10 of the Hardest Video Games Ever Made and Why That's a Good Thing

Image via Complex Original

Developer: Tecmo/Team Ninja
Release date: 1988 (original)
Platform: a version has dropped on nearly every platform.

The entire Ninja Gaiden series is considered one of the hardest series ever released. It all started with the original Ninja Gaiden and its ramped-up difficulty. There are two great truths to Ninja Gaiden: ninjas are awesome and victory is bittersweet. Even if you make it past the multitudes of sword wielding enemies, bouncing your way through shuriken storms to try to save your father, you will most likely die immediately after. The final satanic boss battle is insane and multilayered. If you do manage to get to the end (spoiler ahead) Irene is ordered to kill you and we’re left with a cliffhanger!

In our humble opinion Ninja Gaiden has the best story game of any ninja themed game/movie ever made. In addition to killer artwork, great music and a jumping mechanic that made us thing we could pre-parkour up the side of the house. It was hard, but it was so worth it to see the next cut-scene.

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Release date: 1998
Platform: Gamecube

Nintendo’s futurist hover-ship racing game was always difficult. But the crazy colors and splash graphics of F-Zero GX blew our minds. The insanely fast tracks rarely had sides, meaning players were more often than not, thrown off into oblivion. Every twist and turn of the track had to be memorized, or written down, to retrace after your next inevitable death.

Why go through all this punishment? Because there is no greater reward than having your friends play only to decimate them on games that they most likely love. After all, who doesn’t love F-Zero? If you managed to battle to the end the payoff were crazy tracks and devilish AI.

Developer: Capcom 
Release date: 1985
Platform: NES/Arcade

Our introduction to this incredibly hard game came in arcade form. With colorful and engrossing graphics we were sucked in. Only to find that we game up a small fortune in quarters desperately trying to keep our clothes on. Ghosts ‘n Goblins is all about armor and preferably keeping it on. One hit and little Arthur is in his underwear, two hits and Arthur’s dead.

The level design and variety of foes make the game difficult to adapt to as Arthur is being attacked on all sides. Possibly the most frustrating and tear-inducing feature of the game was that, unlike nearly all of its counterparts, once Arthur jumped in Ghosts ‘n Goblins the player lost all control of where he would land.

So why did we keep playing? Because the game has everything we love right there in the title. The undead, fire dragons, knights and great art so that we didn’t mind not getting past the first level; just playing felt rewarding.

Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Release date: 2009
Platform: PC

It could be argued that the ARMA series from Bohemia Interactive is less of a game and more like a pucker-inducing sweat-pouring military simulation. How hard is ARMA II? The combined realism, enormous maps and textbook size strategy manuals will leave the casual player scratching their heads. The game is an immersive highly realistic simulation; in fact part of its difficulty is that it is probably too realistic.

For gamers used to playing Battlefield or Call of Duty, ARMA II is a rude wake up call. This is not a game where you can just jump in and start dropping baddies. So if your idea of fun in sitting down to some intense note-taking strategy sessions on YouTube then maybe face the fact that ARMA II may not be for you.

Why is having an incredibly hard military simulation with such a steep learning curve? Because when viewed next its counterparts, COD and Battlefield, it’s important to realize just how much you’re missing in these on-rails games. In ARMA II players can truly control every detail of a mission, not just follow the soldier ahead of them while taking huge damage.

Developer: Konami
Release date: 1987
Platform: Arcade originally, nearly every console afterward.

Shooters have evolved in such as way as to make them completely unrecognizable from arcade predecessors. Take the greatest arcade shooter of the 80s, Contra, and compare to most modern day shooters like Call of Duty. Of course these games have something in common in the linage of shooters yet absolutely nothing in common when it comes to difficulty.

We spend at least three years of our collective youth and no less than a small fortune on trying to beat Contra. The continuously changing perspective of levels and laser beam fire whizzing past blew our little minds. Contra features no armor, to regenerating life, no cover just run into a tiny pixel and you’re dead. Even with the popular cheat code that gave players 30 lives it was still just barely beatable to a mere mortal.

Why in the world would spending our childhood fortune on a game be a good thing? Because Contra was breaking new ground in shooters and showing off was games could be. A thousand clones followed and none quite as good. That, and sense of accomplishment when defeating that enormous turtle-demon-monster thing at the end, that was also good.

Developer: Nintendo R&D4
Release date: 1988
Platform: NES

Role playing games are hard for a reason, because players must develop their characters by grinding. Killing lower level foes to collect experience and gold while learning lessons through death. But in Zelda II: The Adventures of Link was a more complicated RPG than its predecessor but if you died, reset or turned off your game between levels you had to start over and lose all experience accumulated. The result? Gamers would just leave their systems on for days instead of losing hours of precious play.

While part of Zelda II’s difficulty is technically related, it also forced players to tread carefully and respect the life of their character. Something that’s not common especially in today’s online RPG fray. Death was permanent and debilitating.

Developer: Rebellion
Release date: 1994
Platform: Jaguar

Remember the Jaguar? No not the Apple operating system, Atari’s gaming platform from way back in 1993? Arguably they best game to come out for the flagging system was Alien vs. Predator. This game is harder than cleaning the sweat-stains our of a power-loader butt pad. Aliens sneak up behind you making no noise and take hapless marines down in seconds.

Some would argue that the difficulty of the game is based on the system’s limitations, but this is only part of the challange. After playing the recently released Aliens: Colonial Marines we were reminded of why Aliens are scary in the first place: because we never see them coming. The game overall might have been crazy-hard but at least the gameplay kept us interested. Which can’t be said about some later Aliens titles.

Developer: Capcom
Release date: 2008
Platform: XBLA, PSN, Wii Console

Mega Man has always been a tough series but when Mega Man 9 was released in 2008 difficulty went next-level. The game went back the series roots with original style play and graphics and ridiculous hardness. It was a sad reminder of those nights we spend crying and whizzing our controllers at the hapless pets.

Creator Keinji Inafune and Capcom purposely intended to screw with hardcore gamer’s heads by making a game that was nearly impossible. Amongst a generation of on-rails and regenerating health features in games they were out to prove a point.

Mega Man 9 is not for the weak-willed or time-crunched. It will punish you for playing with cheap deaths and ridiculously escalating boss battles but if you’re to grasp an entire era of arcade platformers this one game sums it up. Hard? Yes, but also rewarding.

Developer: Rare
Release date: 1991
Platform: NES

Battletoads is widely considered the hardest and one of the best video games ever released for NES. Battletoads masquerades as a one-player game but is essentially impossible to play alone. This beat-em’-up requires help, but in a ridiculous design flaw – in our opinion – the co-op players can do damage to each other. Meaning players can join forces yet cannot get too close to each other otherwise they’ll do damage. Too often in Battletoads we inadvertently killed our friends while fiercely trying to stay alive in its crazy speed levels.

Why put us through this? Because as hard as the game is, it doesn’t detract from how well it’s made and how much fun you’ll have playing with a friend. Making it through a level felt like an accident, and left us looking at our buddies like we just got away with something illegal.

Developer: From Software
Release date: 2008
Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

Chances are if you own Dark Souls you didn’t just randomly grab it off the shelves. Like a cult classic book or movie a friend probably brought you into the fold. What is Dark Souls about? How do you play? Where do you go? It’s the games ability to have all these open question hanging over our heads for the gamers to slowly solve is what makes it really great. Players aren’t told how to fight or where to go but gently pushed in on direction by the death waiting in the other. In Dark Souls and its processor Demon Souls death is harsh and inevitable.

The players must teach themselves how to fight and learn quickly from enemies to stay alive. With so many unwritten rules, every discovery seems like a small victory. The first time we backstabbed an enemy we nearly dropped the controller, “how did I do that?”

What makes Dark Souls so addictive is that it’s so unpredictable. Sure we know there are a lot of bosses but new enemies are not introduced, just new areas. So as the player defeats one boss the next boss could be around the next corner or the player might have to slash their way through entire sections of undead. Die once and learn your lesson; die twice and lose all your accumulated souls, effectively your experience and start over. The sense of defeat is palpable.

But what makes Dark Souls great, just like all these other difficult games, is that the player is rewarded for braving the many challenges by an incredibly dark and twisting story that continues beyond the next screen, if they can survive.