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Games Entertainment

Game Essentials - 20 Difficult Games 130

Posted by Zonk from the hardest-of-the-hardcore dept.
Last week, in a discussion of the essentials of game design by John Harris, Gamasutra posted a list of twenty really difficult games. It's interesting not only for the purposes of the article (examining the concept of challenge in game creation) but also simply as a personal scorecard for your own gaming career. My personal albatross: "8. Monkey Ball, a.k.a. Super Monkey Ball. Putting that monkey in the ball may have been a whimsical masterstroke, but don't let it fool you. This game is hard. Design lesson: If you're going to make a super hard game, make it fair. No one thinks Monkey Ball is unfair. There is no randomness. Everything that happens is a direct result of the player's actions, and there are no hidden portions of the level waiting to destroy the player. It's not like a boss enemy with secret attacks the player couldn't possibly survive the first time seeing it. It's not only possible to reach and finish Monkey Ball's Master levels, but it could be done on one's first try. Winning the lottery is more likely, but it's possible." How many have you mastered?
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Game Essentials - 20 Difficult Games More

Game Essentials - 20 Difficult Games

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  • I'm too busy playing in digital playground type games with open endings like GTA: San Andreas. Give me the 5 star code, a bicycle and 100 foot bunny hops and watch me go ET over the national Guard - the best games are the ones you come up with.

    Mastering though? Certain courses and cars on Gran Turismo - and I lie about not _beating_ a game of late, recently I knocked out both Super Paper Mario and Godfather: Wii Edition in the last few weeks. And as I sit down to write this I just got done playing Wii bowli
    • I could say much the same thing--it's been a long time since I've beaten a game--but for very different reasons. For me, at about halfway through almost every game coming out these days starts feeling entirely disposable. I don't end up really caring how it ends because of the generally generic plots and boring characters, and by about the midway mark everything in current games starts feeling way too repetitive. In fact, I have more half finished games than I really know what to do with. Maybe I'm just

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 )
      Personally, I hate any game that doesn't have an ending. I rarely if ever do side quests, I don't want to collect every item in a game, and I don't want 70 endings that require you to play it in different ways. One game, one ending, and on to the next one please. Sandbox games have 0 interest for me. If I want to play a game with no ending, it'll be a strategy game like Civ, where the goal is still the same every time. I paid to be entertained, not to come up with my own entertainment. If I want that,

  • Ikaruga (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benbean ( 8595 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @07:58AM (#20382699)
    It made me sit through eleven pages only to find Ikaruga wasn't on the list. Pah.
    • Ghosts n' Goblins wasn't on the list either. I have a GnG arcade cabinet. Me and a friend played the thing for the best part of a day on freeplay, but never quite managed to get past the second run-through.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Poltras ( 680608 )
        I've made it through, but never been able to pass the fourth boss of Blaster Master [wikipedia.org]. To my knowledge, none of my friends were able to pass through the 6th boss (without the glitch). From the wikipedia article:

        Blaster Master is also regarded as one of the most challenging games for the NES, along with Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden.

        Man is it true... although it didn't make the list. All of us finished Cobra Triangle and Lolo, while there was only 2-3 of my friends at the time that could get through Metal Gear 2: Snake Revenge (the last boss). That list is definitely biased towards game designers (knowing Gamasutra, this is no

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gauauu ( 649169 )
          I've beat blaster master a few times (yes, it's hard, but actually not THAT bad). The same for BattleToads. Ninja Gaiden really isn't bad either...I've done a run through without losing a life.

          Now the REAL challenging game for nes is Snake Rattle and Roll. I've tried so many times, but could never beat the moon level without save-state cheating on an emulator.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LKM ( 227954 )
          I actually almost finished Battletoads. I have no idea how I did it, but I got to the boulder level, and almost to the end of it (or maybe I actually finished it, I can't quite remember). Despite the fact that you have to play the whole damn game right from the start every time you're game over.

          I must have been insane.

          When I play the game now, I don't even finish the second level.
    • By DoD I mean Dungeons of Daggorath.

      Not only was it hard to figure out what to do and how to do it, but my fingers are still whacked from typing "A (SPACE) L" a hundred times a second.

  • FOSS classics (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why no mention of great FOSS games?

    Oh... that's right.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Mprx ( 82435 )
      Just because you suck at Nethack, doesn't make it "difficult".
      • Nethack is easy compared to Angband. Angband deletes your save file when you die (a la Starflight did) and the monsters are much more...creative...in their abilities and intention to kill you.

        Cripes, archangels Uriel & Gabriel; titans like Atlas; Tiamat and Vecna for AD Saruman; and Sauron are mid-level monsters, just warm ups for the hard stuff.

        • > Angband deletes your save file when you die

          So does nethack. Or anyway, you can't re-use it without cheating (which is surely possible in angband as well). It could be that Angband is harder, I've only tried it a bit, but it seems clear to me that nethack is funnier. There are a lot more obscure tricks in nethack that can be used to increase survival chances (and even permit such insane stuff as pacifist atheist ascensions) while in Angband it just seems there is so much less to do.
    • Rogue, some implementations of which are FOSS and/or public domain, is right there at number 18.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chrish ( 4714 )
      Rogue's in there, what are you talking about?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )
      There is certain campaigns in Battle for Wesnoth that are really difficult to finish (or even impossible) especially when your hero HAS to die.
    • I've never played the original Super Monkey Ball, but Neverball is great fun and _extremely_ difficult. And the things people manage to do pull off to get a best time or best all coins time... there's a site with recordings, at http://www.nevercorner.net/table/ [nevercorner.net] .

  • The TMNT game for NES (Score:4, Informative)

    by EraseEraseMe ( 167638 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @08:05AM (#20382771)
    Now that game was F'ing hard. I could finish every other game on the NES we had in my youth, except that one. Getting to the technodrome, with it's one hit kills and various baddies was hard enough. Shredder then would proceed to live up to his namesake and spit out a gutted turtle corpse. It wouldn't be so bad if you could restart from where you lost your original turtle, but no such luck. Back to the beginning of the level you went, often with the weakest turtle to fight Shredder with.

    • Try Battletoads (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alicat1194 ( 970019 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @08:22AM (#20382973)
      The only time I ever managed to get past the first speeder bike level was when I accidentally hit a level warp (and got sucked into a surfing level, where I was quickly killed off)

      Got to say it did wonders for the heart rate though - no need to exercise, just play Battletoads and watch it go!

      • Haha, wait until you get to level 9... you have to swim through an underwater maze without getting crushed by fast-moving gears.

        I never made it past level 9. :--(

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gauauu ( 649169 )
          Ha, just wait until you make it to the last level. You'll die like a pathetic little fly. I know I did....
    • Most of the time I got as far as the Technodrome, but it was so hard. I also found the level where you fall down a really long shaft to kill a huge mouse robot thing, great for killing off turtles.

      I beat the game once. I distinctly recall that I wasn't even really trying all that hard in the Technodrome (As I had learnt to my sadness it was stupidly hard), and then bam! Shredder and then, bam! Shredder was dead. Never saw him again after that, but I did it once. Great game, though.
  • Ah yes, Super Monkey Ball. Specifically: Expert Level 7. Those who have faced this level will understand the sheer frustration felt.

    Another hard game: Project X on the Amiga. It took two of us playing co-operatively to beat it. And this is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fross ( 83754 )
      Project X was massively hard, but good fun. Not the hardest Amiga shoot'em-up though.

      That accolade must go to the original Xenon, which the Bitmap Brothers freely admit they made stupidly hard inadvertently by playtesting it themselves throughout development and tweaking it to their 6-months-with-the-game ability!

      (Not the sequel, Xenon II, which was great but perfectly possible to complete)
      • The Chaos Engine was interesting, I think, with its idea that the heavy guys were easiest on the first levels, the mediums on the intermediate, and the lights on the last. I actually completed the game with preacher and gentleman, one of the more impressive wastes of time in my youth, but I'd like to see someone completing it with thug and navvie.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crgrace ( 220738 )
      Another hard game: Project X on the Amiga. It took two of us playing co-operatively to beat it. And this is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up!

      I thought Shadow of the Beast was incredibly hard. What pissed me off about it was you had to get through the entire level again after you died. So, if you had a hard time at one spot near the end of a level, too bad, you had to work for 5 min to get there again. That f*in game made me want to throw my joystick through my 1084 monitor! Another tough one was WINGS. I g
  • Who remembers Ghouls and Ghosts or Super Ghosts and Goblins for the NES and SNES. You want to talk about hard games. I'd say those two are quite a bit harder than Zelda. Those two always gave me so much trouble, I think I have yet to beat the first one.
    • Anyone who remembers the original NES Ghost and Goblins game needs to see this:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLTQRJXzwP0 [youtube.com]

      If the music doesn't bring on a rage headache, you probably didn't play it. It's not only ridiculously difficult, but after you win it once, you are told it was all an illusion and are forced to go back through it again from the first level to officially win.
      • *blink blink* that...is...insane.

        Love the shortcut he took on the 2nd level, purposely taking a hit to be flung down the side of the house and skipping half of it.
  • TMNT for NES was INSANELY hard....and in a complete opposite direction here, Ninja Gaiden Black is definately up there in the top three hardest games once you get into the higher difficulty levels.

  • Hardest Game Ever... (Score:5, Funny)

    by blahlemon ( 638963 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @08:19AM (#20382937)
    ...Duke Nukem Forever Why do you think it hasn't been release to the general population.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by PFI_Optix ( 936301 )
      So now games have five difficulty levels:

      Easy
      Normal
      Hard
      Impossible (but not really)
      So hard you can't actually play it, we'll just TELL you it's hard.

      Sort of like Brockian Ultra Cricket when you think about it.
    • Duke Nukem Forever is so hard, the developers challenged Chuck Norris to play it just before they released it. It took him three tries to beat it. After he was finished, he roundhouse kicked his copy of the game. The developer's still working on reconstructing it from the shattered fragments of a backup copy that had been etched in diamond and stored inside a locked bank vault on the other side of the country -- nothing survived of any other copies.
  • "The Warriors are so troublesome that Sinistar, while not more difficult than Defender,..."

    Did I just step into some alternate reality where Sinistar is the mother of all side-scrolling shooters and Defender is the massively hard top-down shooter where a self-assembling robot demon chases you around screaming "Ron Howard?" I deeply love both games but Sinistar is way harder.
    • I found Defender to be much easier than Sinistar - of course I played Defender all the time on a cabinet in my grandma's backyard at a young age, but yeah, Sinistar is way harder. It's the only video game that makes me suffer from motion sickness.

  • You won't see any more of these. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fross ( 83754 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @08:28AM (#20383035)
    Oh for the days, when computer games rewarded ability rather than perseverance.

    Computer games used to be about developing a skill, playing it until you got sufficiently good that you were able to complete something on a higher level. Nowadays, it's about who can put the most amount of time into a game. The difficulty level is a gentle gradient if not entirely flat.

    Compare modern games to the simplest and most iconic of old games - Pac-man. It only had one level, one playing level. One! Yet the same level played again and again, with increasing difficulty. Faster ghosts, less time on power-pills, etc etc. The only way you would see level 20 was if you were good enough to beat level 19, and that was damn hard.

    Compare to games these days, such as the GTA series, Half-life 1 and 2, Halo, World of Warcraft, whatever. The end of these games is not significantly different in difficulty from the beginning. The last levels involve generally the same baddies, but more of them, and you have bigger weapons to handle them. The experience is constant throughout the cycle of the game, so that a little perseverance will reward you with progress.

    Why is this? Games are now a much bigger proposition, and the audience is wider. And the audience wants easy gratification and no frustration. Sure, it's meant to be entertainment, not a challenge. But for many of us, the entertainment is in the challenge and ultimately, surpassing it.

    I remember spending ages playing Pac-man, Defender and the rest as a child trying to defeat the higher levels. When you achieve something you hadn't done before through your own skill and ability it's far more rewarding than just cruising through it.

    Games are about perceived value now, and someone who fails to finish a game will not have gained that full "value" from it. So games are tailored so almost every user can finish it, that Bob the Button Masher will be able to work his way to the end and see all the pretty bits eventually as long as he doesn't run out of Cheetos in the meantime. But this is at the cost of a real sense of progression and challenge, and hence accomplishment, by those of us dedicated enough to put the effort in to get good at something.

    Many games used to be open-ended, with just increasing skill levels and no defined end. I guess this got past that problem as every level was a measure of ability and a goal in itself. You can defeat it on level 15? Well I can get to level 20.

    Games used to be closer to a martial art (simply in terms of dedication, application and training), now they feel more like a particularly wimpy yoga session, where as long as you can make it through the time, you can say you've completed it.

    (No offence to any yogaers out there, you know what I mean)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EMeta ( 860558 )
      I must disagree. First of all, on any PvP games it comes down to ability (most of the time), because perseverance doesn't get you anywhere against other persevering players. Secondly, all the freaking rhythm games, which are hugely popular. DDR and Guitar Hero let you improve with practice, but without some innate sense of balance or finger finess, you aren't going to pass their hardest stages.

      Let new gamers get into WoW with just time spent. The original FF certainly did the same thing. Different

      • Rhythm games certainly do become a test of skill, you're very right. I'd not included them in my thinking.

        WoW (as a player too myself), I'd have to disagree, aside from PvP which is only a small part of the game (or, a large part of the game for only a small number of people) - in that, it becomes a test of matching skill against another human as all online games from chess to Counterstrike do, but as the opponent is a human, not due to the game itself becoming harder as it progresses.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by spenno ( 1135899 )
      Couldn't agree more, allthough the yoga comparason is slightly wrong (yoga can be quite difficult). I can't think of many truly *hard* games in recent years. F-zero, ikaruga, radiant silvergun, probably a lot more. It would be nice if there was a list compiled of decent *hard* games released on current/last gen consoles, so that fans could get hold of them

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zelos ( 1050172 )
      Horses for courses, really, but I find most of the old-style games incredibly dull now (I'm 28, gaming since I was about 9). I loved space invaders etc. back in the day, but they're so repetitive that these days they're dull.
    • Thank goodness for MAME. Now I can play through all of those arcade games that were designed to eat quarters. To beat most of those games you had to play constantly and memorize patterns, something that gets boring fast.

    • Re:You won't see any more of these. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @10:19AM (#20384419) Homepage
      I've been a classic gamer for a long, long time, I was posting on r.g.v.c. since like '93 or so...

      Here's the thing: games now have distinct content, lots of it, not just one playfield or enemy set speeded up.

      (Ideally, this content involves new interactions, i.e. involving programmers as well as designers, not just the artists saying "well, here's a 'new city' to 'explore')

      So people want to get the game that they pay for. Me, and maybe it's a personal fault throughout many aspects of my life, I don't like challenge for its own sake. I want to play with novel interactions in as economical a way as possible. (And, oddly, the time a game uses is counted both towards its cost and its benefit)

      Most games, especially sandbox ones, will have some rewards for the really dedicated and skilled player, or at least have challenges so such a player can self-motivate and have something to do. And now you even have youtube and specialty sites to show off your 'l33t skillz. Quit griping that big chunks of content aren't being created (and tested) just for you and your dedicated little band...
      • As far as 'classic gamers' go, I think you're in the minority.

        I still, to this day, play Super Mario Bros. regularly on my original NES (even though both my remotes are falling apart). I've beaten it in under six minutes; I've beaten it without dying; I've beaten it without warp zones. Right now I'm practicing beating it without dying AND without warp zones. Like GP, the enjoyment is in the accomplishments.

        This isn't to say today's games aren't fun. I enjoy games like Diablo II for the fantasy aspects. Fire

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kisrael ( 134664 )

          I still, to this day, play Super Mario Bros. regularly on my original NES (even though both my remotes are falling apart).

          Heheh, where do you hail from, that you're an old school gamer and call NES controllers "remotes"?

          This isn't to say today's games aren't fun. I enjoy games like Diablo II for the fantasy aspects.

          A. Diablo II probably is a bit old to be representative of "today's" games, especially because
          B. It's mostly just pretty Nethack!

          how many "classic gamers" do you think played through Super Mario

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gulthek ( 12570 )
      The void you are imagining has been well filled by XBox 360 achievement points. If you are competing with your friends and family on points, It's not enough to finish the game you have to finish it with style (and do a bunch of other crazy or hard things). The best thing is, when you actually do that crazy/insane/hard thing to win the points, everyone sees it! Instant proof that you really did it!

      As an example, check out the achievement point list for Dead Rising: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/deadri [achieve360points.com]
      • Hexic HD [achieve360points.com] has insanely difficult achievements. Only the most dedicated and talented players will get them. I gave up, there's no way I can ever do them.

        Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter [achieve360points.com] has ridiculous achievements. Three of them require you to be the best GRAW player in the entire world! One achievement requires you to host 1000 multiplayer games.

        I don't know if Microsoft enforces any standards for the achievements, but if they don't then they should start doing so.
      • As I've never owned an XBox, this is news to me.

        However looking through some of the guides you linked to (eg http://www.achieve360points.com/txt/d/Dead_Rising_ AG.txt [achieve360points.com] ) it seems they are mostly about collecting items or finding secrets, rather than eking out the last bit of skill from their performance? That's what I meant, games like GTA award perseverance and endurance over skill.

        I agree there's definitely potential in the achievements to have skill-based secondary goals, and I like that idea. Thanks fo

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      I think what you wrote is a load of crap. Pac-man is in a different genre than the games you are talking about. It belongs in the puzzle game category with games like Tetris or even guitar hero. Can you beat all the songs at 100% on the hardest level? I bet you can't. For that genre, you have simple gameplay that gets progressively harder. Comparing this to World of Warcraft and Half-life is silly.

      World of Warcraft is based on an RPG. As long as you keep at it, you will progress in this game to th

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by vecctor ( 935163 )
      These two comments seem to contradict each other:

      Oh for the days, when computer games rewarded ability rather than perseverance.

      and

      Computer games used to be about developing a skill, playing it [for hours and hours, repetively] until you got sufficiently good that you were able to complete something on a higher level. Nowadays, it's about who can put the most amount of time into a game.

      (bold statement added by me - but it is accurate)

      Old games were TOTALLY about perseverance. You had to play that game to death until you mastered every move and memorized every aspect of every enemy. You talk about putting time in with current games, so what do you call the constant pracice/replaying to get good in the older ones?

      I don't think that type of gameplay was all that great, and it certainly required MORE time and was less interesting than curr

      • all difficult tasks require repetition. In terms of the skilled old games, they required repetition to get your skill high enough to finish the harder level, before continuing. For more modern games, they require some repetition to get through the content (and of course, "getting through the content" is a whole lot of fun!), but little to no skill increase.

        I'm certainly not wanting games to become more simplistic, single-level repetitive affairs. I'm disappointed that, say, GTA 3 didn't get harder as the

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by saan44 ( 994560 )
          The problem is that every game you mentioned as evidence that skill was rewarded instead of time spent playing doesn't actually require more skill. Take pacman for instance: as you said, every level is the same. The only thing that changes is the speed of the game. You're not rewarded for your skill at the game, you're rewarded for how well you memorize the game and that's a byproduct of playing it for long periods of time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Fross ( 83754 )
            Actually, there was more than just the speed of the game, the power-up pills worked for a shorter time for example.

            Perhaps there were patterns in those simple games that could be exploited to turn it into nothing more than a test of speed, but otherwise the game certainly got harder as it went along.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by saan44 ( 994560 )
              I guess I just don't realize how that equates to harder difficulty when something like HL2's introduction of harder enemies does not constitute an increase in required skill. For instance, the strider fight in HL2 in the courtyard is very difficult, especially on the harder difficulty levels. Much like pac-man, at it's basest level it required you to memorize where the strider came from, where the rocket reloads are, and the timing of the strider's weapon fire, but it's hardly something you can simply kee
    • Pac-Man and Defender are not home computer games. They are arcade games and an arcade game needs to earn its keep one quarter at a time. For an arcade game, if the average length of a game lasts more than 3 minutes it is an utter failure. You are right, these days games are about perceived value. But where you're wrong is any notion that they ever weren't. If I pay a quater to play a game, I'm satisfied if it lasts a couple minutes. Paying a quarter to get a highscore and be the envy of my peers is a very s
    • As another poster pointed out, you've got your genres crossed.

      I play Piyotama (PS3), Super Stardust HD (PS3), Go! Puzzle (PS3) and Blast Factor (PS3) all of which fall into the arcade style nearly infinite difficulty gaming described in the above article. Piyotama's another tetris-like game, Go! Puzzle has a tower climbing logic puzzle that is both extremely fun and very difficult, Blast Factor and Super Stardust can both be beaten (btdt), but have progressively more difficult but simple tasks to complete

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RESPAWN ( 153636 )
      While you do make some interesting points, I feel the need to chime in. For one, games these days are more about telling a story than they are about progressing through infinite difficulty levels. Technology has progressed a long way since Pac-Man and game creators are able to do a lot more with what they have. Furthermore, it's not like you can't go back and play Pac-Man any time you want. We live in a digital age and it's not like Pac-Man has somehow degraded to the point where it's no longer playable
      • but it seems 80% of the replies I've got miss what I'm actually talking about.

        I'm not calling for games to go back to one-level repetitive, simple arcade style games. If I was, I'd be off playing Sinistar right now.

        I think that the difficulty progression that went through earlier games was a great thing, and I wished modern games, such as Max Payne as you mentioned, maintained that.

        Infinite or near infinite games such as Pac-man are a bad example. Let's say something like Contra, or Green Beret. They had

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RESPAWN ( 153636 )

          (Forgetting that the game was so cool that you'd go back and take out the bosses again and again just to do cooler bullet-time things)

          Nice to know that I wasn't the only one to do that. I would replay sequences of enemies or bosses again and again until I managed to do something so ridiculously cool that I knew I wouldn't be able to match it.

          I think I might see what you're saying, though. I think there are still a few games out there that are made with increasing difficulty, though. I seem to remember having trouble with the Shinobi remake that came out a few years ago. I eventually got to a boss that I just couldn't defeat and I kno

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Fross ( 83754 )
            (Forgetting that the game was so cool that you'd go back and take out the bosses again and again just to do cooler bullet-time things)

            Nice to know that I wasn't the only one to do that. I would replay sequences of enemies or bosses again and again until I managed to do something so ridiculously cool that I knew I wouldn't be able to match it.

            The boss that comes out of the lift with his two cronies... throw a grenade over the partition then hide round the corner... just before it explodes, race out of there

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by RESPAWN ( 153636 )
              Glad you get my point though, only thing that gets my juices going now in terms of working hard on something then finally accomplishing it is taking down raid bosses in WoW...

              Sounds like me a few years back when I played TFC and CS. I remember one particular day on a slow server where myself and a roommate were playing TFC, got bored, joined opposite teams and collaberated to lock down the entire map on The Well as snipers. Oh, and I can't forget the day that I was really on my game and managed to lock do
  • Yes, what about that great ZX-Spectrum platformer? That game was nearly impossible to finish without either some pokes and peeks, or an emulator with save-states implemented.

    • My all-time favorite game might be the freeware Top Hat Willy [pastrytech.com], which was based on Jet Set Willy. It was so hard that the creator, Tero Heikkinen, never won it. As far as I know I'm one of only four people in the world who ever completed the game, and I did it twice.

      The game was originally developed on the Amiga, but a PC version is also available. It's a very simple, very devious platformer.

  • Not hard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pancake Bandit ( 987571 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @09:01AM (#20383383)
    I don't really understand the purpose of this list. At least the author doesn't pretend that these are the 20 hardest games ever, just 20 difficult games. Mischief Makers, even getting all the gold gems, was a bit of a challenge but not an extremely frustrating one. Lolo wasn't that much harder than a lot of puzzle games I've played. A few of the games on the list were only difficult because they suffered from poor gameplay, silly programming decisions or lousy instructions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kisrael ( 134664 )
      Well, it was a highly subjective list, but it didn't pretend not to be.

      I appreciated the "game design lessons to be drawn from this" section.

  • toughest ever (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @09:03AM (#20383417)
    Getting laid.
  • Most people I knew didn't even know how to drive the car at any significant speed (or steering it). I was pretty good at driving myself, but never understood the point of the game.
  • Whenever i think of hard games i always thing of Legacy of the Wizard [wikipedia.org] for the NES. I haven't actually taken the chance to try it again but at the time, when i was in early jr. high i think, it seemed incredibly complex. It was a dungeon crawling adventure game that made really good use of puzzles that required finding items in the dungeon to solve. Item A would be blocked by puzzle 1, which you needed item B to solve, but that was blocked by puzzle 2... and there were five or six different characters, each

  • [brag?] (Score:2)

    by QMO ( 836285 )
    We had Defender for our Atari 800. (Actually both on floppy and on cartridge.)
    My older brothers and I would play untill we had a bunch of extra lives and smart bombs, then let our younger siblings play for a while while we rested. We could play that game in shifts as long as we wanted. It's kind of fun to use only smart bombs for 5 - 10 levels.
    • I had that, too. I recall that it was much, much easier to play than the arcade version. Probably because the joystick could be used to change direction, rather than having to rely on the 'Reverse' button.
  • The game that made me gnash my teeth the most was Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge for the snes. I still throw that in sometimes and give it a go. I like the fact that they included lode runner for the nes. That was a very difficult game, but it was also very fair. I'd be scared to actually play these two games on the Wii(virtual console) since I might actually throw the wiimote at the TV in frustration :)
    • It's a sad, sad day when I have to admit that beating all 150 levels of Lode Runner is one of my real accomplishments in life. But I beat it on the Apple ][.
      • Beat it on the Apple ][ as well. Not sure what makes it so difficult -- just time consuming.

        Now Championship Lode Runner, that was difficult.

        --
        "I like my tea how I like my women: warm and sweet"
            -- Michaelangelo

  • Joke (Score:2)

    by Rocky ( 56404 )
    Where's Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna? That was heads and tails the most difficult old-school RPG of that time.
  • I couldn't find the Usenet reference, but I remember some old rgvc conversation about how Sinistar cheats: it doesn't compute things offscreen nearly as much as you'd think, so those little gatherers and warriors can freely fly without worrying about hitting asteroids...

    still an amazing technological achievement...
  • Hardest game I ever gave up on. I was one of those side scrolling, the screen keeps you flying on his board games.. but if you get hit once, you die and start the level over again.. near impossible.

  • The Incredible Machine... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by benfinkel ( 1048566 ) on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @10:15AM (#20384351)
    ...and it's sequels. Those games were brutal!

    How about "In Search of the Most Amazing Thing"? Anyone remember that? I remember finding the most amazing thing and then being killed by one of those monsters-disguised-as-a-fueling-rock on my way back to home base. Jerk.
    • You can still find TIM in a combo pack (crazy contraptions / even more crazy contraptions) on the cheap in the right places. A local walmart had a few copies for $10 about a year ago. (Even had Mac / PC compatibility...)

      Still a great game even today. Though, I wouldn't mind a modern update to it. Perhaps an isometric 3D version to add an extra level of difficulty...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RESPAWN ( 153636 )
        Oooh! Thanks for the tip. I was trying to find my copy of TIM the other day, with no luck. Now, I just have to brave the unwashed masses and stand in line for an hour to get it... maybe I'll wait until midnight to go get it. Those really were some of my favorite "casual" games back in the day.
  • Dr Scrime's Spook School on the Amstrad CPC. Fiendish game, I'm not even sure if completing it was possible.
  • When I was a kid, my father and I mapped out all the dungeons and the castle and actually BEAT Deadly Towers (More impressive, we did the same thing and Beat "Back to the Future 2&3"). Deadly Towers isn't HARD... it's just terrible. It's long, ugly and monotonous. Music replays every new screen you enter, you fight the most uninspired enemies and fall in random holes that lead to dungeons. No, Deadly Towers is NOT one of the hardest games I've ever played, just one of the worst. Now... Ask me about
  • I can't think of any game I wasted more time on, trying to figure out the solutions for each planet. The primitive graphics of the Atari 800XL didn't help identifying what items you found either.

    Boulderdash was outright impossible, especially in the later levels. That said, they were both fantastic and frustrating games.

  • KGB (Score:1)

    by 16384 ( 21672 )
    Seeing the title the first game to come to my mind was KGB, an adventure game for the PC. It was so hard, I only reached the 2nd level once or twice.
  • Hey, any game where bronze-age spearmen can beat a tank is hard in my book!

    Seriously though, the amount of skill and thought required for those games puts it on a completely seperate level from any other strategy game. Let's face it, managing every aspect of a world-spanning empire isn't the easiest thing in the world.
  • I remember seeing an interview with Eugene Jarvis about how the early Defender machines were so tricky that they were wiping out people's ships within a minute. Those people were going and coming back with many more quarters because they weren't going to let the game kick their ass that easily. This is exactly the sort of reaction you want to an arcade machine - put more money in. But you still have to feel you're getting something for it - the home versions of Need for Speed have drag races in which it
  • I never could beat the computer at chess in "high levels" either.

    Nuff said :).
  • Ninja Gaiden -- that last stage was *brutal* and then if you lost to the bosses you had to repeat it. Needless to say, one of the games that stands out in my head that I've never finished.

    RoboWarrior -- such a fan of Bomerman, I thought this game would be the greatest thing ever. Except for the limited number of bombs. And the fact that you couldn't go backwards. And it just made me feel so stupid sometimes, I put it away with disgust.

    Amagon -- For some reason this game held a strange appeal to me, yet
  • I thought I was some kind of a wuss because I couldn't beat Defender, Stargate or Sinistar in the early 80's. I guess I was just average like everyone else.


    But hey, I was one of the first in my city to know about the transmolecular dot in Adventure. I feel avenged!

  • Yup. I've been playing Simcity for more than a decade now and I can't seem to win. Can't even get those stupid arcologies to blast off.

  • Battletoads (Score:2, Informative)

    by Databass ( 254179 )
    My brother and I could beat Battletoads for the old NES. As if that weren't enough, we could beat it beat it playing straight through the twelve levels (ie, not warping.) On top of that, we did in two-player mode- ie, if one person failed, we both failed. Well, up until the second to last level that is. (The game cartridge has a bug on the clinger-winger stage where if you are playing two-player, player two loses control.) Looking back, I honestly can't believe we ever did that.

    Battletoads starts out surviv
  • This is one title I'd really like to see a modern version of. It was a bit like battlebots / robot wars, except you literally built them to be autonomous using a complex wiring system as the programming language. (Think dynamic flow-charting...)

    Of course, now that actual robotics are becoming more consumer-friendly, there may not be much demand for virtual robotics competitions when faced with real-world competitions for anyone with a couple-hundred bucks to spend on a Lego Mindstorms or VEX kit.

    Still, had
  • Surprised Lemmings isn't on the list.

    "Lode Runner" wasn't difficult -- just time consuming. "Championship Lode Runner" was tough -- had to have exact timing.

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