dragon who trapped monsters in bubbles and popped them. Cute! Original! Nonviolent! All the appeal of which diminished once you realized you’d have to deal with the impossibility of getting where you want too many times, the clumsiness of how you killed the monsters, the maddening randomness of the powerups, the unbelievable number of places there was no getting out of, and, oh yeah, the same 30-second music loop repeating about a billion times, for 100 levels, and more than that if you wanted the “good ending”. And of course, that dying every 10 seconds part. Ever wonder why Taito didn’t bring even one sequel stateside? Me neither.

Paddle Mania - Somewhat obscure paddle game from SNK. What made triumph so difficult: 1. Opponent #7, Hard Court Henry, who was a friggin’ wall (seriously, if you can get one goal on him in four matches, that’s fantastic) 2. The two final opponents, the synchronized swim team and Sammy Set, who weren’t exactly pushoevers, and 3. the fact that if you lost to either, the game ended…no continue, no do-over, your tournament is done (and you win the bronze or silver depending on who you lost to). Not to mention that this was a fast-paced game that didn’t have a single opponent whom I’d call anywhere close to “easy”.

Ikari Warriors series - The rotating stick was bad idea from day one; far too easy to die just because you can’t get pointed the right way fast enough. Other than that, these were simply very long, very challenging, very busy games with tons of enemies well-equipped to dish out the damage required to kill the heroes. The third game is actually the worse; you’re up against a timer which is too short for one of the stages, meaning that you CANNOT get through the stage without getting killed (which this resets the clock a tiny bit).

Fightingmania - Oh yeah, how could I have missed this one? If you haven’t seen this game, it has six pads which rise at various intervals, with a light on each that turns on when its fully extended. The object is to hit (or just push) the pad the moment the light goes on, and if you do that enough times, you win the match. Sound simple? Wait until you deal with four, five, or six pads at once, ridiculously fast patterns with staggered pads, and enemies (that’s what the “Fighting” part refers to) that wipe you out in as few as 8 misses, while you literally have to be perfect for hundreds of pads to put them away.

BTW, I wouldn’t call the “death matters” feature difficult so much as incredibly frustrating and pretty much screaming to be defied. Like checkpoints.

117

[QUOTE=BraheSilver]
The third level was always known as the friendship-breaker, due to three factors:

  1. It came right after the second level, where two players almost always ended up wrecking-balling each other over and over in an increasingly hostile game of scorched earth.
  2. The space invader enemies that stole life right out of the bar on the top of the screen and gave it back to the person who killed the enemy (not necessarily the character it was taken from).
  3. Generous put-downs during the speeder bike section: “God dammit, stop wasting our continues and just let me finish this!”
    [/QUOTE]

BraheSilver, you brought a tear to my eye and a giggle. The good old days, when one of the most dangerous things in a video game was your buddy.

118

anybody else remember the Swordquest series? the games weren’t hard so much as tedious and pointless. It was meant to be a big bucks contest where one was supposed to solve the puzzles in the game and the first one to do it could win some ugly trophy based on the storyline.

too bad the games themselves consisted of moving random items to random rooms hoping to pop out random numerical clues that meant absolutely nothing… (they actually referred to page/panel numbers in the accompanying comic, but my sister bought Swordquest: Earthworld pre-played and missing comic.) I didn’t know there was supposed to be a comic until 20 years later, when the contest was waaaaaaaaay over and the cartridge had long since become the star of “How Rebecca Found Out What’s Inside An Atari Cartidge.”

I agree with everyone who said Battletoads: I beat that sumbitch in college after years of never getting past level 3, and have never felt quite that level of accomplishment since.

119

Marble Madness for the NES was really hard. It was one of the only difficult games I actually stuck withenough to become good at.

I might be the only one.

120

Does anyone know of an original Nintendo game called Battle of Olympus? It came out before Zelda but it is very similar in style. A quest through mythological lands and Greek monsters aplenty. You had to collect weapons and 3 hearts like Zelda. To save it you had to go to a god and get the secret password for that saving spot.

I got everything I was supposed to and found the final land, and…that was it. Couldn’t figure out what to do next. I battled Cerberus and that’s all I remember. So frustrating!

Years later in college I revisited it and same thing. I have never found anyone else who ever had this game, much less beat it. But I wanted to see the ending, damnit!