what is the hardest video game you've ever played?

Lemmings gets mighty difficult towards the end, although some of the levels are unfair timing challenges. I never beat every stage.

Olde platformers with no saves/passwords, I consider unfair.

I never got past the 3rd level on Chase HQ, so that gets my vote.

Just getting over the first jump in Army Moves on the speccy also proved a challenge in its day.

But I think the hardest game I've played and finished is Tony Hawks 3. Most of it was fairly easy, but the very last challenge (500,000 on the cruise ship, I think) took me about 3 months during which I was playing an hour each night and gradually doing a bit better each time (which meant I never got bored with it). It's definitely the biggest sense of achievement I've ever got out of a game completion.

getting an S ranking for the final boss battle in DMC3: arguably one of the proudest moments of my life

starting a new game on Hard and getting my ass handed to me by the second level: robbed me of all the happiness I derived from that

If you mean the NES one, I totally pwned at that game. It was the second NES game I ever had, after The Legend of Zelda (I had the base system that only came with a the Nintendo Player's Guide. No SMB/Duck Hunt, Gyromite/Duck Hunt or anything) There's a place early in the game where it's real easy to level up completely, that helps. I don't remember the name of the area, but it's a place where you climb up a rope and kill this big dude. You can climb down and up again and he'll respawn. Just kill him over and over.

The PS2 remake was SUPER EASY.

One of the best places in the game to get experience quick is in the flying stone islands of Lapis, and you can get to it as soon as you have the grappling hook. Head as far right as you can and launch the grappling hook up to climb to the next screen. You'll be attacked by a lone robot. It'll take many hits to kill but it's worth lots of experience. Then enter the nearby door and when you exit the robot will be back. Kill it again and repeat the process and eventually you'll be strong enough to finish it (and anything else) in a single hit.

* I have just got a new TV, so I might actually give this game another go later, when I'm less likely to suddenly snap and smash a brand new telly.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d6/Deadly2.gif/250px-Deadly2.gif

1a. If so, is it because better technology generally allows for game that's more adaptive to different skillz levels, or sommat? Like, better game physics allows players to master a game without spending hours simply refining muscle memory?

I thought Earth Bound was hard when I was ten.

I was about to reply to this with "I don't think so", but last night I dreamt it was. I don't know what to think anymore :(

Speccy games were sooo hard. But the time it took to load the damn tapes meant I'd always put in that extra bit of effort before giving up and loading something else.

-- a.b. (aaaaaathatsfivea...) (webmail), August 21st, 2006 9:14 PM. (alanbanana) (link)

found it: Jungle Trouble
http://retrospec.sgn.net/game-links.php?link=jungle

I'm just reviving this to brag about beating the first Ninja Gaiden, finally.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/ZachRScott/animatedending.gif

"...see you next"..? NEXT WHAT, MAN, next WHAT?! We need closure here

Ninja Gaiden Black and Odin Sphere are probably the hardest games I've played from the last gen, but they're really only hard by current standards, nothing like a difficult NES game. Well, some parts of NGB are.

I got zinged by Daramouss on here!

they're making a new Rygar for the Wii!

he's right though
x-post

yeah Tom Wiimote diskarmor should be cool

Fantastic Dizzy for the mega drive was so annoying for the lack of being able to save the game and for there being no password. I remember playing that game for hours and dying with one star out of 250 left to get don't think i played it for about 5 years after that.

Fantastic Dizzy for the mega drive was so annoying for the lack of being able to save the game and for there being no password. I remember playing that game for hours and dying with one star out of 250 left to get don't think i played it for about 5 years after that.

Hahahahaha, so so otm. I don't think I ever finished it, but I must have been close because I played it a lot!
You totally didn't mind doing the WHOLE GAME AGAIN every time though, because it's so hard to remember how you did things before and what you've got to do, in what order, that every go is like your first. Also, how to get to some of the silly platforms in the crazy egg village, where you've got to jump off the screen at an awkward angle to land on the next screen in the right place.

ok wtf
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a0/Cover-of-the-fantastic-adventures-of-dizzy.jpg/250px-Cover-of-the-fantastic-adventures-of-dizzy.jpg

Starring "Dizzy" the U.K.'s #1 Video game hero

If I can beat Mega Man 2 anybody can.

Hardest video game I've ever played: Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64

Mega Man one was harder than two, I thought. 3 was easier than two, then I didn't play another until Mega Man X which was also easy.

But I think the hardest game I've played and finished is Tony Hawks 3. Most of it was fairly easy, but the very last challenge (500,000 on the cruise ship, I think) took me about 3 months during which I was playing an hour each night and gradually doing a bit better each time (which meant I never got bored with it).

I think I finished that bit in less than a half-hour! It was my first Tony Hawk game, too, so I was pretty obsessed with it at the time.

Mega Man X6 manages to be annoyingly difficult in entirely new ways. You don't have to worry about continues, and enemies usually don't smack you into pits or spikes. However...

After you beat the stage bosses, the "castle" area opens. You quickly notice that the first part of the stage is a tower of spikes. The most obvious solution would be to wear the spike-resistant armour weakly hidden in four places in the earlier stages. So you put it on for the stage, and you climb the tower, and beat a boss, and the stage continues.

The next part of the stage is in the high air where you can easily fall to your death. Luckily the spike-resistant suit can also levitate. However, it can't change direction in mid-air, which causes you to be unable to reach a necessary ledge half-way through. You can't change the suit at this point. The only option is to restart the stage with the original armour.

The tower of spikes again. The vertical parts are spiked, but the platforms aren't. If you jump and boost upwards in midair, you can't quite reach the platforms. I got past it by using an old-school trick: getting hit by an enemy and then climbing the spikes while temporarily invincible. By reading gamefaqs, it's also possible to shoot a ball of ice into the ground, then standing on it and jumping from there. But if your timing is even a bit off, you get hit by the spikes and die. You need to climb around 8 walls of spikes to get to the boss.

The boss turns out to be virtually impossible without the levitation the other armour has. You now have to do a jump and boost at exactly the right time to avoid one of its attacks, which happens over a dozen times during the battle. One of its other attack occurs too randomly to be avoidable, especially with the original armour, and that certainly doesn't help either. If you don't have perfect timing or a bunch of powertanks, you are screwed.

And then you get to the high-air part and fall in the pits a bunch of times because you can't levitate. And then you get to that damn ledge and finish the stage.

All this shit made X6 my favorite Mega Man game.

new-school style games do the same kinds of things but instead of killing you, you just end up running around in circles until you figure out how to get past a point or get bored and turn the damn thing off.

Mega Man 2 is super easy, every now and then I will beat it just to relax.

I never did beat the first Ninja Gaiden. :( I can always get to the same stage without any trouble (and apparently it's the second to last one!) but never seal the deal.

Not many game stages are known for having a FAQ written entirely on how to get through them and them alone, but this stage has its reputation for good reason.

Nuff said really...

To me, the most frustrating part about Ninja Gaiden was that unlike the rest of the game, if you die on the final boss, you get sent aaaall the way back to the beginning of Stage 6-1. On any of other bosses, if you die you get sent back just to the beginning of that segment (ie, 4-3). It wouldn't be such a big deal, except that 6-2 can be maddenly difficult, the kind where you have to throw the controller and cool off for a while.

Actually, though, after dying on the final boss and going back to 6-1 a million times, I ended up getting really, really good at 6-2. I can get through it within 10 minutes now, almost every time.

And just in case you thought I meant maddeningly, I meant maddenly as in John Maddenly, as in really big, overwhelmingly hard.

I watched a speed run on youtube and 6-2 doesn't look as bad as I remember. I must have been within, like, five inches from the end and not known it.

hehe, well, watching a speed run does tend to make things look easier than they actually are, too!
"dude, ghosts & goblins looks EASY!"

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goto 10. each time it got faster. i almost went blind.

I think I remember Ninja Gaiden 2 as being even harder than 1, but maybe I'm wrong about that one. I haven't played either of those games since I was a kid. I never beat either of them. :(

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so much hate for that damn level

i was about to answer, but i just started dark souls a few minutes ago. it might be best to wait a day or two before answering.

still think about dark link in zelda 2

I think I finished that bit in less than a half-hour!

Haha I only just saw this, I hate you.

Jet Set Willy. Never mind the whole 'bugs in the game code means you can't complete it' thing. I never got that far, because the platforming is brutally hard.

Also, the controls were as laggy as a Wiimote.