Wow, I hadn't thought about that 1993 X-men game since... well... 1993. I had forgotten I knew it existed.

MBK: If it weren't for Skyrim, Dark Souls would have my vote for game of the year.

Bad at Skyrim = bad at most games.

In b4 battletoads.

ROBOTRON!! Stupidly repetitive - farking frustrating! God I loved that game. Anyone out there know if it's available for PC or online?

/sheds nostalgic tear...
//put enough quarters in that machine to buy a small island...

Where's I Wanna Be The Guy? This isn't just commercially sold games, NetHack's on there... (although NetHack's old and more well known)

Confabulat: Games that were ruined for me because of their insane difficulty: Star Wars on the Sega 32X

Friggin Super Star Destroyer level. Never could get past that as a kid. :-(

If the difficulty of a game is gauged on the likelihood that you are physically able to finish said game without dwindling into the forlorn depths of gibbering insanity, does that mean Superman 64 is the hardest game ever?

Contra? Seriously? When he was good at the game, my brother could finish the game with 6 lives. Without using the code. If that's not clear, that's 3 more than you start with.

/I was less good. I could still beat the game without the code or continues.

No Dragon's Lair on the NES?

Arriving at Lave without a docking computer?

\old school

Coelacanth: I learned everything I needed to know from Robotron

I learned everything i needed to know from Pong
I don't know allot...

Hey, I beat X-Men. Mojo's level did drive me crazy. It was like the fifth level. If you didn't reset the computer, It would kill you and you'd have to start over. I finally figured it out, or someone told me or something. It was a fun game.

/also if you use nightcrawler you could teleport through an entire level without fighting anyone but the boss.

Dwhaerter: No Dragon's Lair on the NES?

Never even made it past the first stage.

no ET? the list fails.

Also the NES version of Dragon's Lair really sucked compared to the arcade version

Monty on the Run. It singlehandedly raised game music from beeps to, well, music. It was also outrageously difficult, even in a time when most games were much, much harder than they are today.

I'll also add Iridis Alpha. I've tried playing it again recently in an emulator and dies in seconds. I've no idea how I managed to play it through multiple levels when I was a wean. Then again, maybe it was because you had to be quick just to play games at all then.

how many times are these articles going to get greenlit? Seems like I'm reading "hardest games to beat EVER" from various different sites and blogs every other day here. I feel sorry for TFers, I can't even imagine how many of these come through.

Meh. I think I've only played two games on that list...

I did play Infocom'shiatchhiker's Guide, though. Adventure games, in general, are not particularly hard. You just have to find the specific commands to make the story continue.

/ but no, I never bothered to finish the Hitchhiker's Guide game

Fury Pilot: Arriving at Lave without a docking computer?

\old school

I died more times trying to land that damn thing. I wonder how much interplanetary commerce I farked up by causing delays while the scraped my carcass out of the launchbay.

That and those farking Thargolds, sucking me into subspace. I could kill them occasionally, but never figured out how to escape afterwards.

Contra, are you farking kidding me?

Get the spread gun, don't completely suck cock, the end.

Hardest feat in the history of video games ...

hamfast gamgee: ROBOTRON!! Stupidly repetitive - farking frustrating! God I loved that game. Anyone out there know if it's available for PC or online?

/sheds nostalgic tear...
//put enough quarters in that machine to buy a small island...

MAME has it (you can find the ROMS on the torrent sites with little trouble). You will need to buy the joysticks for it though and a set of XArcade duals will cost you over $100. On the plus side there are thousands of more games that MAME emulates so if you like the arcade games it makes it worth the cost.

A gamepad just won't cut it with Robotron (it will work but it kills your hands) but it will work with most of the rest of them.

I can proudly say I beat the dark world ending of Super Meat Boy. There is something about the controls and physics of that game that really clicks with my gaming abilities. It's like being able to see 4, 5, or 6 moves ahead because of the precise pattern of the enemies and obstacles, and then the tight controls play right into what you want to do. If I want to make meat boy jump a certain way, I can. And because it's so well designed in that way, it actually takes some of the difficulty away, as much of the difficulty in so many 2D games comes from shoddy controls and poor level design.

Ya I don't really understand how Contra is being considered hard. My cousin and I used to see how many times we could play through in a row before the Nintendo would come to a near screeching halt due to so much lag caused by the increased amount of enemies per play through. Game is ridiculously easy.

This is much better than the crappy list that we had (either from gawker or college humor) a few weeks back.

Also fuuuuuuu, Dead rising was 2006, man that seems so long ago now.

MBK: If it weren't for Skyrim, Dark Souls would have my vote for game of the year.

We're talking about hard games, the easiest RPG series in the world has no place in this discussion. Though I guess Dark Souls might, it could be pretty frustrating if you weren't the kind of kid that grew up on games with limited savepoints.

//Skyrim is Fallout 3 with the setting replaced with generic fantasy pap. And the console control scheme sucks, the quick-select system is a nested menu, what the hell? And where the fallout games running on the system had a crafting system based on combining crazy stuff into random, hilarous weapons with unique effects, Skyrim's system goes the World of Warcraft path, which was boring in WoW and both boring and nonsensical in a single-player game. I have other complaints regarding quest tree optimization and so-on, but suffice it to say that I'm basically only playing the game because it lets you roll Senator Palpatine and lightning-hand dragons to death, and Old Republic isn't out yet.

RatMaster999: Fury Pilot: Arriving at Lave without a docking computer?

\old school

I died more times trying to land that damn thing. I wonder how much interplanetary commerce I farked up by causing delays while the scraped my carcass out of the launchbay.

That and those farking Thargolds, sucking me into subspace. I could kill them occasionally, but never figured out how to escape afterwards.

You press the key to jump to hyperspace again.

/was once attacked to two Thargoid ships at once and beat them

i could beat Contra with more than 3 lives, yes without using the code, and this is proof that list fails because: repeat: i am not a gamer and never have been. i bet i could still do it.

i've never even played any of the others and i know it fails.

Fury Pilot: Arriving at Lave without a docking computer?

\old school

Docking computers are a waste of time and money. Fly near the station, then fly toward the planet (or away from, I don't remember exactly), stop and turn around, you are now in the direction of the door, fly in while rotating. Easy and much faster than with a docking computer.

RatMaster999: Fury Pilot: Arriving at Lave without a docking computer?

\old school

I died more times trying to land that damn thing. I wonder how much interplanetary commerce I farked up by causing delays while the scraped my carcass out of the launchbay.

That and those farking Thargolds, sucking me into subspace. I could kill them occasionally, but never figured out how to escape afterwards.

you fly angled so that the station is on your left and the planet on your right. Fly until you are between the station and the planet. turn to face station. move analog joystick to match station rotation. accellerate to full speed. dock.

I have no idea how people found this hard.

Metal Gear Solid? I never thought any of that game was frustrating or hard.

dready zim: you fly angled so that the station is on your left and the planet on your right. Fly until you are between the station and the planet. turn to face station. move analog joystick to match station rotation. accellerate to full speed. dock.I have no idea how people found this hard.

Most of us were using digital joysticks or the keyboard. Matching the rotation required very delicate waggling as the ship's rotation was faster than the station's. I found it to be easier to fly in very very close, stop, then hit the engine and hope for the best when the entrance rolled around.

divx88: Ya I don't really understand how Contra is being considered hard. My cousin and I used to see how many times we could play through in a row before the Nintendo would come to a near screeching halt due to so much lag caused by the increased amount of enemies per play through. Game is ridiculously easy.

Agreed. Contra shouldn't be anywhere near this list. Great game, regardless. (And Super C was even easier.)

Now, the arcade versions are pretty hard, but that's mostly because the control is so horrible.

Jim_Callahan: //Skyrim is Fallout 3 with the setting replaced with generic fantasy pap.

So much fail in such a short sentence.