8 of the Hardest Games of All Time

We’ve had a lot of difficult games throughout the years of video games, but which ones would be considered the hardest of the hard? Which games made you rage quit or destroy controllers? There have been a lot of games that fit this category, but I feel comfortable listing these eight as some of the most difficult you could ever play. One thing I’ve noticed as I did research was almost all of them were older games that were new when I was a young teenager. Maybe kids nowadays have it easy? “Back in my day…” seems to apply quite well here.

Of course, there’s a huge amount of difficult games out there. If a game you felt was the most difficult wasn’t listed below, feel free to share it with us in the comment section!

Mega Man

For whatever reason, it seemed to be a rule with Mega Man games that sequal was easier than the last. If you’ve played the original games, you understood this to be true. You didn’t have save points, nor did you have any special abilities outside of jumping, shooting or running. You had to kill the bosses in a specific order so some of them could even be beaten and getting to them meant timing jumps and shots perfectly to kill them before they did too much damage to you. Anyone who says a different version of Mega Man is the hardest never played this one!

Marble Madness

I swear this game was designed to cheat. I remember playing this one when I was a kid and the amount of rage that I had after the ball dropped off of the side was equivalent to the brightness felt by a thousand suns. In terms of difficulty, Dark Souls is a kids game compared to this most evil of puzzle games. You had to roll a ball through a maze without rolling off of the side. It sounds simple, right? Did I mention the maze moves around, up and down and has a ton of various types of obstacles to avoid? On the flip side, you felt a sense of accomplishment when completing a level.

F-Zero

F-Zero was a racing game that is considered one of the most brutal to complete. Imagine being in a demolition derby at four times the speed of an Indy Car while zipping around tracks that are more like a roller coaster than a racing track and that’s the experience playing F-Zero. Playing this against friends was a true test of just how good of a relationship you really had with them.

Ninja Gaiden

Who doesn’t want to be a Ninja? Well, after playing through Ninja Gaiden you may not want to anymore! It’s not like most hack and slash games that’s pure offense, shooting or throwing weapons at dozens of enemies as you slaughter your way to victory. Ninja Gaiden compelled you to play defensively, too. Precisely timing your attacks while knowing exactly when to block and parry was key to your survival. If you weren’t fast enough, “Game Over” would be the text you saw the most.

Contra

In Contra, not only did you have a near constant amount of enemies spawning and shooting at you throughout each level, but you had to survive the gauntlet with only three lives and one-shot kills from many of the more powerful foes. It was very unforgiving to someone just learning to play or didn’t have a decent reaction time. If you ever wanted to practice your hand-eye coordination, this is a game that will certainly put it to the test.

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels

Nintendo thought this game was “too difficult” for Western gamers and never released it in the States. In Japan, it was called Super Mario Bros 2. It was vastly different from the Super Mario Bros 2 we had here, which was apparently nothing but a dream of Mario’s.

Demon’s Souls

Imagine Dark Souls, but harder, that’s Demon’s Souls. Each enemy was meant to hurt you, and hurt you bad. You didn’t have any “filler” enemies that were easy to kill and there just to waste your time. This game was filled with enemies that seemed to do damage to you simply by glaring at you. You’ll either love this game or know just how easy it is to shatter a console controller.

Battletoads

A game so rare nowadays that it’s more of an online joke than anything else. But when Battletoads was new, it was a game that put your reflexes to the test. While it was a humorous game with fun ways of killing enemies, it required a bit of skill to actually complete. If you can find it, try it out.