Nintendo Hard

Now, if you're one of the old school video gamers, you know EXACTLY what this phrase means. I was in Atlas yesterday and someone mentioned the game Star Tropics 2. I thought to myself: "Damn. I remember that game. That game was HARD."

So, do any of you have any of those old "Nintendo Hard" games that it took you YEARS to beat? Mine was Double Dragon 1 and 3 on NES. I owned both when I was like 10 or so, but didn't BEAT either till I was like 22.

And Contra...don't even get me started. I had some guy actually try to tell me that he beat Contra 1 without game genie OR the Konami Code.

Bullsh*t, private, bullsh*t!

Are there any games out now that would be considered "Nintendo Hard"?

BattleToads. That game was stupid hard, like un-enjoyable hard.

Unbeatable without cheating if you ask me. The Clinger Winger was just impossible...

There are a lot of people in the indie gaming / modding scenes who still believe in Nintendo Hard. I can't think of any specific examples right now though. But they are certainly there!

Silver Surfer was incredibly hard! I beat it in time, though.

Top Gun was so damn annoying. I remember celebrating when I actually landed the plane!

The only other that comes to mind is Ninja Gaiden...

For me, it was Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, but in a special way. The game wasn't hard (Except for certain points of precision jumping), so much as hard to follow.

Case in point,

Quote:

Hit your head on Deborah Cliff to make a hole

is supposed to mean something verrry different

Anyway, actual, Nintendo hard games, I'd have to hand it to Top Gun, as above. I don't think I ever landed the dang plane

Contra!

Back to the Future...

It was only recently when I learned that the game was, by all rights, designed not to be beatable.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy. Christ, even back when I was a kid and didn't beat but maybe 1 out of 10 games that I played, that one stood out. I didn't even get far enough that I could say I properly enjoyed the game, but I never actually owned a copy of that, so maybe I just needed practice... Then again, a quick look at Wikipedia tells me that even Captain N himself claimed he could never beat that game. Captain freakin' N, man.

Really, almost every game reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd tends to fall into the "unfairly and unfunly difficult" category.

Then there's always games like this.

Star Ocean on Ps2.
Its a two disk game and itsn't only the fact that its ridiculously long that makes it hard but its filled with a ton of puzzle/maze places.

Hmmm, lets see...

1st one I recall was A boy and his blob. Such a wonderful concept, I just could never figure out where the heck to go or what jellybean to use. Still bugs me I couldn't get into this one.

Super Mario Brothers. The original. I'd crusie right along until level 7-4, then things started getting hairy. At level 8-1 all hope was abandoned.
Could have been the fact that I was 9 years old though...

Ghostbusters. This game can be played right??
Right? All I seem to remember is walking up stairs, and then more stairs...

Here's what we mean by Nintendo Hard.

I remember Battletoads. I recall beating it without cheats or using the warps exactly once, but that was because I'd tried so many times I'd memorized where everything was, to the point where I could draw a map of the Clinger Winger level from memory. I have never been able to duplicate that feat since. I've never liked the idea of getting past a level through memorization of what killed you the last 100 times. Storywise, the hero only gets (and only needs) one chance to get past an obstacle, and needing multiple tries to do so as a player doesn't feel quite as heroic.

I think I might have once finished the first level of the 8-bit Prince of Persia.

Was reading the link to Nintendo Hard and about 3/4th of the way down I notice this:



Any mission in a cave in City Of Heroes is bad. The tunnels are tight, hard to maneuver in and force PCs into close combat which some of them are ill-equipped to survive. But one cave map tile, known to many as "the layercake of doom", takes the cake (pun intended). This large chamber, usually found at the end of a cave, is five levels tall. Not only do the mission objectives often require the whole room to be cleared of foes, but there are many gaps in the floor(s) that can drop an unwary hero down one or more levels, often into a pack of angry enemies, possibly including their boss. And even if it's safe, he still takes falling damage. Groans and expressions of hatred for this room are common whenever it is encountered during a mission.

• Then there's the maps set in the hidden underground city of Oranbega - "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" only begins to cover it. What makes it worse is that the locals have a nasty habit of taking hostages and hiding them in nooks and crannies where they are easily missed.
  • AND the random portals which WILL split your party, whether you want to or not, and the rooms which literally tie themselves in knots, and the hidden passageways which invariably lead to the boss ..

Another Edit: Has to be a Nintendo game......whoops!

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. Been stuck at World 8-3 since I was 11 years old. I'm 25 now. (SNES version, so I have had my progress saved for that long. Really.)

I tried to repeat the path I took so many years ago last month. I almost wanted to travel back in time to ask my younger self how he was ever able to do it.

Jurassic Park on the Sega Genesis. But only if you're playing as the Raptor.

******* Alan Grant.

Or for classic Nintendo retarded...

The original Godzilla game. You know, the one where your options are Mothra who is ******* fantastic at everything and munches the game without difficulty or Godzilla who is painfully, painfully slow and normally is dead before you've stomed anything....

Super Ghouls and Ghosts.

As a friend pointed out, it says in the title the ghosts and ghouls are super not you.

Oh and finishing the game once is just a warmup, now finish it with a crappy weapon on hard to get the real ending.

I agree with the bayou billy. I also found ALL of the Ninja Gaiden's to be hard. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pissed me off. Alot of Konami games were hard without "the code" if you know what I mean. Legendary Wings....I almost ripped my eyeballs out!!!!

When I beat the land speeder stage of battletoads (Solo, dear god never in two player) my friends watching and I cheered like we had just won the Super Bowl or something.

Then I died in Stage 4.

I've watched speed runs of Battletoads and seeing how little of the game I actually got through frightened me.

Castlevania 2 was the second NES game I ever owned, and I eventually figured everything out.

I can only speak from experience, but getting all 120 coins in Super Mario Galaxy is Nintendo Hard. I'm at 100 or so, but some of those purple coin challenges are crazy...

Edit: Just got Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and on the higher difficulties it's Nintendo Hard.

Mega Man 9, the Dr. Wily stages are Nintendo Hard. (The corridor with all the spikes, right after the zero-g sections with all the spikes, before the split-bubble boss, routinely cause me to curse and scream)

Megaman 9 was created to be Nintendo Hard™
It was going back to the classic days of 8 bit gaming, even when it's on a now current-gen console (we're no longer looking for the next generation).

I need to put my hat in on the Star Tropics 2 list. I haven't beaten it, even to this day. I've gotten to C-Island in it, and beat the snake, but after that, the boss gauntlet was nigh-impossible. Always the skeleton miner. Can't figure out how to beat it.

I'm going to avoid pointing out any AVGN games, since we know they are horrible anyways.

2 current games that are Nintendo Hard™ that I've played have been the Bit.Trip series on WiiWare. Fun, but hard.

Finally, Dwarf Fortress on the PC. So notoriously hard that the developer himself says "Losing is Fun!"

This thread is a very good example of why I completely gave up on playing console games. Actually, the early Atari 2600 games started me down that road, but Nintendo just cemented it.

I just bought an XBox a month or so ago. Today's mega blockbuster games are mind-numbingly easy. I could've beaten Mass Effect with my eyes closed. Now granted, I'm playing my 3rd playthrough just to get all the achievements, and it's more grinding than challenging, but still.

Gears of War - mostly easy.
Mass Effect - mostly easy.
Left 4 Dead - mostly easy.

I haven't played any games for consoles in a while that would be concidered "Nintendo Hard", I only fire up an occaisional fighting game when friends come over.

But god do I recall some of those early Nintendo ones.. A thorn in my side was Contra 3: Alien wars on Super NES. It was a love/hate relationship!