Hardest game you've beaten?

[Lynda Monica | 350]

On 8/31/2022 at 8:08 PM, PII said:

Curious what you disliked about it.  ??

I always thought it was the same as the Genesis version except with a better soundtrack...

It's actually the complete opposite. The Sega CD version has CD quality audio, but they replaced every single track in the game with different music that sucks and doesn't fit the level's atmosphere or story. Imagine if Square changed every single track in Final Fantasy VII to completely different music, but the audio quality of the completely unrelated music was nicer. I don't think anyone would say with a straight face that makes the music "better".

Also the Sega CD version adds extra levels that add nothing of value to the game, and just act as annoying filler. Ecco the Dolphin tells a story with its levels, and most if not all of them add to the story or gameplay. The extra levels in the Sega CD version are not only bad levels, but they intrude on a tightly designed story and add nothing new.

The Sega CD version is also the coward's version of the game, as they added a ton of checkpoints to the stages, none of which exist in the original.

Everything the Sega CD version changes makes the game worse, therefore that version sucks.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,675]

1 hour ago, DoctorEncore said:

I looked through at least a dozen articles and threads before writing my post and didn't see Shinobi mentioned in a single one. It's such a cool game and I wish more people would experience it. It's almost like the PS2 library is just too vast to reasonably explore. I suspect the Switch will be similar.

I have both Shinobi and Nightshade, just haven't had a chance to try them.

[Sumez | 3,035]

Completely unrelated I guess, but the Ecco the Dolphin MegaCD soundtrack is insanely good. I really underestimated it back when I played the game, but it's a genuine standout, with a lot of recurring motifs and fantastic atmosphere.

  

22 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

or ones where the difficulty is the point (like the Souls series)

That's completely misunderstanding the Souls series, if you think the difficulty is in any way "the point".  

Edited September 3, 2022 by Sumez

[The Count | 550]

Great question, if I had to guess of the top of my head I'd say Blackthorne for SNES. I remember the final boss being tricky.

[AirVillain | 500]

Great question and interesting discussion.

Some crazy games I've never even heard of never mind gotten the pleasure of getting my ass kicked by.

I don't have a really impressive list.... 

*Contra (Which I maxed out as well as can no death.... Not actually impressive, I know )

*Double Dragon series (DD2 I've played so much it's quite "easy" and can beat pretty much each time I play, but DD & DD3 were pretty hard. DD more-so, but DD3 took some serious work as well)

*Mega Man series (With MM being the hardest I feel. Tough to get through that one without continues, but it was fun to work at it and do it. With the others the difficulty can be cushioned with E tanks and such.)

Of course there's the two stereotypical games of GNG & Battletoads.

Ghosts 'n Goblins I "beat" using an insane amount of continues. I couldn't even attempt to keep track, haha. But I managed to hack through the game, yes twice. 

Battletoads I'm okay at but get fucked up at the Clinger Winger everytime.... fuck I hate that level. I hate it so much that I rarely bother getting that far. I can max out the score and get past the Inferno pretty easily and find that to be fun enough.

I remember I tried to beat it using a game genie and I still couldn't, haha.... Sad, but funny.

[mbd39 | 2,039]

1 hour ago, AirVillain said:

Great question and interesting discussion.

Some crazy games I've never even heard of never mind gotten the pleasure of getting my ass kicked by.

I don't have a really impressive list.... 

*Contra (Which I maxed out as well as can no death.... Not actually impressive, I know )

*Double Dragon series (DD2 I've played so much it's quite "easy" and can beat pretty much each time I play, but DD & DD3 were pretty hard. DD more-so, but DD3 took some serious work as well)

*Mega Man series (With MM being the hardest I feel. Tough to get through that one without continues, but it was fun to work at it and do it. With the others the difficulty can be cushioned with E tanks and such.)

Of course there's the two stereotypical games of GNG & Battletoads.

Ghosts 'n Goblins I "beat" using an insane amount of continues. I couldn't even attempt to keep track, haha. But I managed to hack through the game, yes twice. 

Battletoads I'm okay at but get fucked up at the Clinger Winger everytime.... fuck I hate that level. I hate it so much that I rarely bother getting that far. I can max out the score and get past the Inferno pretty easily and find that to be fun enough.

I remember I tried to beat it using a game genie and I still couldn't, haha.... Sad, but funny.

I think maxing out Contra is impressive. I've come close with a score over 4 million but it's still on the "to do" list.

For Clinger Winger just pause at the corners and then change direction. It's a little cheap but it gets the job done. The last level is really tough. Fortunately the Dark Queen isn't too bad.

 

[Makar | 2,017]

Alright I gotta add Wargroove to the list just for the last 2 battles in the game alone. It’s a tactics game like advance wars. The 2nd to last battle took me at least 15 tries to beat and I only ended up beating it by resorting to a checkpoint I saved in the game. If any single unit on your team dies in this battle, you lose. One tiny wrong move and you’re done. then the last battle was pretty tough too. Not as bad but you have a tiny crew against a giant force. Solid game, definitely recommend but tough at the end. 

[AirVillain | 500]

8 hours ago, mbd39 said:

I think maxing out Contra is impressive. I've come close with a score over 4 million but it's still on the "to do" list.

For Clinger Winger just pause at the corners and then change direction. It's a little cheap but it gets the job done. The last level is really tough. Fortunately the Dark Queen isn't too bad.

 

Well, thanks I appreciate it. Maxing out Contra is all about getting through the frist few loops with dying as little as possible. Obviously? haha.... but because it gets harder and harder you can't afford to die in the earlier loops. 

I think I got up around the 99 lives, but ended up with 7 or something at the end. 

It was a complete gong show at the end. Just a battle to the death with the pea shooter. 

Pause, eh? 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

Ninja Gaiden III or Battletoads. I beat both exactly one time and never had any desire to put myself through either experience again.

[DarkTone | 990]

I'm giving myself 1 year and 17 days to think of a better answer. 

For now I'm going with DRMBM. I've never played until I got it on the xbox 360. Theres an achievement to beat the final boss. It fucking broke me. I think I mentioned a while back this story, but I went away, played other games, returned and bear it first try. I was so amped up I put a 3 hour podcast on. Ended up beating it in 5 minutes. 

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

This thread is going to shame me into putting a couple of these retro games onto my 2023 backlog list so I can say I've beaten them as well. I've at least gotta do Contra and Ninja Gaiden.

[AirVillain | 500]

3 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

This thread is going to shame me into putting a couple of these retro games onto my 2023 backlog list so I can say I've beaten them as well. I've at least gotta do Contra and Ninja Gaiden.

The biggest thing I think of each time I play Contra is "attack the game".

You can't sit back and let the game come to you, you have to go balls to the wall and attack every enemy and rarely stop moving. 

Even after playing it for literally HOURS on end, I still have to focus and battle the game each time I play. It's not a strain by any means, but it's not a walk in the park like SMB3 for example.

Ninja Gaiden can get bent as far as I'm concerned. I once tried to "beat" it. I use quotes because there was no chance in hell I could do it and it was a terrible experience. 

Anyone who can beat Ninja Gaiden straight up gets my utmost respect. 

Thought of another for the thread: Bucky O'Hare.

I remember years ago when Bucky was gettin' super hyped I bought it to see what all the hubbub was about. Was a neat game. Difficult. Final stage was wild, but fun. 

Not on the same level as GNG or Battletoads, obviously.... 

[Sumez | 3,035]

On 9/5/2022 at 3:08 AM, AirVillain said:

Thought of another for the thread: Bucky O'Hare.

I remember years ago when Bucky was gettin' super hyped I bought it to see what all the hubbub was about. Was a neat game. Difficult. Final stage was wild, but fun. 

Not on the same level as GNG or Battletoads, obviously.... 

Bucky isn't too tough when you've seen all the levels already, gives you more than enough 1UPs to run through the game without needing to continue even if you play poorly.

Where it gets really interesting is with the secret hard mode, which I think someone in this thread already mentioned beatnig. Kudos to that!

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sumez

[T-Pac | 7,676]

On 9/1/2022 at 9:13 PM, rdrunner said:

Sticking with NES, here are some toughies I beat without any help, then wrote guides to help others:

• Deadly Towers
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Solomon's Key

Wow - I remember trying to beat Solomon's Key back in college. Even using the continue code over several days, I could only get to Room 42 on my own. And then with a guide, I still gave up at room 46.

Kudos on that one.

-CasualCart

[mbd39 | 2,039]

19 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

Ninja Gaiden III or Battletoads. I beat both exactly one time and never had any desire to put myself through either experience again.

Both very hard games. Did you ever beat Adventure Island? I think that's much worse than either in terms of frustration.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

46 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

Both very hard games. Did you ever beat Adventure Island? I think that's much worse than either in terms of frustration.

Yeah. I owned Adventure Island as a kid and beat it back then. I beat it during the last weekly contest week too. I don't find it as frustrating as the other two, but I'm also more familiar with it.

[mbd39 | 2,039]

Just now, Bearcat-Doug said:

Yeah. I owned Adventure Island as a kid and beat it back then. I beat it during the last weekly contest week too. I don't find it as frustrating as the other two, but I'm also more familiar with it.

I dunno. I don't think there's anything in Battletoads that's as nuts as 8-2 and 8-3 in AI.

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

3 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

I dunno. I don't think there's anything in Battletoads that's as nuts as 8-2 and 8-3 in AI.

 

The tower at the end of Battletoads really annoyed me. I didn't care for the ice cave either.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Bearcat-Doug

[mbd39 | 2,039]

8 minutes ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

The tower at the end of Battletoads really annoyed me. I didn't care for the ice cave either.

The tower is probably the most annoying level because of how far you go back when you die. It's a long level full of tricky platforming and obnoxious enemies and there's only two checkpoints. Plus by that point you might be suffering from Battletoads fatigue and just want to get the game over with.

 

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

6 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

The tower is probably the most annoying level because of how far you go back when you die. It's a long level full of tricky platforming and obnoxious enemies and there's only two checkpoints. Plus by that point you might be suffering from Battletoads fatigue and just want to get the game over with.

 

 

Yeah, I don't know how many tries it took me to get through that tower, but it was a lot.

[CMR | 525]

Probably Battle Kid is the hardest I've beaten.  The one that took me the longest, though, was Thunderforce V on hard mode for the PS1.  I pretty much had to memorize that whole game.  By the time I stopped playing it, I could 1CC it and could almost one life it.

[MegaMan52 | 2,482]

I've beaten several hard games, mostly for the NES and original Game Boy. Batman, Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (with a friend), Rockin' Kats, Pac-Mania, Tiny Toon Adventures 2 (the Roller Coaster and Funhouse levels), and the Game Boy Mega Man III all come to mind.

However, none of those were as hard as Adventure Island for GameCube. About six years ago (maybe a little longer than that), I played through the whole game. Like Adventure Island on the NES, the difficulty can be insane and occasionally unfair because you have to keep collecting fruit and if you touch an enemy even once you have to restart the.level or go back to the last checkpoint. Like the auto-scrolling levels in Battletoads and the Roller Coaster level in Tiny Toon Adventures 2, you kind of have to know what's ahead. There is an "easier" difficulty that allows Master Higgins to take an extra hit (half of his energy is drained), however it doesn't make the game a whole lot easier because Higgins jumps a little when he gets hit and he might fall into a hole or some water. Also, there's no post-hit invincibility and there are usually multiple enemies or other obstacles on the screen so if you get hit you'll likely touch another enemy or whatever almost right after. So, I played though the game on the normal difficultly since the easier difficulty doesn't make the game that much easier.

It's not quite as hard as the NES game. For one thing, World 8 in the GameCube version only has one level instead of four levels like the other Worlds. But I haven't beaten the NES version, so Adventure Island for GameCube still stands as the hardest game I've ever beaten.

It's worth playing through the game and grabbing as much fruit as possible, though, because you can unlock a lot of extras. Some of the extras include the Hudson Shooting Watch, commercials (including the American commercial for Adventure Island II), an option to change the music to that of the NES version, and a Sound Test that includes both the NES and GameCube Adventure Island soundtracks.

Edited September 9, 2022 by MegaMan52

[Tanooki | 4,967]

I've got that game there, star solider and bonk too from that line and he's right, that one is super challenging, even if you don't care about unlockables.

[DorkOverlord | 688]

Ninja Gaiden on NES. I beat it once when I was a kid, and haven't been able to do so ever again. 

[DefaultGen | 5,549]

Out of the games I've played and can beat on NES, I think Adventure Island is the hardest.

Of the games I play frequently, Ninja Gaiden II and Castlevania III. I just never get good at NG2 Act 7 and can blow through the rest of the series.