Whats the hardest game YOU ever played? (Non Rom Hack)

[Enterim]

Gah! I swear Battletoads wasn't made for humans!

[Wak]

I never finished The Legend of Zelda, I never finished The Legend of Zelda II, I never finished Super Metroid. Lacking of hints to finish a game blows my patience.

I never finished Metroid Prime because I watched all those runs on SDA before to play... so I was capable to go to places I wasn't supposed to with the help of jumping glitches, and I got fucking lost hardcore. I exchanged my game to 4 Sword Adventure at this point.

What makes me not finish a game is pretty rarely a matter of skills, but a matter of omg I just simply don't get where or what I'm supposed to do.

[Enterim]

I was playing Contra III: The Alien Wars with my brother earlier on the Wii and it was actually pretty playable and fun. Then we broke out the Genesis and "played" Contra: Hard Corps. Hard Corps is less of a game and more of an exercise in recognising futility.

[Darkwing Duck]

I started playing Dragon Warrior II again...

Dear lord, I'd forgotten how difficult that game is.
"We're going to give vauge hints about where you are supposed to go, what you are supposed to do, and best of all, no effective means to telling where you are, even with a world map!"
"Hey Prince!  You can't use any magic, even though you're the main character and the one who will die last!  Guess what?  If someone else dies, you can't do anything unless you have the Worldleaf! =D"

And of course, teh Rhone cave. >_<

Edit:
Forget the stupid cave, change that to the ENTIRE LAST AREA.  Random encounters that have a good chance of wiping out the party, and the final boss that takes 30 minutes to get to likes to do party-wipes that you have no chance of recovering from. *twitch*  This is with characters properly grind-fested up, BTW.

You need to speed run it now. 

The Road to Rhone is by far the hardest dungeon to pass through that I can ever recall playing.  Only other one I can think of is Infinity in Breath of Fire II, but that may be because I had to keep my shaman melds.  The road is still really hard even if you know where exactly to go.  Definite thumbs up to anyone who has beaten it with no help.

[Chromium]

Dear god not the Road to Rhone.....I was two steps from the exit once and got massacred by a group of Green Dragons.  Controller throwing and swearing ensued.  I had to grossly overlevel just to beat this game.

[mikwuyma]

I was playing Contra III: The Alien Wars with my brother earlier on the Wii and it was actually pretty playable and fun. Then we broke out the Genesis and "played" Contra: Hard Corps. Hard Corps is less of a game and more of an exercise in recognising futility.

I've never really understood why people think Contra: Hard Corps is so hard. Do they just play it once, die on the first stage some (which is actually one of the harder stages in the game), then just give up? The game is actually a complete memorizer. Once you memorize the boss patterns, the game becomes very easy because there's very little randomness, and none of the bosses take a long time to kill (even with the pea shooter).

[mithical87]

Playing theworldshardestgame now, yeah level 10 is... yeah. Hrm. Much smaller window at the 6th ball. Much smaller. Yeah.

One of the most difficult things I've done is the Secret Message shinespark-charged marathon in Metroid Fusion. I know Metroid is big around here but that was just so hard.. I have big thumbs so I hate tiny little D-Pads. I wonder what it would be like on a GC controller. It took me weeks of practice. Gave up. Came back to it a month later. More weeks. One morning I got up at 6 am and finally pulled it off. I woke up everyone in the house... 

One odd yet incredibly challenging game I've played is a frogger clone UMS map in Starcraft. My friends and I played it for hours and hours, eventually one friend and I were able to beat the last level (5). Every time you die it spawns like 30 zerglings around you and kills them all. Splat. Sometimes the AI would get a little screwy and they'd veer off their destined paths. Especially the reavers. Fuck those reavers.

Oh! Jumper 1 and 2! Flash based game where you're a little red box named Ogmo or something. You have the arrow keys, a double jump, and that's it. Well in Jumper 2 you can do a side flip and a wall jump, but still only arrow keys. I got all the gems in Jumper 2 and spent awhile speedrunning the first 5 worlds, actually. Some guys were competing on a forum (I think it was samus.co.uk) and I was matching or besting the lowest listed times. Got burnt out after world 5.

As for entire commercial games..
- Legacy of the Wizard on the NES. To be fair I was pretty little at the time but this game was a big goddamn mystery to me. I don't think I even had a manual. After watching the speed runs I see just how far in over my head I was. What the hell is with all the fake blocks!?
- Metroid on the NES. I forget.. can you shoot UP in this one? I remember being horribly frustrated by the controls in this one, even after going back to play it on an emulator.
- Legend of Zelda on the NES. I only ever played it on an emulator.. does the manual help any? I was playing it on 2nd quest mode and couldn't find the 4th dungeon.
- Ikaruga is pretty hard and I only play on Medium. I've seen some youtube videos of absolutely disgusting 2d scrolling shooters.
- The original Monkey Island. My friend and I are still stuck inside the Giant Monkey Skull.
- Guitar Hero. Laaame answer but there are some songs that require a lot of practice. I've beat Lou on Expert in GH3, and I've finished Jordan on Expert in GH2. Haven't spent more than an hour practicing the tapping intro to TTFAF, but it's all that holds me back from finishing it.
- Miss Spell's Class. My best is 22 seconds =P

Just realized you don't need quotes around the url when you use (url=yadayada). Now I need to go back and edit like 3 posts I've made today. Also I'm giving up on the World's Hardest Game because it is getting reeeeaaaaalllly late. Also if you click some links around dictionary.com there's also Anagram Cracker. My time for the word 'Ignoble' was faster than 100% of the other players in the database. I haven't managed to crack the top 10 yet, though.

[sunburstbasser]

In the original Metroid, you have to be patient to play it.  Its really not a hard game to play, its a hard game to get around in.  You can shoot up, but you can't duck, so you'll either be jumping over or morph ball bombing a lot of the game's enemies.  Most of the ceiling enemies can simply be run right past.  Once you get the Wave Beam and the Screw Attack, you'll be set until you hit Tourian where you'll need to nab the Ice Beam again for metroids.  Just take your time until you figure out the little quirks and it'll open up.

Ikaruga is certainly hard, but the whole thing is 100% scripted.  Once you figure out how to beat a section, you'll be able to do it every time.  The enemies will always come in the same waves in the same order and attack at the same time.  The replays available on the Gamecube version help a ton in seeing how to get past a section.  And if you haven't tried it, rotate your monitor (if it won't hurt it).  This game was made for vertically aligned monitors and it makes everything far easier to see and figure out.  The GC version offers two versions of the rotated monitor, one that turns it into a horizontal shooter and leaves your monitor alone and one that switches the controls as well.

In comparison to these games, Legend of Zelda and Super Metroid are pretty simple.  LoZ has lots of wandering about but beyond that most dungeons aren't too bad.  I'm probably a little jaded to Super Metroid's difficulty because I've literally beaten it in excess of 100 times, but every new powerup opens a new area SOMEWHERE and you can often get an expansion or energy tank on the way to it.  Eg:  Killing Crocomire opens up the Grapple Beam and an easy early Power Bomb; Grapple Beam lets you get to the Wrecked Ship the intended way, Wrecked Ship has Phantoon and the Gravity Suit, Gravity Suit+Power Bomb gives access to Maridia, etc. 

Zelda II has a lot of cheap moments and enemies. 

[Frezy_man]

When I was playing Metroid years ago without a FAQ locked myself inside a room for 5 days and painted my own maps for the game so I should not get lost. I have a feeling of that I had to try to bomb every wall in the hole game to get to the next weapon or area. The game does not leave you much of a hint.
I don´t know how many hours I played to fill up the Energy after dying.

I recommend using a guide when playing the first Metroid game at least

[Griggski]

N+.  Beating ALL of the stages is no easy task, and the co-op stages...ugh.  Prepare to die a LOT.  I think I unlocked the achievement for dying 1,000 times during the first evening of gameplay!

[yoshmaster5]

I started playing Dragon Warrior II again...

Dear lord, I'd forgotten how difficult that game is.
"We're going to give vauge hints about where you are supposed to go, what you are supposed to do, and best of all, no effective means to telling where you are, even with a world map!"
"Hey Prince!  You can't use any magic, even though you're the main character and the one who will die last!  Guess what?  If someone else dies, you can't do anything unless you have the Worldleaf! =D"

And of course, teh Rhone cave. >_<

Edit:
Forget the stupid cave, change that to the ENTIRE LAST AREA.  Random encounters that have a good chance of wiping out the party, and the final boss that takes 30 minutes to get to likes to do party-wipes that you have no chance of recovering from. *twitch*  This is with characters properly grind-fested up, BTW.

You need to speed run it now. 

The Road to Rhone is by far the hardest dungeon to pass through that I can ever recall playing.  Only other one I can think of is Infinity in Breath of Fire II, but that may be because I had to keep my shaman melds.  The road is still really hard even if you know where exactly to go.  Definite thumbs up to anyone who has beaten it with no help.

Definately not... I'd go completely insane. ;_;
It's a good game... it just bends you over and sodomoizes you. *shudders*  No amount of money would get me to even try...

[chalmo]

N+.  Beating ALL of the stages is no easy task, and the co-op stages...ugh.  Prepare to die a LOT.  I think I unlocked the achievement for dying 1,000 times during the first evening of gameplay!

I'm proud to say that my brother and I managed to beat N+'s Co-op campaign in a couple of evenings, very proud. However, the newer Ninja Gaiden on Xbox, came out around 2004, is another story. That game kicked my ass six ways to Sunday and then some. It's probably not even that hard but I don't think I ever got past the airship level.

[Metal Dream]

Typing of the Dead - I still camn'Mt type properly witjout having to check my keyboars...see? 

Out Of This World / Prince of Persia - I never got the grasp of those games and I never know where to go!

Metroid (NES) - Watching me curse and fail at this game could be classified under "entertainment"

[TurboSlug22]

Hey guys!

First time poster, long time visitor to SDA. I'd have to say it really depends on how you classify hard. Does a game that you can play for a decade and still not hit the skill ceiling count?

If so - I'd say Continuum.

There's an area in this game to gauge our piloting skills against one another and it turned into something we enjoyed time attacking with each other.

Maybe ill post that in a new thread and see if you guys are interested in checking out some of our videos

You can get the game (freeware) here:

http://www.deathstarbattle.com/downloads/deathstarbattle.exe

While the area I describe is found in the default zone in the zones list, dont forget you can also download all the other zones in our community. They have different flavors but DSB (imo) has the best gameplay.

Been playing for about 8 years myself... Still improving.. but i learn slow and some of you SDA people are INCREDIBLE with your focus and determination to improve upon your previous performance, so I think you would prly be already a few years ahead of people in the community right there alone.

Hope to see you in the star!

[TehRandom]

Maybe T2 for SNES I don't even think that game is possible to complete, I've never made it past the mall, I find John Connor at the arcade but nothing happens.