Games You Can Never Beat But Keep Trying Anyway
 

Some of us occasional gamers are masochists. We get a game, play it endlessly and just can't seem to beat it. It may be a boss, it may be a level, it may be because we suck at gaming. List some games that you have just never finished, despite trying as hard as you can. Keep in mind, this is about unnecessary difficulty - not bugs or game errors.

1.) Double Dragon III - This game is tough as a swallowing a box of nails. I beat the first game and had a co-op win with the sequel, but I don't think I've ever met someone who's beaten Double Dragon III. Everyone I know agrees that its way harder than it needs to be and at my best I could get to Egypt, but never to the final boss.

2.) Contra III The Alien Wars (GBA) - I love love love Contra III. Everything about it is twice as manly as John Wayne, three times as badass as Lee Marvin and rocks harder than Iron Maiden's Number Of The Beast. I beat Contra III for SNES *once*, years ago - in middle school and a couple years back watched my friend beat it on its hardest difficulty, which was like watching someone destroying Satan.

But even my friend agrees that the GBA port is too fucking hard to beat. No bombs, the new levels are painfully made and you can't switch weapons. Contra III was hard enough but the handheld port is beyond human capacity.

3.) Final Fantasy IV - An entire generation of RPG players enjoy this game but I think most of them will agree that theres large sections of this game that go from mild to retardedly difficult. Is there any other game that takes a 90 degree turn quicker than the set-up to the Dancing Calbrena boss fight?

4.) Fury3 - The infamous MS buy-out knock-off of an amazing game (Terminal Velocity) was about as good as it was easy. Instead of giving the enemy pilots discernible intelligence even for the time, MS decided that more was better and the result was a bigger digital pile-on than the Matrix Reloaded's Burley Brawl.

5.) Sky Kid - I'm the only person in the world to play this NES game before it was available on the Wii, I think. Its a fun little WWI pilot game, where you have to bomb targets like battleships and bases - but some of the levels go on endlessly. That is - you have to dodge flack canon fire, and other fighters - then pick up a bomb, fly it over your target, drop it and then fly through the last half of the level. That doesn't sound too bad until you remember that theres long sections where you have to avoid giant, towering walls of earth what you can't fly around.

Lately for me it's been Mega Man ZX Advent on the DS. Now before you say 'noob', it's on Expert Mode. I'm at the end of the game where you have to go through a tricky two-part final stage, split up by the "fight the 8 bosses over again" part typical to most Mega Man games, and then the final boss with its two forms. In Expert Mode...everybody is faster and more obnoxious with their tactics, you don't get any max life/energy upgrades, and only ONE Sub Tank (which is a pain to obtain, too). Not to mention that everything hurts more as well, so depending on what hits you, it only takes 3 or 4 hits to die. Even with the maximum 9 lives to start I still haven't pulled it off yet. Some of the bosses are always a real pain in the rear while some prove to be so on some tries where they were not previously. I put the game down for a while out of frustration and have only recently tried giving it a go again.

BAM. My story, right there. I had this game from age 9 to age 12 on the NES, and played it constantly with my best friend. The furthest we ever got was Italy, and we were so excited about it we got our ass kicked like some pieces of shit. And the Goddamn spin kick only comes out like half the time. Swallowing a box of nails indeed, it's bullshit.

Anyway, here's a few I've been dealing with lately...

1) UNiSON JP (PS2) - This is a music game for the hardcore. The basic premise is simple--you are a girl in a 3-girl dancing/singing group, and you must learn a simple choreography and "perform" it on stage using the two analog sticks. The problem? No indicators whatsoever. Yes, you have to remember the choreography, and it gets real hard, real fast. My rote memory isn't that great, so this is like trying to win a fight against Randy Couture for me. I have yet to beat the easy mode (which is the first girl), and there are two other girls that represent medium and hard. Why do I keep playing? The music is a collection of awesome Jpop disco remixes. Pretty funny story too.

2) Marble Blast Ultra (360) - Egh, just thinking about this bothers me and I have to go get a drink. It starts out stupidly easy, but the final few levels... I don't know, I just can't do it. I still want to try every now and then cause I just like rolling.

3) Panzer Dragoon Orta (SMEXBOX) - Every month or so, I start a new game of this, and each time I get really far and then I just get frustrated with it. It's not that hard, I just suck ass at it. I'll beat it someday though, I swear!

4) Etrian Oddysey (DS) - I'll never beat this. :(

I believe you are mistaken, sir.

Oh, man. I have to say Ikaruga. Sure, you eventually get unlimited continues after playing for a long time, but there's no satisfaction in beating it that way. Most of the time, the background music is obscured with the sound of your ships exploding into a million pieces, especially in the hellish level 4.

And yet, like some sort of digital Lament Configuration, the game calls to you, insisting in one more playthrough, demanding its patterns learned, demanding you see all there is to see. It's hard to put down, because regardless of how much you suck, you still have fun playing it. Truly the work of the devil.

Battle Toads, any of them. I haven't played them in forever but no matter how many times I tried I could never get past the speedbike stages.

Several of my friends that played Star Ocean 2 and accidently turned off the boss's limiter and refuse to start over would say that.

Just when I thought I couldn't contribute to this post, you made me realize how much I suck at any Mega Man game. I'll be okay playing the level through ... until I reach the boss and then I die. And again. And again. And this never ends.

I cannot for the life of me beat the CPU in Madden when it's set up to All-Madden. I somewhat suck in All-Pro, but in All-Madden it's impossible. I have tried to learn the ins and outs of the game as much as I could, but it seems like I reached a point where I can no long get any better in that game. Which sucks, since I spend a ton of time playing it. >_>

Oh, I almost forgot Sim City 4. I always end up with negative revenue, no matter how much I try to make a profitable city. (I don't think you can 'beat' this game, but I can't get past the stage of having a small town without running into debt.)

Er, whoops. All those consoles are the same anyway. :(

Augh. A lot of bad memories come to mind when you mention that game - mostly from Double Dragon Vs Battletoads (or whatecer it was called) for the SNES

Xenosaga Episode I.

For some reason I absolutely cannot get past the final dungeon. I play through the game fine up until that point, and when I get in there the monsters wipe the floor with me. It's terrible. I can never get past the fifth screen of the damn place.
It's a shame too, because I absolutely love the story. It's a little cliche, sure, but because it has that hint of Xenogears going for it I can't help but be drawn to it.

So every few months I'll pick up the game, try to start over from the beginning, and get up to the final dungeon only to end up in the same predicament. I should just skip to Episode II but I want to see the first game through to the end. :(

Solomon's Key for the NES pissed me off so much as a kid :mad: I should retry it...

First of all, I want to give props to Lehah to such a great topic. I'm kind of strapped for time at the moment, but I'll give you the one game in my gaming experience that I can never beat no matter how many times I try it.

That game is Spiderman & X-Men in Arcades Revenge for the Genesis/SNES.

I have never played a more ridicolous game in my entire life. I have not played this game in quite a while but its always been one of those games I always wanted to beat.

The first level is easy enough as spiderman but when it gives you option of playing the other characters level, thats when the games difficulty ramps up to the point that its even more insane.

There are two levels for each caharcter in this game. To this very day this is how far I've gotten in the game.

Spiderman (I can beat the first level, but for some reason I can't beat the rhino at the end of the second level. I remember shooting webs at him for about 45 minutes and it hadn't killed him. I don't know if thats how you kill him, but I haven't played the game in a while.)

Wolverine (I can beat the first level with wolverine with just luck against apocalypse, but for some reason I can't beat his second level where your running from the juggernaut. It seems like I can never move fast enough)

Cyclops (I haven't beat any of the two levels with this character. It is so easy to get killed with him and electrified train tracks everywhere. I haven't even made it to the first boss of the first level with this character.)

Storm (I can beat the first level with storm, but I can't come close to beating the second level with her, she has oxygen as energy and the moment you get hit with anything your oxygen decreases dramtically. It is such an annoyance trying to not get hit by anything while trying to prevent yourself from drowning.)

My personal favourite:

Gambit (You start off in the level with a giant spiked ball coming after you. If you hit it you eventually get killed. Your weapons are cards that can actually run out. You have to run to the end of the level, avoiding the steel ball, avoiding enemies, running for dear life, to make it to the boss. I have only ever made it to the boss of his first level once, and the only time I did it, I didn't have any cards left to use against him. I don't even know what to expect out of gambits second level .)

To me the difficulty of this game is utter bullshit, and I have never met anyone who has beat this game. I'm sure somebody on this forum has probably beaten this game. Easily my most frustrating game that I still want to beat someday.

In terms of double dragon III, I have played that game quite a bit and actually got quite far into it. The furthest I've ever gotten in the game is I faced against cleopatra, I found the trick to beating the three mummies. If you use your drop kick instead of your spinning kick the mummies can't dodge it and you can kill them without getting hit. That is still another game I haven't beaten yet.

Angel of Light, I totally agree with you about that game. I never could beat it, and I eventually just lost hope of ever doing so.

And in that same vein, I never could beat Maximum Carnage for the SNES. I freaking loved this game, but for the life of me I could never beat it. I would always die and stop playing for months, then come back and manage to get just a little bit further. I know I got pretty far into the game, but I honestly don't know how close to beating the game I ever was. It sucks too, because I really liked the story and stuff but never got to see how it ended. I wonder if I could beat it if I tried again today...

I beat Contra III when I was in high school on Hard. You wanna feel a sense of accomplishment? That's the way to do it. I was fucking GOOD at video games back in the day.

However, years of alcohol, drug and other substance abuse have positively diminished my reflexes and focus severely. Now it's decidedly harder for me to play games with a higher-than-average level of difficulty. One such game that I will probably never see the ending to and yet will continue to whittle my soul away into it is Ikaruga.

Ikaruga is hard. It is cock-hard. It's harder than Old Testament god. It is Jessykins' nipples walking blindfolded through a fish market hard. I think you get the idea. Beating it on Easy was difficult enough for me as it was but I decided to take it on in Medium difficulty and was swiftly smote the way you think of the Sword of Acala piercing through the sky. Needless to say, the 4th level boss has always been especially difficult for me and I don't think I'm ever going to beat this game to where I'm satisfied with my level of accomplishment.

In short: I will die an unhappy man.

I had Solomon's Key for the Game Boy. Not sure how much it differed. I was a wee lad back then, but there were just some level I could NOT fucking figure out. FUN game, though. I could probably get through it all nowadays, but those bonus levels were tricky.

Add Contra 4 onto the heap. Anybody here who's played this yet will agree with me. Hours of playing, and I've only been able to get to level 7 of 9. By level 7, they throw EVERY fucking enemy in the book at you, and it's just madness. And I refuse to use the Konami code until I've beaten it fair and square.

Gradius (or any of it's incarnations) is another game I have never beaten. Play and play as I might, but I never could finish it.

Additional Spam:
I played Ikaruga on my Dreamcast, and I don't remember having such a problem on Normal. But I honestly don't remember if I got unlimited continues or not. Still, though, I only had a tough time when I set it to hard mode.

My dad, though, who couldn't comprehend anything with more than two buttons, certainly got plastered in that game.

Ikaruga, Mushihimesama, and a whole load of other hard shmups I will never beat. At least, not without heavy abuse of continues. But I love them, and even dodging one insane curtain of bullets is highly satisfying.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a game I've been coming continually closer to beating, but still fall just short. You have to save ten neighbors each level, and every time you lose one, the remaining levels will have one fewer victim to save too. And with fifty or sixty some odd levels, one lost neighbor is a pain. Especially in later levels, when enemies will spawn near the neighbors, or quickly target them. The only way to save some neighbors is to manipulate groups of enemies into following you around, which then destroys your life bar. I'll beat it someday, but it is painfully difficult and long.

Maximum Carnage and Spiderman & X-Men in Arcades Revenge were incredibly fucking stupid tough. I totally forgot about Maximum Carnage (mostly because it was a rental) but I don't think there was a comic book game made that made me swear as much as that one...

...until I got Arcade's Revenge for the Gameboy. That game is something you do when you hate yourself, like sticking a loaded gun in your mouth with the trigger tied to a door handle. The only one I beat was Cyclops and only because he's the easiest character to use since his optic blast was a ranged weapon and you could take out the Sentinel by crouch, jump, shoot until you beat him. Fuck the rest of that game; I remember thinking how Storm's level was like the underwater level in the first NES Ninja Turtles game except harder than a fag's prick at a daycare.

Also - has anyone ever played Spider-Man 3: Invasion Of The Spider-Slayers for the Gameboy? If anyone here can tell me how to exit the fucking abandoned building that Electro is in before the place explodes, you'd be answering a lifelong question of mine.

I also forgot to mention Ironsword: Wizards And Warriors 2. You know, the game with Fabio on the cover? I think I got to the first boss once. ONCE. You had to go up a mountain and then into a world of clouds. Except they werent clouds because you couldnt walk on them, you fucking slid all over the place like a janitor mopping up after a scat movie.

Two games instantly spring to mind:

Blaster Master (NES) - I can't for the life of me beat this game. No matter how much I try, I can't get past stage 7 (or was it 8?). Nevertheless, I've been playing this game on and off for over a decade and have yet to beat it. :(

3D Worldrunner (NES) - Oh how I hate making those jumps along giant gaps in stage 6/7. I'll probably end up dying before getting to the final stage in this game. =/

I can't believe I forgot Ikaruga. Anyone you see in Youtube videos playing through that game (like the one of the guy playing through it on two-player by himself) could pass for a brain surgeon with the amount of precision that game takes.

I was playing Wii earlier tonight and I forgot I had purchased this game for the VC: Ninja Gaiden.

Go on. I dare anyone to tell me they've seen the ending to this game.

I've seen the ending to the game. :eagletear:

But that was over 15 years ago. I probably won't be able to do it again if I were to play the game right at this moment.

YouTube Video

To beat Rhino, you have to swing into him from one of the ledges near the ground. If you do it right, you'll pass through him and it'll damage him.

As for Juggernaut, as you run through the level, you need to cut down every single anvil and 1 ton weight for him to run into, all the while tearing away at him with your claws. It takes a while, but if you hit him enough, you should kill him by about 3/4 of the way through.

Unfortunately, I can't help much with the other levels, as I haven't beaten the game either. It's too damn hard!

Ninja Gaiden's sixth stage was a bugger, but at least it didn't force you to re-eat bosses. For me, there's only one game that will forever kick my ass and my patience, but I'll continue to play for all eternity.

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius

I hate you so much right now. :(

I have beaten Ninja Gaiden I and II for the NES. III I have never played for more than 15 minutes, it kicks my ass every time. I've heard there's an ancient ship of doom in there somewhere?

I believe the Batman game for the NES is on the same league of the Ninja Gaiden trilogy. It has great graphics, an incredible soundtrack, and it's quite challenging. Seriously, I can't believe they sold it to kids. It's that hard.
My parents bought for me when I was 8 years old, and it was my freakin' Everest until I was 14, when I finally beat it. I still played it a lot cause it was very fun.

Viewtiful Joe on Adult for me. I know many people have finished the game on Adult and the two further difficulties, but Fire Leo is frustration on its own level.

It's not that the boss itself is hard (I mean, he is, but that's not the only problem), usually when you have a hard boss in VJ, you keep trying, restarting from the beginning of the match over and over till you finally manage to beat him.

With Fire Leo, it's hideously annoying because a game over means you restart the whole stage, which just so happens to be a boss marathon fight against all the previous bosses in harder form (without Alastor, though) before you actually get to Leo. I know how I'm supposed to beat him, I know how to dodge the attacks and make him spin and them lay it on him and then back away and I know he goes even harder when you finally get to the very last bit of his last life bar. I've just never managed to do all that in one go without slipping up.

I remember starting the game on Kids, thinking it was "normal", while Adult was "hard", played for five minutes, restarted on Adult, played all the way to Fire Leo and after a week of trying, gave up. I later restarted on Kids and played through the game without a single continue. The gap between Kids and Adult was huge for me, and while I hope I will one day finish it on Adult, I don't think I'll be getting past Fire Leo any time soon.

The rest of VJ is hard but plays fair. When you die, you feel it's your own fault. But with Fire Leo, while I know I'm just not good enough, actually getting good against him is unnecessarily bothersome since you spend half of the tries fighting the other bosses and not him.


As for anyone wondering about Ninja Gaiden 3 should check out the SDA run on it (non-emulated).

It's a fact that this game is impossible to beat, and can only be done with the help of a Game Genie. Even then it's still retardedly hard because the game controls like utter pig shit.

Ikaruga was just hard enough to where I couldn't do it with 5 continues, I needed to unlock the golden handicap of unlimited continues. After that it would take about 6 continues, 7 or 8 if I was lazy to beat the game.

For some reason, I could never beat the last boss in FFIV. I was never able to do it, no matter how much I leveled up (granted, it wasn't to dizzying degrees, but still reasonable). I'm hoping to re-try when it's released on DS soon.

I also couldn't get past this one boss very early on in Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete. It was in an icy level as far as I recall, and I tried beating him for 2 weeks before I flat-out gave up. Shitty, I know.

I have a friend who beat it last year for the first time. I never got much further then Bloody Moth.

As for Maximum Carnage... that game is just cruel. You think you've beaten the game, the credits start to roll and Carnage pops out for one last fight!

You know, even to this day, try as I might, I cannot beat Tetris.

1.) Contra - It seems that no matter what I do, I get punked early on. Ecah and every time.

2.) Ghoul's and Ghosts (my mind is going blah, I hope this is the name) - Insane difficulty with you only being able able to take two hits.

3.) Beyond the Beyond - I guess I SHOULD have beaten this game. However, I got so annoyed with it eventually (I guess therefore defeating the purpose of this choice given the thread title) as mages would continually knock my characters dizzy. Oh, and there was a high encounter rate too to make things much more annoying.

Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels on NES. I've beaten it on SNES in All-Stars because when you continue you start at the start of the level instead of at the start of the world, but the NES version is excruciating. I downloaded it on the VC and beat it, but that was only after the ability to save your progress so it doesn't count, even then it took me about 2 months.

Contra, like Contra III and Final Fantasy Tactics, is a game that turns boys into men. If I can beat Contra (and I'm not much of a gamer), so can you. If you were born at or before 1989, I think this is something everyone needs to do.

I had that game too, and Castlevania II and Bayou Billy and like, every other utterly frustrating game ever made on the NES. Goddamn, you'd think I did it on purpose. I did beat Batman eventually, but like you it took me years. The Batman game by Sunsoft for the Gameboy is a lot more forgiving, and also extremely awesome. I recommend it!

I'd have to say ninja gaiden III US version: this game is just so impossible for me, I can beat Ninja Gaiden I,II and III but only the JAP version, in the US version the birds' damage was improved and some of the enemies at some sections, it was just so intrincate to kill anything, so that'd be it for me, all the other games that have given me trouble I've managed to beat.

FFTactics? I always felt that was easy and fun.

Heh, the sad thing I'm not nearly as good as I was in my younger years. These last few years have cramped my video gaming style...

Kinda funny you say something, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about the first 2 Ninja Gaidens recently, all about how much a pain in the ass they were. He has his original XBOX modded and has all the old classics on there. We took turns, and to my surprise, really didn't have much of a problem in any particular part until the very end. Thanks to the power of save-states, we were able to finally see the ending, sans youtube this time around :D.

One game that I have never beaten, despite coming back every few years, is the original GI Joe games on the NES. For those of you who haven't played either of the two, they're both side-scrollers. Not bad, pretty fun for the most part. But, especially in the original, there are parts where it just gets mindfuckingly hard. I recall when I revisited the game about a year ago now, I finally got to the last stage, and it was a fucking joke, like not a person alive is getting through that. I think I'll try again on that note.

Drakkhen is a former masochistic pleasure of mine. I used to occasionally start a new file saying "Yeah, THIS TIME I'll beat it!". The thing about it was that I could never figure out what to do. How could a game with so much random talking not explain what to do!? Those sky monsters come once in a while to rape my party into oblivion. What the hell...

You have a point there. But I DID have a huge sense of accomplishment seeing the fucking KREMLIN blast off. :tpg:

I would have to say, that I have actually beaten Ironsword: Wizard & Warriors 2 and also Maximum Carnage. I didn't realize that people actually found those games quite challenging. Now obviously nobody is going to believe me because you either show proof or it didn't happen. A saying a lot of GFFers go by for sure.

In terms of Maximum Carnage, I think I beat the game but I'm not too sure. I vividly remember fighting Carnage by himself in a park of some sort with a large building you can climb up on in the middle and it was daylight as the last level. I think you could actually use both spiderman and venom to fight him and alternate between them if one got killed. It has been a long time since I've finished the game, but I know I played the game several times and picked many different routes to try to find the one that suited me the best. I also took the time to try to find the items that allowed you to continue. I also found one helpful technique is when you fight some of the earlier bosses that can't climb up and hit you. Just stay clinged to the wall and keep drop kicking the bosses, it may take a while but you can beat them with taking any damage especially against the umbrella brothers and bosses of that nature.

As much as your not going to believe me sprout, I have beaten Ironsword: Wizard and Warriors 2 but to be honest it is no easy feat by any means. When you have a small video game library being a young teen and all the other games are beaten. You just keep playing the game until you beat it. Lehah your absolutely right the game is utter bullshit, the way you jump makes the game so incredibly hard. I use to get stuck on the fire level all the time, but I guess through sheer patience I managed to beat it. I think what helps is when you know where your going which is a challenge in itself, because for each boss you have to attain an attack that will only work on the boss of that level. What is even more worse is the fact that the last level you have to fight all four elements, and they're quick and its not very easy to hit him. Its at least 13 years since I've beaten it but I do know I have beaten it.

Hey Lehah I managed to beat contra, but not actually on the nes. I actually beat the first contra game at the arcade. Is that even credible.

In terms of Contra III, I've beaten the game on easy and medium difficulty but never hard. It has been a long time since I've played it, but it is fairly challenging. The furthest I've ever gotten on hard difficulty was the motorcycle level and then my ass just gets raped.

I just remembered another game.

Milon's secret castle or whatever it was called. IT was that game where you have to get tons of keys to evetually rescue the princess. You had like, oh, 50 lives and needed each and every one of them. If you messed up with keys then...blah...

I remember spending months and months of my life trying to beat Doom 2 on the hardest setting (Nightmare I think) but I reckon it was actually impossible without cheats. Not only did zombies and imps constantly spawn around you and being essentially 2D you only had left and right as dodging options, you simply didn't get enough ammo to kill even half of the enemies that you met. I think level 7 was the furthest I ever got, at which point you get jumped by about 20 spider demons and have basically no hope of leaving the room alive. Even with the cheats it'd take 20 minutes to kill them all and on the very last level, with God mode on, you had to finish the level in about 3 minutes otherwise the slowdown from the number of cyberdemons stomping around crippled my 486 DX2 down to an absolute crawl.

Also, I never finished Jet Set Willy, despite spending most of my time at primary and early secondary school attempting to do so. It was just so unforgiving and had a nasty habit of re-spawning you in front of monsters when you died. Tough, tough game that one.

Oh god, add that to my list. I picked up Viewtiful Joe 2 reccently, and wondered why I never beat Viewtiful Joe. I really enjoyed it, but I must've been stuck somewhere. Well, I figured I'd run home, fire up the game, and finish it off. Turns out I was stuck in that exact spot. That damn Fire Leo. I played for a few hours that day and could not string together everything to get through there. I've probably been stuck there a couple years now.

Batman for the NES is also a game I picked up not too long ago, and I can see I may have trouble beating it anytime soon. There's a lot of hard stuff I'll have to learn how to deal with in that game. Most bosses have been destroying me the first couple tries while I try to learn their patterns. I can only imagine how painful it may be at the end of the game. This game might take me a good while.

Most of my failures have been with the Contra series. I have never been able to beat any of the Contra games (though admittedly, I've only played I and III). There's just too much shit going on screen for me.

And while I can easily beat Double Dragon III consistently, I have a lot of trouble beating Double Dragon I and II. Double Dragon I usually gets me around the time stage 3 rolls around because it's so damn long. The spikes really screw me over too. The ones that fall from the ceiling in the caves, along with the wall of death in the fourth one. Double Dragon II usually gets me around the time Stage 6 rolls around with the ridiculous amount of instant death pits.

As for Double Dragon III, most enemies can be dispatched with you moving up and down and using the spin kick at the right time. Otherwise, you can mash the punch button with Chin. Most bosses can be dispatched with either Billy's Nunchucks or Chin's Iron Claws or a combination of both. The only stage that might be an issue is the last stage, Most of the tactics still work here when you find enemies in the traditional x-y plane. In the flat x-plane areas where you can only move left to right, there are usually some pits of death you can take advantage of as well. You just need Ranzou and stand near a pit with your enemies on the other side. They will fly towards you with a kick, but if you mash your sword attack, that has longer range and takes priority, so you'll usually knock them back with it, usually into a pit. The other trick is Billy's Somersault. This often overlooked move allows Billy to pass through enemies unharmed, which makes it useful when there are people jumping at you. Actually using this move in real combat might be harder, but it's a good evasive move against a flying jump kick. (Don't try to use this on the first part of Stage 5, since I don't think you'll make it to the platform if you do. Use it once you get inside.) As for the final boss...the main trick is to move in diagonals when she goes underground, her attack won't hit you, and you'll end up in a fairly close position where you might be able to land a few hits in. The other hint is to never get too far away, since she'll hit you easily, and you'll have no way of hitting her. Randomly if you trap her in a corner, you can take out Chin and mash punch again, moving down a bit after each combo. That'll really tear into her HP if you can keep it up.

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie on SNES.

Seriously, fuck the 6th stage.

Pretty much anything from Team Ninja... I'll never be "hardcore" enough to beat them, but they're still fun to indulge in once in a while.

I would have to say Conquest of the Crystal Palace (NES). If you like NES platformers in the vein of Ghosts & Goblins (ninja action vs. plumber action) then it's a great title. It's by Asmik which was a great developer - Boomer's Adventure in Asmik World is one of the greatest Gameboy action/puzzle games ever. However, this game just gets excrutiatingly hard in places, not unlike G&G. There are places where you experience slowdown, for example, because there are 20 enemies falling from the sky that you have to slash your way through like you're some sort of demented snow-shoveller in a blizzard or something. Then, even after all of the difficult levels, if you reach the end, the boss is 10 times harder than the rest of the game. A true "boss," in other words. Not only content to shoot at you from the right side of the screen, he also rains down the ceiling upon you. And if you've made it that far, your lives and continues are gone so if you want to learn the boss' pattern you'll have to play all over again. I actually have this cart for NES; it's a great and rare classic. Now that I am "old," I can hardly get to the first boss let alone past him.

Another title I will mention is Blood for PC on the hardest level. If you read the instruction booklet, the 4th level of difficulty is only meant for co-op play, but you can still choose it in single-player mode. I had an extremely difficult, long journey to beat the game on the hardest mode using every cheat except God mode. What's more difficult than insane, evil mimes after all, while you're just trying to chill and play a game of zombie-head soccer? :D

I remember Captain America and the Avengers for the SNES gave me plenty of trouble back in the day. Aside from being a horrible arcade port, I remember that the enemies could pretty much juggle your character back and forth if their positioning was right. The horrible sounds the game made were even worse. I can't remember exactly how far my brother and I got in it, but I know we never made it to Red Skull. Still, we kept trying at it. Nowadays, I'd much rather play the arcade original on MAME than play that crappy port.

And I thought I was the only person who played that sack of shit.

I never thought there would be a topic like this, but most of the games I still have

Here it goes,
Jungle Book -Genisis
Sonic The Hedgehog-Genisis
Toy Story-Genisis
Sonic Advance 3Gba (couldn't beat supersonic stage)
Rainbow 6 Vegas (have no idea)
Megaman X 4 (couldnt beat last boss)

I have alot more, but these are the ones I have had a struggle on
most of these games you might haven't heard of.

Don't brag that you have beat this game (which I'm sure you might do)

Yeah, Rainbox Six, Sonic and Megaman are really obscure series. :rolleyes:

Anyway, any Mortal Kombat game is practically unplayable in Normal difficulty and above. It doesn't matter how good you are, you can't beat the superhuman reactions of the AI without resorting to glitches/bugs exploitation.

If you're good at a fighting game, it's very likely that you can beat the CPU of said game even on the highest difficulty setting. Not with Mortal Kombat, sir. It will allow you to win one or two fights, then completely destroy you until your self-esteem is zero. Then you will take the difficulty to the lowest settings, where you will win so easily, it will not be any fun at all.

I thought of another one: Platoon on the NES. When I was little, all I ever did in that game was wander aimlessly around on the first stage unable to figure out where to go or what to do, and eventually lose because the Viet Cong would drop on my head one too many times. Now later on I could make it as far as the fourth stage, but it was more or less a repeat of the first stage in terms of lack of direction; the only difference was that the view was a bird's-eye instead of a side-scroller. I haven't tried the game in a long time so I don't know what the result would be now.

I don't understand why some people find Contra 1 difficult. I can defeat that and Contra 2 just fine (although it took a while before I didn't need the Konami code for a little boost!)

Here are the NES games I could never beat:

- Lost Word of Jenny : It's in fuckin' Japanese. Why my dad bought this, I never know.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Too difficult! TMNT2 and TMNT3 are cakewalks by comparison
- Gradius : I never saw what was past the third stage (Moai), Konami code notwithstanding. I only saw the ending after downloading the emulated speedruns of this game.
- Punch Out : My reflexes suck, and Mike Tyson is unfair. It's amazing how the emulated speedruns demolished him in just one round.

The NES was the only console I actually owned. For the rest, it's all emulated and thus, I could beat it using save states, cheats, and slowdowns. In these two games, I found myself using these facilities quite often:

- Gradius III : Close to impossible, moreso than Gradius 1. I marvel at the emulated speedrun which plows through all enemies while dancing around the arcade mode projectiles. I used slow-down quite often to beat it.
- Contra III : A lot of stage hazards and (sub)bosses that stab you suddenly. I used rewind liberally here.

Battletoads for NES has been an off/on project of mine for quite some time now (already mentioned, but i agree all the same). I've managed to push forward as far as the Rat Race, the 2nd from last level i believe. Anything less than a PERFECT run in the last section of that level is completely unforgiving...it's ridiculous.

Hudson's Adventure Island (the original for the NES) was waaaay harder than its SMS counterpart, and i doubt i'd ever be able to beat it (or have the patience, anyway) without the "infinite continues" cheat. One of the harder parts of any game i've ever come across is found in 6:02-6:10 of this video:

YouTube - Adventure Island NES speed run 39:41 (Part 5)

He uses the skateboard, so you might not be able to appreciate the difficulty as much, but it was damn near impossible to do on feet with the hatchet! I think i would've shattered my system if i jumped into the fire just before the goal...in fact i know i would've.

I know i've played some near-impossible Adventures of Lolo before, though i'm not sure which of the 3 was the difficult one. I know it wasn't the first in the series though, as i beat that not too long ago without too much struggle.


I see if i can come up with any more for other systems - kind of in a NES frame of mind right now..

Tasty! I played Adventure Island on GB and doubt the difficulty is similar, in fact it seems like there were unlimited continues on that perhaps? But, after playing that the NES version definitely looks hard and that video is impressive.

I recently decided that I have to get my gaming shit together and finally beat some of the shmup classics that I never played/owned when I was younger. I couldn't have come up with a better way to fuck up my own head over this than by buying a used PS2 copy of Gradius III and IV. The version of Gradius III on that disc is the notorious arcade version which was reportedly so damned hard that Konami started pulling it from arcades after less than a few months of its release. The SNES version was purposely tweaked to be more manageable, even though that game is also pretty damned hard.

Another game that I have trouble with when I let myself get rusty is U.N. Squadron. The last two boards of that game always kick my balls in, especially the giant shielded tank that hangs from the ceiling in the cave level.

Hands down, the shooting genre (especially in terms of arcade games) presents the most challenges and requires the most practice and finesse of me when I'm looking to give myself mental anguish over games. The games I actually own are only the tip of the iceberg, as there are dozens of amazingly hard MAME emulated games which I promised myself I would try to beat with 1 credit's worth of lives, including some other hard-assed Japanese Konami games like Salamander II, Xexex, etc...

Contra for the NES is a cakewalk compared to most of these. To put it into perspective, I can blast through Contra without dying at all, ending with a load of extra guys, while with Gradius III arcade, I can't make it to the 2nd boss yet...and there're 10 fucking levels in that nightmare. Contra at least allows a few moments of respite.

In addition to the above games, there are tons of arcade games from the Capcom collections and the 2nd Taito Legends set for the PS2 that are equally addictive/menacingly-hard.

Crap game, yes, but when you're young, it's fun as hell to play. Me and my friends tried hard as hell to beat this game, but never did since none of us could ever stay alive long enough span four credits over the course of seven stages.

Once the N64 came out, I just gave up on it and moved on. I'll probably re-download the ROM sooner or later and just try and beat it by myself and hope the same area doesn't screw me over.

Another one that took me a long time to do was the original Star Fox on the SNES, taking the "level 3" (the bottom) route. I think part of what made that game difficult, especially on the bottom route, is how your first try is probably your best bet because once you die (or are unlucky enough to get wing damage along the way), you're stuck with single blasters again and it could be a while before you get upgraded again. I have beaten it that way, but it took a lot of effort and even then I can't remember whether or not I used continues. I would guess that I did.

I'll give you that one. Final Sigma is a bitch. The head on the ground is nigh impossible to safely attack as Zero, as it's either throwing shit at you, or sucking you towards him, both of which are hard attacks to avoid anyway.

I was never able to beat Saiyuki: The Journey West. It's a forgettable Final Fantasy Tactics wannabe on the Playstation, you didn't miss anything. I insisted on slogging through because hey, Monkey King.

My issue was that the game clearly wanted me to be wasting time grinding levels, and I was having none of that. It worked out pretty well because I am mastar tactician, and cheerfully hacked my way through the game when I really shouldn't have been able to. Then I get to the last boss, and it's a straight up slugfest. No maneuvering, just a giant target that can hit you from anywhere on the map, and six sub targets that are too strong to practically destroy, who can also hit you anywhere on the map.

Essentially the game completely hosed me by forcing me to have a minimum attack and defense strength for the last fight. And of course, there was no way to undo my save and go back to a point where I could grind out levels. The ending probably would have sucked anyway.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out! for the NES. I love that game to death, but when you get to the third round of fighting...it just turns into rape. Soda Popinski is cheap, Bald Bull is harder to read for me, Don Flamenco is a bit tougher, but the real challenge starts with The Sandman. Punch him in the face and then you have to punch him in the gut or else he'll block and counter.

Super Macho Man is worse, especially when he unleashes that hurricane punch of his. I can see it coming, but if my timing is off even by a little...Mac gets his ass pummeled to the ground.

The worst is when you finally get to Mike Tyson. I just can't read his movements no matter how much I try. It doesn't help that most of his punches take you down in one hit. I remember my brother only beating the game once before back when I was a kid and that was via the Game Genie. Even then, he barely won by lasting three rounds against Tyson and winning by split decision.

Seriously, awesome game...but I've never once claimed victory through the entire game.

This. Right fucking there. That speedbike part was pure bullshit. The only other game with something similiar of content that was just about the same amount of bullshit was that jet bike part of Conker's Bad Fur Day.

My list: (I don't know if I'm doing this right, but here goes.)

1. Super Mario Bros. Yes. Call me a faggot or whatever you like, I don't care. I have still YET to beat the original SMB. Why? 8-3, that's fucking why. Hell I didn't beat Mario 2 until it came in that Mario All-Stars SNES compilation game.

2. Ecco the Dolphin. Is there a way out of that very first part of the game when you load it up. Srsly.

3. 7th Saga. once Deji (or whatever the fuck his name was) stole my wind rune that I used to teleport when I slept in an Inn and I was in an area that monsters kicked my ass. Damn game never got put back in the SNES again.

4. Kingdom Hearts II. That goddamn Orginization 13 asshole in Beast's Castle is just a pain in the ass. I'll go back every now and then to see if I can beat him, but sure enough. Fuck that shit. I'll just not beat the damn game.

5. Vanguarde Bandits. I have no idea why that game has to be as ridiculously hard as it is.

There are more, but for the most part it's not really the challenge of most games for me, it's the fact I get side-tracked so bad and I just never seem to keep focused to finishing them. :\

God damn I forgot about that one. I've only made it to Super Macho Man once. Mr. Sandman was just an absolute piece of shit. However, I hated the second Bald Bull fight. Mainly because I was so used to people before then acting as if they were going to raise up at 9 only to fall back down. OH NO NOT BALD BULL. Plus you either had to knock him down from the Bull Charge or finish him off with an uppercut (couldn't just punch him down regularly, he'll still be up with no health left) which was just dumb.

Mike Tyson. I remember when my friend and I got to him. Went all 3 rounds with him and had something like 4990 points and he won by decision (I think 5000 was the amount you needed for your favor). Talk about pissed off...

Oh man, I feel your pain there. I had a lot of trouble with 8-2 mainly due to that long jump near the end. A small pipe and then two little pieces of ground with gaps in between to make the jump. I always tried to start at the edge of the pipe, run, and fell in between the pieces of ground many times. I never started at the ground pieces because I didn't think I'd get enough speed.

In 8-3, if you can get past those two sections with the hammer brothers, the ground, a level of brick, and then another level of bricks, then you got to what I believe is the hardest part. Hammer bros. on ground level and you have to run past them while timing it right and making sure you don't get hit by one of their hammers in the process. After you get past that, you can win. When I first played this, I couldn't get past it without having Fire Mario.

Ugh, Xaldin. Once again, I feel your pain. The triangle action helps but when he starts going crazy and getting a dragon going with his lances, I have to head for the corner and dodge it. It might sound like a pain, but try leveling up your master form so you can do the jump dodge. That'll help you out a bit.

I think the first time I beat him, I got lucky because I was resurrected three times by Mickey.

I've beaten Punch Out - but this was back when the game was still available in stores. I really doubt I could pull it off again, but each guy had a set number of moves. Once you saw two moves, you could usually figure out if you could throw a punch.

Tyson was incredibly hard to beat because most of it is just dodging and survival.

I've played ever since i was a kid and i probably came across a lot back then that i never beat but i'd always pop it in and have a go at it like Zelda on NES, couldn't even tell me what the objective was back then i was too busy running back and forth through screens trying to get that damn thing spitting in the water, these are the only ones that come to mind:

Sin and Punishment - Only played it on the Wii Virtual Console though and it still seems pretty tough. I couldn't get past the 2nd or 3rd level with the mecha boss? Granted i only tried playing seriously once but it seemed ridiculously hard.

Pilotwings - For the most part, the stuff was hard for me but i kept trying and trying. I can't recall which obstacle but i think it was skydiving/parachuting through the rings and then to land on the target.

Top Gun - Back on the NES i couldn't land that fucking plane on the aircraft carrier at all.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Are you kidding me? That water level alone got me frustrated i don't even remember if i got by it.. maybe once or twice but that totally shadows what i remember after it.

Final Fantasy VIII - This was my first time playing a Final Fantasy game and the system with building your weapons and junction stuff was pretty over my head. I enjoyed the hell out of it though but when it came to fighting Adel that had Riona hostage i had myself in a pickle and i ended up cheating =\ the bosses at the end i have no idea how i would've beating those if i couldn't even beat Adel on my own. Gotta replay it someday.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica - This goes for all Resident Evils not like they're hard but they creep the hell out of me and i usually run out of ammo a lot. I guess i'm not great at running past and conserving. Only one i got the furthest in was Code Veronica on Dreamcast and i ran out of ammo on the plane with that tyrant.. screw that.

I agree with any Battletoads, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and the Contras. Even Contra II co-op and the cheat i don't even think i've seen the ending.