whats the hardest game you've ever played?

[TheObscureGamer]

The hardest game I'd say I've ever played is Megaman Dr. Wiley's Revenge for the Gameboy.To put into perspective just how hard the game is,I've beaten Ghosts N Goblins and Ghouls N Ghosts(which aren't hard games to me as I beat them both on separate occasions in like 4 hours).and to make it worse,I've had the game every since I was a kid and can only beat a single boss(I guess if I try now I could beat it but so far I haven't).I can't think of another game that I've found to be hard.So what are your hardest games/game?

[icemanxp300]

Kid Kool was quite the challenge but I beat it. On the other hand I never beat Humans on the genesis... so.

[Hyperboy]

A game called "life"!

[Tales from the Game Room]

VECTRON for Intellivision. Man, is that a toughie...

[VectorGamer]

Sinistar. I was never able to get past the third stage.

[cimerians]

Sometimes the line blurs between hard and unplayable.

 

Unplayable: Rise of the Robots.

 

Difficult: Ghosts n Goblins...maybe Ultimate mode on the PSP version.

 

I agree with Sinistar in the arcade. I also had trouble with Defender. They were made to eat your quarters although I know a guy who's a master at Defender.

[mbd30]

ActRaiser 2

 

They must have thought that the first game was too easy and too much fun so let's ramp up the difficulty to an insane degree while also making the controls suck ass.

[Torr]

Chakan: The Forever Man on Sega Genesis.

The game is hard from the get go with cheap deaths due to not being able to see where your falling to and some bad collision detection.

 

Ecco The Dolphin also on Sega Genesis.

The brunt of the game is hard but you can get good enough with practice to dodge the enemies and find your way through the labyrinths, but the last couple levels? What were they thinking????

 

 

 

I swear I'll scream if someone says Contra on NES!!! Is the game easy? No, not at all, but it is NOT as hard as people make it out to be!!!

 

Also Turrican on Sega Genesis, but that game is hard just due to sloppy programming. It plays WAY too fast, I'm sure it's a 50Hz game not optimized for 60Hz. Plus the fact that your health drains as long as ANYTHING is contacting you and there's NO invincibilty time, being pushed away, whatever. If a bullet passes through you at the right angle so to take the longest path overlapping your sprite it can drain your whole health bar in less than a half second. I have a rant on this game over in the Sega Genesis forum. Sure, sure, maybe the Amiga original was a classic, blah blah, but I'm talking about the GENESIS port. It's terrible.

[Nebulon]

Cybernoid - NES

[SoulBlazer]

I consider myself a very good gamer, but I really struggled to make it far in Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. I finally did beat it, but man, that was a six month struggle.

[fiddlepaddle]

Genesis: Back to the Future Part III; I've only barely got to the end of the first level, and that that took many retries. It's a fun challenge, though.

 

There are lots of games that ramp up to where I eventually get killed, like Kaboom. I've got to admit, though, that most of the games I really like don't even have a real ending anyway.

 

I watch movies when I want to know how the story ends.

[mbd30]

I consider myself a very good gamer, but I really struggled to make it far in Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. I finally did beat it, but man, that was a six month struggle.

 

I loved this game, but finally gave up in frustration at chapter 12 "The Caverns."

 

I remember you could dispatch quite a few enemies using cheap tactics such as the flying swallow and backflip attacks.

[Rhomaios]

Most of the "Hard" NES games are just challenging, but they get their reputation from kids who went back to play them today. I thought Ghosts N Goblins (and likewise with Ghouls N Ghosts on the Genesis) was challenging, but I never would have chalked it up to being one of the hardest games. Contra is beatable, Castlevania is beatable, Ninja Gaiden has a couple of super hard levels at the end, though.

 

Gradius III arcade is a doozy. I'll second Ecco the Dolphin, too. That's definitely a game I could never get very far in as a kid, and find it particularly hard today.

 

And then there are a slew of arcade games that for whatever reason I love to play but I'm just not that good at, like Ms. Pac-Man. I don't know what it is about that game in particular, but I lose so many more quarters to it than its contemporaries like Centipede, Galaga, or Donkey Kong.

[Tempest]

NES Ghosts n Goblins was way too hard for its own good. Then you had to go through it all again! Maybe if they took out a few Red Arremers it might be a bit more playable.

 

I always thought Kid Chameleon was nigh impossible. I really REALLY wanted to like it, but it was not to be.

 

I just replayed Contra a few weeks ago and beat it in about 11 lives. Several of those deaths were because I was impatient, I could probably beat it in under 6 lives if I really tried (screw those spiked truck things!).

[Blazing Lazers]

Blue Sphere.

[Shinju]

NES: Legacy of the Wizard, I beat the game when it was in its life cycle but god damn, if you didnt map your progression you were hosed!

 

SNES: PLOK, Absolutly one of the most fustrating games on the system with one of the best sound tracks on the system!

 

Genesis: Chakan: The Forever Man, I have to second this, game was bruitally hard due to poor collison detection and horrible platform placements

 

SMS: Ghost House, Ugh....

[Tempest]

SMS: Ghost House, Ugh....

Really? It's not easy but I wouldn't say it's hard. I actually like it.

[Shinju]

Really? It's not easy but I wouldn't say it's hard. I actually like it.

 

I like it too, but it can be a pain in the ass, I probably should have chosen The Ninja or maybe even Rastan. Funny I have the entire US NTSC-U set and I have only played though to the end about 40 SMS games. I have played them all to test them to make sure they did infact work but not to the end.

[glazball]

I beat NES Ninja Gaiden and Ghosts N Goblins bitd, and I do get proud when I read kids talk about how hard and near impossible it is now. Yea, it was hard and many controllers were thrown, but it's what we had and we played the hell out of them. Even now when I play NG and get to those last levels, it's all still there: where to jump, where to pause, when to attack, which pickups to avoid, etc.

 

The hardest modern game I've beaten would probably be Resident Evil 5 on PS3. Playing through on hard (trying to attain platinum) was very tough in a few spots, specifically the big ogre boss fight and the fight with Wesker. I've given up on trophy hunting since then, and I just don't know how some of those guys earn platinums on a lot of these really hard games. I guess I don't have the patience of these 20-somethings skipping college classes to play games anymore!

[mbd30]

The hardest modern game I've beaten would probably be Resident Evil 5 on PS3. Playing through on hard (trying to attain platinum) was very tough in a few spots, specifically the big ogre boss fight and the fight with Wesker. I've given up on trophy hunting since then, and I just don't know how some of those guys earn platinums on a lot of these really hard games. I guess I don't have the patience of these 20-somethings skipping college classes to play games anymore!

 

Have you tried "God of War 2" on Titan mode? I thought that Theseus was pretty much impossible, and it's supposed to get even harder after that.

[mehguy]

Summer Carnival 92 Recca. Try to beat that.

[+jeremiahjt]

Batman Returns on the Lynx. I have beaten every level using the level skip, but I have never been able to past level two if I start from the beginning.

 

I also find Gravitar to be really difficult.

 

Pitfall! on the 5200 is also extremely difficult for me, but that is because the controllers. When I get into a good groove I can run through 2600 Pitfall! fairly easily, but I last about 10 screens on 5200 Pitfall!

[Martianman]

Pretty much any shmup. Radiant Silvergun comes to mind. Castlevania games can be pretty frustrating too. Honestly though, I'm not at my peak gaming skill anymore so part of it could just be that I'm out of practice.

[Nathan Dunsmore]

I'm surprised to see Ecco mentioned on here a few times, I beat that one years ago. Almost done with Tides of Time. I've always considered Dick Tracy, Ghostbusters, Toki and Battletoads/DD to be among the tougher Genesis titles I've beaten.

 

I mentioned this one on RVG and I'll mention it again here: Home Improvement (snes).

Edited March 19, 2015 by Nathan Dunsmore

[Cynicaster]

If a game is strictly score-based--like most classic arcade games, for example--It's tough to rank different games as to how difficult they are because there are no universal criteria. You can rank different levels of the same game with respect to one another, but how do you meaningfully compare the difficulty of, say, Asteroids Deluxe to Donkey Kong? Scores and game duration tell you nothing... the mechanics are completely different... so what else is there?

 

The post-NES "finishable" games are easier to compare because nobody cares about score on those and you can make meaningful assessments of relative difficulty by comparing how difficult it is to reach the finish line. I think that's why GnG and Ninja Gaiden are popular mentions in discussions like this, because reaching the universal goal of "completion" is very tough on those games.

 

As an aside, I think game difficulty is more a "perception" than an objectively measurable quantity, and that perception can get skewed by questionable game design decisions. For example, even if two games have effectively identical gameplay and in-game challenge, the one that sends you back to the very beginning of a level when you die probably "feels" more difficult than the game that just starts you up where you left off, because the off-putting frustration of being sent to the start is so discouraging. That's why, to me, one of the hallmarks of great game design is a game that absolutely kicks your ass left and right, but you feel compelled to keep fighting the game to get further and better. Robotron 2084 is a quintessential example of this, IMO.