contra – very fun but overrated on difficulty
battletoads – absolutely impossible
i have never beaten the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
also HOME ALONE is impossible. you have to survive for 20 minutes in the house without marv and harry catching you.
other fun and difficult games that no one seems to mention:
-terminator 2 (u gota knock t1000 into the lava)
-batman (u gota shoot the joker like 7825 times)
I beat Bayou Billy after playing it for 6 months straight. You have to do all of the practice games, then play the real game immediately after. When you get to a hard boss and your energy depletes, it will automatically replenish because you did the training games first. I haven’t played this in years but I think your bulletproof vest will replenish also.
I played that version of Battletoads when I was a kid, and I gave up at the surfboard level. It was fucking frustrating. The only fun part of the whole game is the first level. I played the game again after a few years with snes9x, and it had the quick save/quick load function. I got to the final level and finally beat it. The higher level I got to, the more impossible the game became. I had to quick save every 5 or 7 seconds and reloaded like millions of times. I think there’s no way in hell a player can win if he plays normally.
Double Dragon 3 was, and still is, utter bullshit. The fact I made it to the last level make me feel good.
Only game I disagree with, is Contra. Even without THE CODE, I can beat it. Should of put “Silver Surfer” for NES in its place. That, was probably the hardest game ever. Getting past like 5-6 enemies, is a feat. I don’t know if anyone, anywhere, has beaten that game without an emulator.
Interesting article, although the entry on Contra is ridiculous. The author pretty much asserts that it is impossible to beat the game without the Konami code. Even more incredibly, he says that it takes two months of practice to get to the second level alive. While I do not want to be rude, I have to wonder if the article’s author has some kind of debilitating neurological condition because, quite frankly, all it takes to get through the first level of Contra unscathed is some basic memorization of enemy placement within the level. And it isn’t a long level. There are two basic enemy types in Contra: 1) Fixed-point enemies, and 2) Randomly-generated enemies. Fixed-point enemies all shoot, and most randomly-generated enemies just run toward you. All you have to do to kill most of the game’s random enemies is… run forward and mash the fire button. Or turn around and fire at the ones coming from behind. Once you memorize the placement of fixed-point enemies, you can avoid running into them. Their attack patterns are pretty predictable. You also have to jump over holes in the ground…
This is all pretty basic. If you want to keep on the top portion of the level early on there is some tricky timing with the exploding bridges, but those don’t kill you. Whatever difficulty there is to the stage’s end boss is wiped out if you find one of the level’s two (I believe) spread gun weapon enhancements. But even with a pea shooter all it takes is some patience to kill him. You want to adopt this strategy:
1) Jump up to the top platform and shoot the guys on top of the structure.
2) Keeping to the left-most side of the screen, shoot out the two guns near the middle of the structure
3) At this point, nothing can hurt you, so you’re free to destroy the remaining part.
THIS is what you spent two months training to conquer? With such a lack of ability (or mental competence, or both), I’d frankly be surprised if you could complete ANY game, or, hell, do any thing that required the slightest amount of memorization.
You also complained about the second level where enemies lob grenades at you. For one thing, they aren’t “countless.” Generally, per group of soldiers attacking you, only one throws grenades. The rest just shoot at you, and you can dodge their bullets by crouching.
PROTIP: When enemies throw grenades at the position where you’re crouching… move.
As to the electric shocks… you do realize you’re not supposed to run into those electrified wires, right? All you have to do to avoid electric shocks is to not press up on your joypad.
Contra isn’t an easy game, by any means. Once you get to the Waterfall stage, death can come quick and often. Nevertheless, it is very possible to beat the game without resorting to cheat codes. I’ve actually beaten the game on one life (that is, without dying at all). It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And hell, even then, I used power-ups. I’ve seen people beat the game on one life without ever using power-ups.
My purpose in saying this isn’t to gloat. Beating a video game is… well, beating a video game. Not a great accomplishment. If you have difficulties with the game, I can understand that. Some people just aren’t good at Contra. Myself, I can’t play music-rhythm games to save my life. I struggled to complete the last mission of Elite Beat Agents on the easiest mode. But it is insulting both to your intelligence and to mine to say that the game is too difficult to beat without cheating, and that you’re justified in cheating because ‘everyone else does it.’ No, everyone else does not do it.
I beat Double Dragon 3 as a kid with every character, including the plump one. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to kill something, though, before I managed it. Also beat TMNT 1 after months and months of practice. Those are my only “claims to fame, though – I never got past Level 3 in Battletoads and certainly never beat any of the others on this list. And these days, I’m a gamins wuss – no time to put into beating really challenging games.
They say games have become easier, but that’s largely due to better design avoiding a lot of the frustrations of cheap deaths they used to have with the Old-School games.
Though getting used to better design has made it harder to play older games, and throw backs to older games, now. I used to be REALLY GOOD at STREET FIGHTER II, then when the Xbox LIVE Arcade game port for one of the iterations came-out, I wasn’t so good. Not even against the CPU.
You know why you all cannot beat these games? Because you’re all noobs! Haha, just kidding. Contra is pretty difficult. Battletoads is just utterly annoying..
Firstly, contra is definitely beatable without the code, as are all the later ones. My roommate and I could beat Contra, Super C, and Contra 3 with one life on the hardest challenge level. It took a ton of work, but definitely doable.
Second – on ghosts and goblins I believe you are mistaking the different games. You had a spear to start off with that went across the entire screen, no sword which wasn’t introduced until ghouls n’ ghosts, and it was actually pretty decent. Another thing, while you do have to beat the game twice in a row to actually beat it, it was also ghouls n’ ghosts that you had to pick up the power bracelet on your second run through to get access to the true final boss.
Well I finished Contra because my friend did something to the computer so that you can save the game wherever you want to. Have you heard of that before?
Have any of you ever played Milon’s secret castle? It deserves to go in the top 10, that game is seriously unbeatable. i’ve never got past level 3.
You should try it.
I agree with the person who said contra is overrated on difficulty. I’ve seen so many people say this, and I am not a great game player. I’ll never win a game tournament, for sure, or even qualify. But I got to the point where I never needed the 30 man code and never lost a life, no matter what. Of course, I was 13 at the time. Ask me to do that today and I’ll never make it.
Fester’s quest was just outright impossible. Anyone bother to playtest that?
Runner-ups–Rambo was really hard, but I did beat it eventually. Platoon also is really hard, but beatable.
Now what about the original Castlevania? How in the @#$@ do you beat that game? On the NES, I couldn’t get past the grim reaper on the second to the last level. I know you can get through that guy, but he’s really hard. I’m glad I gave up. Because several years later, and with an emulator with “save state” feature — I tried beating dracula. It took me forever to beat him, even loading states… It’s riduculous.
Another game worth mentioning… Top Gun. Yes, you say…only five levels. But you get to the last two levels, you are usually on your last jet. By this point, You’ve crashlanded one on the aircraft carrier in level 2. Maybe lost another jet on refueling or the landing on level 3.
And the missiles are coming every which way. Throw your controller at the screen, because you’ve just got hit, and it’s game over.
I remember buying Battletoads instead of Mega Man 3 when I was a kid and almost regretting it.
But after hours of game play, I managed to beat the game many times. Just the satisfaction of beating up the Dark Queen at the top of her tower in the last level is enough reward when you realise how tough that game is!!
But I’ll agree that Tradewest could have made that game a lot less difficult.
battletoads is easy lol
home alone: completed like 50 times (it was my only game for a while)
contra 4 pretty difficult but not as hard as you make it seem
No one really said much about Gauntlet on here.. Battle toads will always be impossible, Ghosts N Goblins pretty tough as well. Some mentioned Rambo, not that tough. Friday the 13th was awful but easy once you knew how to defeat Jason. TMNT fun and had its difficult times but was beatable. Bayou Billy was just a pain in the ass more than anything else and Home Alone, come on now!… Lol
There was a game for Playstation I rented once called “Run” that was fucking IMPOSSIBLE. it wasn’t even fun it was so hard. Anyone ever play this? You start off in this glass hallway and your object is to run from bullets and bombs coming at you from every angle. I believe a helicopter was outside the glass, shooting at you through it, bombs dropped from the ceiling and came up from the floor, there was mounted machine guns, etc.
Well, considering I used to live in the same town as him (Bernardsville NJ), he used to jog by me when I was out at the school bus stop every morning, I used to see him and Robin Givens all over, and I am a HUGE boxing fan that grew up watching Tyson fights, and because I thought it was pretty much common knowledge where Mike was from, I wanted to address the fact that whoever wrote this list said,”Nothing could get you prepared for having to dodge oddly timed uppercuts by the Bronx basher.”
Thought he was from Catskills? Or somethin like that? Come on anybody in here really know where Tysons from? Lol. Bein obnoxious by the way, don’t really care…
Back to the future three first level on the horse… as hard a level as ive ever played on anything, you had to have super ninja reflexes to dodge anything.. and i would also like to say Kid Chameleon was a tough cookie of a game
I don’t know about that. I mean all of those games were really hard but still…I think Syobon Action 2 for the computer was exceedingly hard. It took me less time to beat contra than it did that damned game. I think that should be at least number 3 or 4
I beat Ninja Gaiden but i haven’t yet beat Battletoads, also i haven’t played Contra but I’ve only heard that it’s extremely difficult and now people commenting here are saying Battletoads is harder? News to me.
I disagree with the statement made about Contra and having to have the code. I’ve beaten the game 3 times without stopping or resetting the game and without ever going to the Game Over screen the entire time. It took a few days of practice to get up to par to accomplish the task, but it’s not really all that bad. Ninja Gaiden 1 is pretty much the same way until you get to 6-2 and 6-3, which can be very maddening. Still, I think I had much more trouble with the 2nd Ninja Gaiden than the first. Lol.
I agree that Paperboy was annoying as all heck. You are a magnet for obstacles in that game. It got tiring very fast. I loved Gauntled and got good at it, but there were players who were in a different league. I once played with a kid who reached at least the 45th level on one quarter, with Warrior. Craziest part is he never hogged food – he was just flawless in how he played. I couldn’t leave the arcade, I had to see how far he would get. I got home 2 hours late because of this and caught a whooping from my parents, who were worried sick about where I was.
I actually beat Ghosts & Goblins fair and square, but it was excruciating. The effort needed to get past the first two levels tunes your skills so much, that you actually stand a chance the rest of the way. 2 hits and you are dead… come on now…
contra – very fun but overrated on difficulty
battletoads – absolutely impossible
i have never beaten the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
also HOME ALONE is impossible. you have to survive for 20 minutes in the house without marv and harry catching you.
other fun and difficult games that no one seems to mention:
-terminator 2 (u gota knock t1000 into the lava)
-batman (u gota shoot the joker like 7825 times)
I actually beat HOME ALONE one fuckin time. And yeah Battletoads is the hardest game ever.
I have gotten to the final level of Battletoads, the spinning tower, I think it’s called The Revolution. I never beat it though
I beat Bayou Billy after playing it for 6 months straight. You have to do all of the practice games, then play the real game immediately after. When you get to a hard boss and your energy depletes, it will automatically replenish because you did the training games first. I haven’t played this in years but I think your bulletproof vest will replenish also.
im always surprised to see that “Sky Shark” didn’t make any of these lists. also, i have beaten paperboy before.
I played that version of Battletoads when I was a kid, and I gave up at the surfboard level. It was fucking frustrating. The only fun part of the whole game is the first level. I played the game again after a few years with snes9x, and it had the quick save/quick load function. I got to the final level and finally beat it. The higher level I got to, the more impossible the game became. I had to quick save every 5 or 7 seconds and reloaded like millions of times. I think there’s no way in hell a player can win if he plays normally.
Double Dragon 3 was, and still is, utter bullshit. The fact I made it to the last level make me feel good.
Only game I disagree with, is Contra. Even without THE CODE, I can beat it. Should of put “Silver Surfer” for NES in its place. That, was probably the hardest game ever. Getting past like 5-6 enemies, is a feat. I don’t know if anyone, anywhere, has beaten that game without an emulator.
Lawnmower Man for snes # 1
Interesting article, although the entry on Contra is ridiculous. The author pretty much asserts that it is impossible to beat the game without the Konami code. Even more incredibly, he says that it takes two months of practice to get to the second level alive. While I do not want to be rude, I have to wonder if the article’s author has some kind of debilitating neurological condition because, quite frankly, all it takes to get through the first level of Contra unscathed is some basic memorization of enemy placement within the level. And it isn’t a long level. There are two basic enemy types in Contra: 1) Fixed-point enemies, and 2) Randomly-generated enemies. Fixed-point enemies all shoot, and most randomly-generated enemies just run toward you. All you have to do to kill most of the game’s random enemies is… run forward and mash the fire button. Or turn around and fire at the ones coming from behind. Once you memorize the placement of fixed-point enemies, you can avoid running into them. Their attack patterns are pretty predictable. You also have to jump over holes in the ground…
This is all pretty basic. If you want to keep on the top portion of the level early on there is some tricky timing with the exploding bridges, but those don’t kill you. Whatever difficulty there is to the stage’s end boss is wiped out if you find one of the level’s two (I believe) spread gun weapon enhancements. But even with a pea shooter all it takes is some patience to kill him. You want to adopt this strategy:
1) Jump up to the top platform and shoot the guys on top of the structure.
2) Keeping to the left-most side of the screen, shoot out the two guns near the middle of the structure
3) At this point, nothing can hurt you, so you’re free to destroy the remaining part.
THIS is what you spent two months training to conquer? With such a lack of ability (or mental competence, or both), I’d frankly be surprised if you could complete ANY game, or, hell, do any thing that required the slightest amount of memorization.
You also complained about the second level where enemies lob grenades at you. For one thing, they aren’t “countless.” Generally, per group of soldiers attacking you, only one throws grenades. The rest just shoot at you, and you can dodge their bullets by crouching.
PROTIP: When enemies throw grenades at the position where you’re crouching… move.
As to the electric shocks… you do realize you’re not supposed to run into those electrified wires, right? All you have to do to avoid electric shocks is to not press up on your joypad.
Contra isn’t an easy game, by any means. Once you get to the Waterfall stage, death can come quick and often. Nevertheless, it is very possible to beat the game without resorting to cheat codes. I’ve actually beaten the game on one life (that is, without dying at all). It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And hell, even then, I used power-ups. I’ve seen people beat the game on one life without ever using power-ups.
My purpose in saying this isn’t to gloat. Beating a video game is… well, beating a video game. Not a great accomplishment. If you have difficulties with the game, I can understand that. Some people just aren’t good at Contra. Myself, I can’t play music-rhythm games to save my life. I struggled to complete the last mission of Elite Beat Agents on the easiest mode. But it is insulting both to your intelligence and to mine to say that the game is too difficult to beat without cheating, and that you’re justified in cheating because ‘everyone else does it.’ No, everyone else does not do it.
I beat Double Dragon 3 as a kid with every character, including the plump one. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to kill something, though, before I managed it. Also beat TMNT 1 after months and months of practice. Those are my only “claims to fame, though – I never got past Level 3 in Battletoads and certainly never beat any of the others on this list. And these days, I’m a gamins wuss – no time to put into beating really challenging games.
yea – somebody said it but they are correct: Silver Surfer for NES is the hardest game ever. Definetly should have been on the list.
They say games have become easier, but that’s largely due to better design avoiding a lot of the frustrations of cheap deaths they used to have with the Old-School games.
Though getting used to better design has made it harder to play older games, and throw backs to older games, now. I used to be REALLY GOOD at STREET FIGHTER II, then when the Xbox LIVE Arcade game port for one of the iterations came-out, I wasn’t so good. Not even against the CPU.
You know why you all cannot beat these games? Because you’re all noobs! Haha, just kidding. Contra is pretty difficult. Battletoads is just utterly annoying..
A couple of things on your article.
Firstly, contra is definitely beatable without the code, as are all the later ones. My roommate and I could beat Contra, Super C, and Contra 3 with one life on the hardest challenge level. It took a ton of work, but definitely doable.
Second – on ghosts and goblins I believe you are mistaking the different games. You had a spear to start off with that went across the entire screen, no sword which wasn’t introduced until ghouls n’ ghosts, and it was actually pretty decent. Another thing, while you do have to beat the game twice in a row to actually beat it, it was also ghouls n’ ghosts that you had to pick up the power bracelet on your second run through to get access to the true final boss.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
Well I finished Contra because my friend did something to the computer so that you can save the game wherever you want to. Have you heard of that before?
what about Fester’s Quest?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qor5Rn7glaU
battletoads all the way through
BattleToads was a fun game. I love the joke about people calling gamestop asking for it.
And every game you have on here is pretty much the hardest ones. Though Ghost Busters was like satans asshole.
I know AVGN already said enough about ghost busters. so I wont say anything, but that was my break feast of nails in the morning.
ECHO THE DOLPHIN…
Have any of you ever played Milon’s secret castle? It deserves to go in the top 10, that game is seriously unbeatable. i’ve never got past level 3.
You should try it.
I predict you lots of fun.
Not a single game from the original megaman series on here? Strange. Megaman 3 is one of the hardest games i’ve ever played.
I agree with the person who said contra is overrated on difficulty. I’ve seen so many people say this, and I am not a great game player. I’ll never win a game tournament, for sure, or even qualify. But I got to the point where I never needed the 30 man code and never lost a life, no matter what. Of course, I was 13 at the time. Ask me to do that today and I’ll never make it.
I have to disagree with Contra and Double Dragon III, because both are pretty easy games if you play them for a week or two.
Has anyone even thought about Friday the 13th for nes? Easily top 5 for difficulty and overall fruitlessness.
How bout Rambo and platoon those games were annoying.
Dragon’s lair. I can’t even beat it on an NES Emulator. Another is the NES Garfield (Difficult and the worst NES game of all time).
Contra shouldn’t be on the list.
Fester’s quest was just outright impossible. Anyone bother to playtest that?
Runner-ups–Rambo was really hard, but I did beat it eventually. Platoon also is really hard, but beatable.
Now what about the original Castlevania? How in the @#$@ do you beat that game? On the NES, I couldn’t get past the grim reaper on the second to the last level. I know you can get through that guy, but he’s really hard. I’m glad I gave up. Because several years later, and with an emulator with “save state” feature — I tried beating dracula. It took me forever to beat him, even loading states… It’s riduculous.
Another game worth mentioning… Top Gun. Yes, you say…only five levels. But you get to the last two levels, you are usually on your last jet. By this point, You’ve crashlanded one on the aircraft carrier in level 2. Maybe lost another jet on refueling or the landing on level 3.
And the missiles are coming every which way. Throw your controller at the screen, because you’ve just got hit, and it’s game over.
I remember buying Battletoads instead of Mega Man 3 when I was a kid and almost regretting it.
But after hours of game play, I managed to beat the game many times. Just the satisfaction of beating up the Dark Queen at the top of her tower in the last level is enough reward when you realise how tough that game is!!
But I’ll agree that Tradewest could have made that game a lot less difficult.
3. Commodore 64 Karateka
2. Atari E.T.
1. Commodore 64 Dragon’s Lair
What? No Kid Icarus? Epic Fail
duck tales is pretty hard and it made me hot
I stumbled upon a “tournament” of the top 64 NES games here (www.whereisbenrivera.com) No Kid Icarus, though, is a complete shame.
I always found Castlevania and Top Gun to be nightmares. Ditto with the original Ninja Turtles.
battletoads is easy lol
home alone: completed like 50 times (it was my only game for a while)
contra 4 pretty difficult but not as hard as you make it seem
U should add Silent Hill Origins
No one really said much about Gauntlet on here.. Battle toads will always be impossible, Ghosts N Goblins pretty tough as well. Some mentioned Rambo, not that tough. Friday the 13th was awful but easy once you knew how to defeat Jason. TMNT fun and had its difficult times but was beatable. Bayou Billy was just a pain in the ass more than anything else and Home Alone, come on now!… Lol
There was a game for Playstation I rented once called “Run” that was fucking IMPOSSIBLE. it wasn’t even fun it was so hard. Anyone ever play this? You start off in this glass hallway and your object is to run from bullets and bombs coming at you from every angle. I believe a helicopter was outside the glass, shooting at you through it, bombs dropped from the ceiling and came up from the floor, there was mounted machine guns, etc.
Uh, Tyson was from Brooklyn, not the Bronx.
Else…does anyone really care that much where Tyson is from?
Well, considering I used to live in the same town as him (Bernardsville NJ), he used to jog by me when I was out at the school bus stop every morning, I used to see him and Robin Givens all over, and I am a HUGE boxing fan that grew up watching Tyson fights, and because I thought it was pretty much common knowledge where Mike was from, I wanted to address the fact that whoever wrote this list said,”Nothing could get you prepared for having to dodge oddly timed uppercuts by the Bronx basher.”
Either way, I just posted a simple correction, never made a big deal out of it, so I’m not sure WHY it’s a big deal??
The things nerds get angry about.
This isn’t a history lesson about Mike Tyson. Its a video game list.
Thought he was from Catskills? Or somethin like that? Come on anybody in here really know where Tysons from? Lol. Bein obnoxious by the way, don’t really care…
Back to the future three first level on the horse… as hard a level as ive ever played on anything, you had to have super ninja reflexes to dodge anything.. and i would also like to say Kid Chameleon was a tough cookie of a game
I don’t know about that. I mean all of those games were really hard but still…I think Syobon Action 2 for the computer was exceedingly hard. It took me less time to beat contra than it did that damned game. I think that should be at least number 3 or 4
I beat Ninja Gaiden but i haven’t yet beat Battletoads, also i haven’t played Contra but I’ve only heard that it’s extremely difficult and now people commenting here are saying Battletoads is harder? News to me.
I disagree with the statement made about Contra and having to have the code. I’ve beaten the game 3 times without stopping or resetting the game and without ever going to the Game Over screen the entire time. It took a few days of practice to get up to par to accomplish the task, but it’s not really all that bad. Ninja Gaiden 1 is pretty much the same way until you get to 6-2 and 6-3, which can be very maddening. Still, I think I had much more trouble with the 2nd Ninja Gaiden than the first. Lol.
how is silver surfer not on this list, it is easily the hardest videogame.
Wow, this is a great list. I’m 40 years old and this brings back alot of great memories. Thanks.
I disagree with Contra though, with practice that game is very beatable without the famous code.
I agree that Paperboy was annoying as all heck. You are a magnet for obstacles in that game. It got tiring very fast. I loved Gauntled and got good at it, but there were players who were in a different league. I once played with a kid who reached at least the 45th level on one quarter, with Warrior. Craziest part is he never hogged food – he was just flawless in how he played. I couldn’t leave the arcade, I had to see how far he would get. I got home 2 hours late because of this and caught a whooping from my parents, who were worried sick about where I was.
I actually beat Ghosts & Goblins fair and square, but it was excruciating. The effort needed to get past the first two levels tunes your skills so much, that you actually stand a chance the rest of the way. 2 hits and you are dead… come on now…