The hardest video games of all time

[AnotherCrapUsername]

Treasure Island Dizzy on the Amstrad. Absolute cunt of a game with only the one life and a terrible inventory system that made the one life all the more tragic.

Would still give up my kids to go back to those days of playing it and getting frustrated with it.

[Carbomb]

On 10/11/2025 at 12:54 AM, SpiritOfTheForest said:

Someone else had Deathtrap Dungeon! I had it when I was a kid and I'm not sure I even made it past the first level. I remember the booklet included with the game was called the "Bestiary" and it has to be the best booklet for a video game ever compiled. It gave details of all the monsters and their lore and it was such a great addition. Of course, it was all made redundant when 11 year old me couldn't progress far enough to encounter any of these creatures but it really captured the imagination of a small boy. Someone's uploaded it online here if anyone wants to check it out! https://www.mocagh.org/miscgame/deathtraple-bestiary.pdf 

 

The reason it was my first PS purchase was that I had the original Fighting Fantasy game book of the same name, and its sequel, Trial of Champions.

One interesting thing was that, even though the game and the game books were Ian Livingstone's IP, alongside Warhammer, the developers couldn't use the term "Skaven" and had to call them "Ratmen" in the Bestiary.

[BomberPat]

On 10/11/2025 at 11:57 AM, Merzbow said:

Back on topic, Shadow of The Beast 1 & 2.. both were shit and stupidly hard but looked amazing.

I think one of the Shadow Of The Beast games, can't remember which, was the first time I ever encountered a game where not picking up an item at the right time made it completely unwinnable, and there was no way of going back and getting it. Just a completely broken mess.

My other Shadow Of The Beast story is that we had quite a complicated console owning history - my Mum ran the village youth club, and bought a Mega Drive for it, but during the summer when the youth club wasn't running, we'd keep the console at home, so most of the time we had a Master System at home, but we got the Mega Drive during the summer holidays. My dad was working in Ritz Video, so alongside the handful of games that belonged to the youth club, we'd rent games cheap from his work. One day, a couple of games got nicked from the village hall where the youth club ran, so Mum decided it was for the best that we just keep the Mega Drive at home all the time, apart from the one evening a week that it was needed at the club. So we ended up effectively owning the thing even though the council paid for it (the same went for our first PS1). 

Once we got the Mega Drive at home, Dad decided we should get rid of the Master System. He had managed to get hold of a Master System convertor for the Game Gear somewhere - either a carboot sale, or a "fell off the back of a lorry" situation, I would guess, as around the same time we also ended up with the very rare, very expensive, and utterly useless Game Gear TV adaptor. We figured that if we could still play Master System games on the Game Gear, then there was definitely no need to keep the console, particularly now we had gained the Mega Drive. It was only once we'd got rid of the Master System that we realised that, it being a game built in to the console, we could no longer play Alex Kidd In Miracle World, and I wasn't very happy about that. Then my Dad discovered that the one Master System game he ever played, Operation Wolf, was also unplayable on the Game Gear - the way the Master System version worked, it just assumed that you had a light gun plugged into controller port 1, so to use a regular controller you had to plug it into port 2, but of course the Game Gear has no port 2, and the game assumes it's a light gun. Devastated. 

Finally, the Game Gear started to break, and the 2 button just wouldn't work any more. Not great for a console that only has two buttons in the first place, but when you don't have many options, you try and make do. I remember playing Shadow Of The Beast, where the 1 button was punch, and 2 was jump, and managed to complete at least one level just by jumping over every bad guy and rushing past them, and even as a kid just thinking that this game was shit and badly designed if you could do that. Of course eventually you come up against a big boss that you have to fight, and there's no way to get past them when all you can do is jump, so we binned it off after that.

[Browser Brady]

Got TOP GUN 2 : The Second Mission on the NES for my 11th birthday.

 

A shite game but i spent hours at it and only made it to the second level a handful of times.

 

Bart Vs the Space mutants on the NES was excellent but also very difficult.

[LCJ]

I also recall Bart vs the Space Mutants being a very difficult game. I was nowhere near completing it.

[Lorne Malvo]

Probably not one of the hardest of all time, but Jak II is worth mentioning for the fact that it was such a huge increase in difficulty compared to the first game. Taking a fun colourful game of average difficulty and making the follow-up a grimdark exercise in frustration was a weird choice.

Stuntman was a bastard of a game too. 

[Chilly McFreeze]

On 10/10/2025 at 6:54 AM, RedTwoster said:

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

When this game was announced, I was buzzing. I loved the original Crash games, and I had every faith this would be excellent. When the reviews came in, they were glowing. Then I played it. Fuck.

I’d be shocked if anyone out there has 100% completed this without utterly giving their life away to it. It’s beyond difficult. The older Crash games were challenging at times, but ultimately they were pretty breezy platformers that didn’t require insane levels of skill to get through. They were more about fun than the challenge.

This utter bastard of a game, though? You have to be precision-perfect if you’re to collect all boxes. Even if you give up on doing that and aim simply to complete the game, death sits around every corner, sticking the middle finger up at you. Some of the bosses in particular put even the most frustrating of From bosses (I’m looking at you, Godskin Duo) to shame. 

 

It feels like an entire game of those fan-built Mario Maker levels designed to be almost impossible to complete; the level of difficulty often feels unfair. I got to a point in this where I knew I couldn’t get any further, and I just had to give up. I’ve contemplated revisiting it but even the thought of doing that makes me shudder. 

For me, this is the most difficult game I’ve ever played. Sometimes a game feels hard, but not impossible. I’m pretty certain that I don’t have it in me to complete this.

Over to you - what do you consider the hardest games you’ve played?

Not to brag but I've 106% completed Crash 4 twice. I double dipped on the PS4 and Switch because I loved it so much.

Honestly, it's really fucking hard, but not THAT hard. It just depends how much you like the gameplay. I think the movement is one of the best in any 3d Platformer and loved it so much I was quite happy to sink untold hours into completing it. The downside to the game is it's incredibly bloated so just becomes time consuming, but no one individual challenge or level is overly hard.

Same goes for Celeste, which is genuinely hard, but also the most encouraging and forgiving game you could ever play as it is always getting you to keep trying.  100% that bad boy twice too. It also happens to be one of the best games I've ever played and I would highly recommend it (there's a no death mode if you can't be arsed to 'git gud', the story alone is worth playing it for.)

[Bus Surfer]

1 hour ago, LCJ said:

I also recall Bart vs the Space Mutants being a very difficult game. I was nowhere near completing it.

As a kid, I absolutely wanted to love this game. The first level just seemed so at home with the Simpsons that it blew my tiny mind. The streets of Springfield, Cherry Bombs, Calling Moes, it really incapsulated the feel of it, Unfortunately, the Krusty Land level where you have to ride the jets of air to make it across the other side always ended my run through. I never got past this part. Games could be absolutely brutal back then.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2025 by Bus Surfer

[lanky316]

A spot in here for the games on the Speccy or C64 that either were unfinished and so had ridiculously hard levels to stop you finishing or had a game breaking bug that made it impossible... I'm especially looking at you Jet Set Willy.

[tiger_rick]

I really liked the Mickey Mouse game, Castle of Illusion on the Master System but I never ever got past the level with all the sweets and cakes. Echo the Ecco comments. That game was a nightmare. California Games was one of my favourites ever but the surfing was really hard. Think I was shit at the frisbee too. 

Don't want to drift too much into sports games because there were plenty that I found too hard to even understand, particularly early NHL and Madden games. I've always loved football games, obviously but I was absolutely wank at the Euro 92 game on the master system. I've always put it down as a crap game but I think it might just be because I was crap at it. There was a management game that I really loved on the Atari ST and Amiga, think it was something to do with Graham Taylor, and it was a really well designed game expect injuries and fatigue just absolutely crippled you if you played it much. Just fundamentally broken.

[Jesse]

My mood for YouTuber voice/reactions waxes and wanes but when I'm in the mood for it I've really enjoyed Grandpoobear (formser Super Mario World speedrunner) playing through really hard games from the NES era and trying to actually reach the credits.

25 games on this list including my own white whale of Super Ghouls n Ghosts which is still a bastard to beat now.
 

 

[King Mal the Glorious]

On 10/10/2025 at 6:18 PM, Wideload90 said:

My biggest nomination though is comix zone. Punching walls damages you and weakens you so enemies molest you with ease. Never got past 2nd level to even see the superhero.... Rubbish.

I also never finished this, but through no fault of my own. There's a glitch in one of the late levels where you have to jump across a gap, however attempting to do it crashes the game and you have to start all over again. Never got passed it, must've been a dodgy cartridge.

[johnnyboy]

4 hours ago, LCJ said:

I also recall Bart vs the Space Mutants being a very difficult game. I was nowhere near completing it.

Complete it?  I don't think I saw the second level on the copy that came with my Amiga

[Carbomb]

18 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

I really liked the Mickey Mouse game, Castle of Illusion on the Master System but I never ever got past the level with all the sweets and cakes.

I never completed Castle of Illusion either, but it was the very last level that, the haunted castle, that was impossible for me - there was a scrolling section, which you could only get past by bouncing on ghosts flying towards you or you'd fall and lose. Could never nail it, just too difficult - and because it was so far into the level, I always had to start it again when I fell, meaning I couldn't get enough practice in on the timings straight after dying, so I didn't retain it.

A shame, because the rest of the game was brilliant. 

[Devon Malcolm]

I guess I could say Super Meat Boy but I guess that's by design rather than accident. A game for sociopaths.