Video Games so Difficult You Have to Cry

There was a time when video games were a lot more unforgiving than they are today. Before the invention of save points, continues and endless lives gamers were routinely given three lives to complete horrendously difficult tasks. Games that routinely brought grown men to tears and posed a serious risk for game pads and furniture world wide. Here is a list of the most insanely difficult video games to ever be unleashed on the public.

Punch Out

The original Punch Out for the NES has a reasonable difficulty curve. Sure enough, many gamers found grave frustration in facing the pink menace Vodka Drukinsky (Soda Popinksy in later versions of the game), but with practice all of the foes in the game are manageable. That is until your final fight when you go up against Mike Tyson.

The Mike Tyson fight is notorious for it's extreme difficulty. Not only is Mike Tyson impossibly fast leaving the player virtually no time to react, but one uppercut from the Dynamite Kid is enough to send you straight to the canvas.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

This side scrolling platformer has driven many gamers to the brink of insanity. Playing as the Knight Arthur, the player is faced with an intense onslaught of enemies in this game. Huge waves of enemies are a trademark of the series, but this third installment of the game takes it to a new extreme. Mercifully Arthur can obtain a suit of armor. However, no matter how upgraded or powerful his armor is it will shatter and fall off at the first impact leaving Arthur to face the hoards of evil in only his underwear.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts was released on the SNES and introduced a new concept to platform games, the double jump. Players can execute a second jump while in air to perform a super jump. Jumping is essential in the game but also a factor that drives the difficulty of the game through the roof. Once Arthur commits to a jump the player has no control over his movement. Any seasoned gamers will know the frustration of sailing helplessly towards a newly appeared foe, counting the milli seconds before guaranteed death.

Contra

Contra is a classic franchise converted from the arcades to the NES. The difficulty was always brutal for these run and gun games, but according to many gamers no game is harder than Contra 4. Contra is a side scrolling run and gun game and Contra 4 takes the game back to these roots. The game was released on the Nintendo DS in 2007 and was hailed by gamers as a return to the original style of the series.

The action in Contra is frantic to say the least. The screen fills up with enemies and bullets while the player has to run and gun their way through a series of stages that quickly can turn into a button mashing exercise in hoping for the best. The action itself is challenging enough. Add to that that your character dies as soon as he is hit once and the game turns down right brutal. Finally, the boss fights in Contra 4 are incredibly hard adding yet another layer of soul-crushing difficulty to the game.

Mega Man

Mega Man is another classic platform franchise, and another brutally difficult series. Like Contra, Mega Man has recently been reintroduced and two new Mega Man titles are available as downloadable games on all three major consoles. To the delight of fans, the Mega Man games are still brutally difficult. However, as far as difficulty goes, the first Mega Man game still beats out the rest.

While The platforming action is very challenging throughout the series, the first game lacks many of the features that made the following games slightly more forgiving. The controls are very simple giving the player less control than in later ga,es, and energy packs are very scarce.

Battletoads

Battletoads was developed to counter the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and was released late in the life cycle of the NES. The game was developed by legendary developer house Rare and was probably one of the best looking games to be released on the NES. The game is not remembered for its good looks, but rather for its extreme difficulty. In fact, the game is routinely voted hardest game to ever be made.

Battletoads has several different game modes ranging from traditional 2D side scrolling adventures, to pseudo 3D maze levels where players dodge obstacles or outrun extremely deadly enemies. The racing levels are notoriously difficult as they require extreme reflexes and can't be completed without memorizing many different patterns of how obstacles appear. The game is also famous for it's 2 player co-op mode that isn't very cooperative at all. In the intense action friendly fire is unavoidable and frequently see players turning on each other.

Doom 2

Doom is one of the most important video game titles to be released. The game essentially created the first person shooter genre and became a huge commercial success that laid down the blue print for video games for years to follow. The legacy of doom is still widely felt today in a score of games building on the original Doom game.

The follow up game Doom II doesn't expand much on the original game, but it significantly increases the difficulty. One sign of the troubles facing the player is when boss characters from the first game shows up as regular level monsters in the game. As with all Doom games there are many different difficulty settings. The most difficult mode is Nightmare, a game mode that truly lives up to its name.

Legend of Zelda: The Adventures of Link

The Adventure of Link, or Zelda II was a radical shift in the Zelda series from the original game. It parted from the top down view of the original and introduced elements that became integral to the Legend of Zelda series. Most notably an experience point system that lets Link level up and a new battle system that includes the use of magic.

The game also produced the most difficult Zelda experience to date. While Link still has his trusty sword, it's so short and his reach so limited that killing enemies requires exceptional timing.

F-Zero GX

The F-Zero franchise is known for it's over the top racing at breakneck speeds with a host of obstacles and hostile enemies to boot. The action is always frantic in F-Zero games, but the Gamecube entry pushes the format to an almost ridiculous extreme.

One element introduced that can make the game very difficult to master is snaking. Snaking is a technique that can be used when exiting a turn. By leaning into the curve correctly and snaking out of the turn, players can hit in game speeds over 1800 mph. This kind of speed naturally tests the players reflexes quite severely and is downright impossible to control on the more difficult levels.

Mushihimesama

Mushihimesama is a vertical scrolling space shooter that takes the concept of 'bullet hell' to a new dimension. The player controls a tiny space ship up against increasingly humongous insect like enemies. The extreme difficulty in this game is created by enemy fire taking up well over 90% of the screen real estate almost constantly. The game requires a high level of pattern memorization, quick reflexes and pin point control. The final boss in this game is as close to impossible to beat as you can get.

A**hole Mario

This game is not an actual game but rather a collection of out of this world difficult Super Mario World levels. The levels are created by hacking the original game and creating custom levels. The pure evil and brilliant creativeness of the level designs are breathtaking. The fact that some players actually subject themselves to the game and even beat it is beyond comprehension. The levels are so unfair, so insanely difficult and so utterly devilish that no other game comes close to the difficulty level. The game can be downloaded for free if you want to experience the ultimate sense of repeated failure.