List of Hardest Video Games I’ve Beaten

A list of the hardest games I’ve beaten without the aid of modern rewind technology:

Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels

• I beat this one recently using the SNES All Stars version off of The Switch. I guess I could have used the rewind technology. Actually. Did I? Maybe once in a while. I honestly don’t remember. But I don’t think I was using it that much then, if at all, so there’s a good chance I’m not lying here. I am pretty sure I mostly used my skill.

Zelda II: Adventure of Link

• I had it on the 3DS. I’d played it a couple times before. This time I played through it twice in a row. Once as a practice. Then a second time and I lost a few lives during the second playthrough but I never game overed and had to start from the first castle with sleeping Zelda. And neither playthrough did I hide in the corner, crouch and poke at Shadow Link. I gave that fight the attention it deserves.

Super The Empire Strikes Back

• I was so happy when I beat Darth Vader. I don’t think it was the hardest setting but it wasn’t the easiest. Probably whatever difficulty setting it’s set to automatically. I don’t remember. I can’t remember what part of that game was the hardest but it wasn’t Darth Vader at the end.

Super R-Type

• The easiest setting. But it was on the original hardware. At first I was disappointed in the final boss, and I still am a little. It doesn’t look creepy enough. But I do like that it makes you think a bit. The main thing you’re attacking looks to be an embryo. The trick to win the fight is to just keep moving back and forth, like sexual thrusts. Can’t say I’ve ever seen that in any other video game. But I’m probably just virginal when it comes to that. The music in Super R-Type, like Spider-Man and X-Men, is some of the best stuff I’ve ever heard in a video game. ‘Solo Sortie’ and ‘Wet as a Fish.’ Check those tracks out on Youtube.

Revenge of Shinobi

• I got to the last boss as a kid but never beat him. I did it recently on my Wii, though. Can’t rewind with that. These days I can get pretty far on the hardest difficulty setting and I could probably beat it too I just don’t know how much patience I’d have. Why do I like Revenge of Shinobi a lot more than Shinobi 3?

Spider-Man and X-Men in: Arcade’s Revenge

• When I was younger I was always able to beat all the levels except two. Gambit’s and Wolverine’s second level. You really gotta keep plugging away and practicing to beat those bosses. Especially Juggernaut. He’s so cheap. Now, I mostly appreciate the representation Marvel’s rogue’s gallery here, but it’s really really really lame how Storm doesn’t have any X-Men villains to fight. I think Blob and Toad would have been good choices. Her levels suck too but apparently it’s based on the comic book, so whatever.

Mortal Kombat 2 (SNES)

• This game has 5 difficulty settings. Very Easy. Easy. Medium. Hard. And Very Hard. I think if you play it on Very Hard, an actual fist pops out of the screen and hits you in the face. I don’t know, I’ve never tried. The game is hard even on the easiest setting. SNESDRUNK absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said that there’s something about the way the game is designed, at a certain point the game just decides that you’re done and you don’t get to win the match. And some moves and dodges that really should have worked for some reason just aren’t. It’s strange. You have to play the game and be somewhat intimate with it to know what I’m talking about. I’ve beaten MK2 on Medium. I play through the game as Johnny Cage, kill Kintaro, then I have to switch to Liu Kang and use his low fireball to beat Shao Khan. It’s a bit of a cheese but it gets the job done. And Medium setting is already kind of insane. I also like using Reptile in MK2 but I don’t usually get very far. I just think he’s cool. I’ve beaten Mortal Kombat 3 as well. Night Wolf, Sektor, Liu Kang and one or two others were my characters. But this was for the DS. And I don’t remember what difficulty setting I was on. Night Wolf is the only character whose combos I can figure out. They’re still tough to do.

Do Mario 3 and the other Super Star Wars games count? In Super Return of the Jedi, I never actually escaped from the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon. So I’m not sure if that counts. It’s a boring level and the rest of the game is over anyway. I beat The Emperor and checked out the ending online.

I keep trying but I really don’t like Super Ghouls and Ghosts.

What other games am I forgetting?

At one point in time, after hours of Dragon Ball Z-like practice, I used to be able to go up against three level nine computers all on the same team in the original N64 Super Smash Bros. on free for all mode. Once or twice I even won the match using Mario.

Mario Kart kicks my ass. You reading this: you’re better than me at Mario Kart. I got pretty good at the DS version. I think that was my favorite Mario Kart. The other ones are too cheap. And fuck that blue shell. Using that blue shell is like what this program has been doing to me all my life. It’s so unfair.

Feel free to disagree with me but Mario 64 is one of the hardest games I’ve played. It’s the controls. They land somewhere between broken and just usable enough to keep you playing. I’m not sure if they intended for me to feel so unconfident in the way Mario handles in that game, but it actually kind of becomes its own challenge just getting him to do what you want to do and I’ve beaten the game with 120 stars a couple times. I don’t like the DS remake but I like what it was trying to do. I think it just kind of fell right on its face trying it. To be honest. The original Mario 64 is probably my second favorite Mario game after Mario Bros. 3. Super Mario World used to be my second favorite but I think time has changed that. And I never ever would have guessed because Mario 64 really gets my gamer blood boiling. I don’t know. You tell me. If you like video games, and Mario, but you’ve never played Mario 64 before, you pick it up and give it a shot and tell me if I’m hallucinating about the wonky controls. The controls and physics for Mario Galaxy, Sunshine and Odyssey feel much smoother and manageable.

The six ‘extra’ levels in Yoshi’s Island (SNES) are pretty challenging. I was surprised at how hard those levels could get compared to the rest of the game.

I feel like I’m missing some other examples. What am I forgetting?

I beat Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety but with codes. I don’t think it’s manageable without them.

Does Might and Magic VII count? I’ve beaten this game so many times I have to stack my party with the weakest classes just to have fun. My brothers feel the same way.

Does Azure Dreams count? (Spoilers! The final boss is a non-boss let-down, but getting to him is fairly challenging. You try it.)

There are a lot of puzzles in Dragon Quest III that are kind of bullshit. There are some things, and I assume I’m going to encounter more, that you really could or should not be able to figure out given the in-game clues. Also, for the remake, I hope they tone down that encounter rate. Or make the holy water, etc., actually do something.

I’ve beaten Ragu Ragula in the first Wild Arms once or twice. Probably only once. That may be the hardest RPG fight I’ve ever had. He’s harder than Zeik Tuvai, by a lot, and Zeik Tuvai is already pretty hard (depending on how lucky you get).

(Culex is pretty tough but manageable.)

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I never beat it, or got very far because I was so dang young, but I played Fester’s Quest a long time ago. It’s weird that they made a game based on a side character from an old television show, because the game came out a few years before the Sonnenfeld films. Japan seems to be very good at predicting things.

I remember liking the game. I laughed at the face he made in the beginning cut scene.