Hardest Video game You've ever played?

[NewJourneysFire]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned Touhou (PC) yet. That series is downright insane! It can take months of constantly playing just beat Normal mode in any of the games (bar 9, which is easy in comparison) without using continues, required to unlock the Extra Stages (Which are even harder). The closest I got to beating the Normal modes w/o continues was at the final spellcard of the final boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom (Touhou 7) and second spellcard of the final boss in Subterranean Animism (Touhou 11).I would post vids, but posting from a 3DS sucks.

It goes without saying that topics like these can be very biased. Chances are if you look online for "hardest video games of all time" you're only gonna get the same answers that are shown here. Chances are there are much more difficult games than Battletoads, but nobody cares about them.

But the thread says hardest games we "played". I never even heard of the games you mentioned.

[Blanka]

GTA: San Andreas. Hands down. Even with the in game cheats it's a real bitch to play. I still have nightmares about Zero's missions.

[CJC]

Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari. Didn't help that we didn't have the instruction manual for the game. I ended up adopting a 'three gold' strategy, wherein I would bribe my way to the Black Market, bribe my way past the psychopath, and then hope beyond hope that I'd be able to parachute into the right spot.

Pitfall the Mayan Adventure is a close second.

[zcfan27330]

Some of the Zelda Classic Quests. I had a hard time with the 3rd quest the first time considering how I couldn't find the white sword until I had 13 hearts and didn't find the magic sword at all

[Questwizard88]

Mine would have to be any Cave shooter on its hardest difficulty, especially Mushihimesama Futari Black Label. Its insane in some areas. Out of the ones I've played on the hardest difficulty, I'd say DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu and Espgaluda II were the easiest of the bunch so far, but still pretty hard. Mushihimesama Bug Panic's final boss is definitely way up there on the difficulty scale too. Its gotten a lot of complaints for being way too hard.

[Chris Miller]

It's tough to pick any one game out of all the games I've played over the years. I won't list a game that's hard because of broken controls, bad gameplay or lousy AI, as those are just...broken . Here's some of my picks, in no particular order:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
In all the years I've owned this one, I wasn't able to beat the last level without cheating until recently. I felt kind of dumb when I realized the trick to the jet pack guys.

Contra (NES)
No description needed, really. Anybody who's played this knows already.

Hagane (SNES)
It's a little like a Ninja Gaiden game for the SNES, but with perfect controls and powerups. You'll need every one of them, too. This might be the hardest SNES game I've ever played, but it's not the kind of hard that makes you curse the game for cheating. No, it's hard because of the raw skill required to win.

Ninja Gaiden Series (NES)
Much like Hagane, you need lots of skill to win at any of the NG games. You get a lot of abilities, and you'd better know how to use them because the enemies are relentless.

Castlevania III (NES)
Jumping hunchbacks, clock tower, pits, 'nuff said.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Game Gear/Master System)
It's hard to describe. The game has really good controls and graphics for an 8-bit system, almost as good as the Genesis version. They're two completely different games though. I'd highly recommend you give it a try. Just try not to cry when you keep dying on the first act.

[Jirin]

When the topic creator mentioned Mario 2 I assumed he was talking about Lost Levels, did he mean the American Mario 2? That's not that hard, it just requires competent platforming skills.

Do self imposed handicap runs count?

I also wouldn't include any RPG where you can level up on a list of 'hardest games ever'.

And Contra's definitely a hard game, but once you figure it out, it's not so bad. I've beaten it on one continue without the code.

And Ninja Turtles 1 is only hard because of the glitchy jumping over fire with no headroom. That one jump in the airport is ridiculous but the rest of the game is fairly average.

1) Most coin op arcade games from the 80s

Every one was designed to murder you hard.

2) Battletoads

That effing surfing part.

3) Super Mario Bros 2, by that I mean the Japanese one

It plays like a fan hack.

4) Ninja Gaiden 3

I don't know why so few people have played this when so many know about the first two. I just read on Wikipedia that the Japanese version had no continue limit and the password system. But I can usually not beat the third boss, and one time I made it to 7-3 when the game froze, and I haven't touched it since.

Personally I think it's awesome that they changed the game in the US version to make it harder. Usually it's the opposite, they tone down the difficulty hard when they bring it over here. Catherine making the pillow give you more lives, FF4 easy type, and that ridiculous TacticsOgre port where you can rewind your bad decisions.

5) Castlevania 1

This game has a lot of the dickish kind of difficulty with things coming at you timed exactly when you jump and coming at you from angles where you can't hit them.

[Nightmare]

Battletoads, followed by Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue.

Both are stinkers.

-James

[Zim]

The hardest game ever for me was Harley's Humongous Adventure. It's actually a relatively easy game, but every copy I ever played froze on the ant hill level at a certain spot, every time, making the game extremely difficult to figure out how to win.

Mega Mans: Although somewhat difficult at first, after the order of enemies is learned and all the intricacies of the levels experienced, aren't hard to run back through.
CastleVania: Basically the same.
All Mario Games: Extremely easy once learned if difficult at all in the first place.
Zelda Games: With the exception of The Adventures of Link, were all incredibly easy to win, aside from the modifications of the game made to be more difficult for challenge reasons.
Ninja Gaiden: I've never beaten a Ninja Gaiden game, proving them to be one of the most difficult, but probably just as easy as the rest. The final boss(s) I lost too every time, except for Ninja Gaiden 2, I think I beat that one once.
Double Dragon (1-3): Extra hard at first and then super easy once the method of winning is learned.
BattleToads: Never beat any of them because those jet ski levels always had some mysterious super invisible ramp jump that I'd die on every time. I think I got past it one time, then lost shortly after, except for BattleToads and Double Dragon, that one wasn't as hard.

Q-Bert 3 (SNES) is definitely on the list of hardest games. If I remember correctly, with skill I could rack lots of extra guys and win fairly easily, but then the game carries on to past level 100, gets really hard, and by level 130 or so I lost and quit and never tried again, that game is HARD.

[BtjCraft]

I'm not the type of guy who likes to play difficult games (with a few exceptions, Zelda II being one...which is an awesome game...until Thunderbird) but my most troubling game is Donkey Kong for the NES. The only reason I played this game is because Nintendo decided to stick it in Donkey Kong 64. I have yet to get that cursed Nintendo coin!

The movie Billy Madison comes to mind whenever I think of that game though.