Toughest Games To Finish

In the early days of gaming, games were often designed to be super difficult. They were a true test of a player’s skill. Developers wanted you to have trouble, and they wanted you to get frustrated. Nowadays most games are softer and easier, but here is a list of the toughest games to finish whether they are hard and/or annoying to beat.

Mike Tyson’s Punchout (Nes)
Getting to Mike Tyson isn’t that difficult, but to time all the uppercuts against him perfectly was unbearably difficult. Unlike Contra though, Tyson could be beat with hours and hours of practice. Still, Mike Tyson is one of the most noticeable signifiers for “Difficult Boss” in video game history. Every gamer is struck with fear in having to battle an opponent who could spell game over for you in 1 hit.

Back To The Future (NES)
Back to the Future was nothing like the great movie that preceded it. Walking down the street would prove to be one of the most difficult tasks in a video game ever. Then when you finally get through the walking, the game brings on even more hard and annoying challenges making it 1 tough game to finish.

F-zero GX (Gamecube)
GX took the blisteringly fast races from previous entries in the series, and added merciless enemy AI and excruciating track designs. Furthermore, GX saw the introduction of Story Mode, which upped the ante even further with its utterly impossible challenges and multiple difficulty levels. The game’s difficulty ramped up at a rate where players always felt like the next challenge was surmountable.

Bionic Commando (NES)
Bionic Commando must have been made to be intentionally difficult. The jumps you have to make in this game are some of the hardest in gaming history. Your swing mechanism was hard as hell to control and would often leave you dead in a ditch. The levels are long and the enemies are never ending. Now there was a trick to get unlimited lives, so it is debatable if it belongs on this list, but without that exploit how hard is the game?

Devil May Cry 3 (Playstation 2)
This is one of those games that knows it’s hard, and presents the challenge. It’ll initially seem very difficult to avoid getting hit in Devil May Cry 3. You can’t withstand many hits, and unlike in similar games, you don’t get some sort of invulnerability grace period after you’ve taken damage. So if five enemies attack you at once, you’ll take all five of those hits and will probably die. Making it one tough game to finish.

Contra (NES)
Most people may remember constantly dying in this hard game and resorting to using the cheat code. There are some claims that with some basic memory and after getting used to the patterns, Contra becomes relatively easy, but that is why this is considered one of the toughest games, but not impossible.

Mega Man 9 (Wii, PS3, Xbox360)
Making it to Dr. Wily’s castle is super hard, let alone beating it. Capcom ratcheted up the toughness several notches when they designed this new-yet-old game, and it definitely shows. Beware of vanishing platforms in this one, along with all the other challenges they threw in to make you pull out your hair.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
Most gamers have fond memories of the Ninja Turtles from their 8- and 16-bit days - that is, unless they played the very first Ninja Turtle game. A side-scrolling action affair, Ninja Turtles was horribly unfair, riddled with glitches and frustrating to the max. Then there is the underwater level which took an already hard game and made it even worse.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (Lost Levels) (NES, SNES)
This isn’t the watered-down American version of Super Mario 2. This is the actual Super Mario Bros. 2, complete with wind and poisonous mushrooms. This is 1 tough game to beat, especially when the wind kicks in and you get swept off a platform you thought you’d safely mounted or when you go over the flagpole only to reach a teleport that takes you back worlds.

Ghosts ‘n Goblins (NES)
What kind of game puts you through hell to rescue the princess and then, once the final boss is defeated, tells you that you don’t get a REAL ending until you beat it all AGAIN? Ghosts ‘n Goblins does and you need to do it if you really want to beat the game.

Battletoads (NES)
Battletoads is one of the few games where, not only can you beat up your fellow player, you can EASILY beat them up. The field of action was just too small half the time to avoid hitting each other. Coupled with a glitch that rendered the multi player experience futile and levels requiring as much luck as lightning reflexes, Battletoads was nearly impossible to beat.

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