Recently, I decided that I would like to try to start playing through and beating classic games, primarily ones that I enjoyed playing a lot during my childhood but which I just never quite managed to beat. Hudson Soft’s Adventure Island for NES was one such game that came to mind, and I thought it would be the best one to start at, since they also developed Panic Bomber and Vertical Force for the Virtual Boy, which makes them awesome. I thought to myself, perhaps I never beat the game because I was young and naïve then, but surely now with my adult and more highly sophisticated skills, I would be able to conquer it no problem. After picking the game up again and playing it for the first 20 or so hours, I had no choice but to conclude that this game is a freak fest, certainly one of the hardest NES games ever made.
I really wanted to play it through old-school style, meaning never using any save states which weren’t available to us whippersnappers back in the day. Since the game doesn’t offer any continues, unless you find a hidden cheat, from what I’ve read, this meant that I would have to start over from the very beginning of the whole game every time I lost all my lives while trying to learn each new section of the game. After probably more than 50 solid hours of trying to master the game this way, with who knows how many deaths, I managed to come up with a strategy that let me make it into the final area, Area 8. But then, I said phooey with it, as Area 8 is the most absurd of all absurdities, with Area 7 coming rather close to being such, so I decided to use save states to learn and practice stinking Area 8 because playing the whole way through the game, which itself probably takes about an hour and a half, just to make it to the same spot in Area 8 where I died previously and then die repeatedly at it again before even having a chance to learn and develop some sort of strategy for that spot of ridiculousness and then make it to the next spot that would also completely own me, was just taking up way to much time and effort. Even with the use of save states, it probably took me another solid 10 hours to learn and master every obstacle of Area 8, so without the use of save states and, therefore, with having to play the game the whole way through to make it to Area 8 before I could then practice each new part of it, it probably would have taken me another 50 to 60 hours to master that final area, so the save states might have saved me another 40 to 50 hours of insanity.
I cannot imagine how any gamer could have been expected to beat this game back in the day, without devoting his or her whole life to it. You basically have to memorize every single facet of the entire game, but even once you do that, you then must execute whatever you need to do almost perfectly, as the game allows for almost no deviation from perfection. This means that once you have everything completely memorized, you then must run through the game almost like a freakin’ Jedi, killing and dodging everything necessary with what looks like split-second reactions but which only results from knowing what is coming ahead of time, and this sometimes even means throwing an attack at a stinking enemy that isn’t even on the screen yet before you make a very difficult jump onto a platform where the enemy will be waiting to kill you if you didn’t already best him in anticipation! It’s insane! And accumulating lives almost seems pointless, at least for me, because if you die at a difficult spot and then can’t get your fireballs back, you will just likely see all of your hard-earned lives disappear one by one at the same spot that killed you in the first place, with very little that you can do about it. And I can’t even imagine beating this game without the fireballs! My winning strategy must include that I run through the game as a flaming freak of destruction, and if I die, hopefully it is at a point where I can safely get my fireballs back before then resuming the madness, but if I die at a bad spot that doesn’t allow me to become a flaming freak again soon, I might as well kiss all of my up to 9 lives accumulated goodbye, as they will do me almost no good at all and will all be gone in no time flat. Memorizing absolutely everything along with near perfect execution seems to be the only way to beat this ridonculous freak fest of game.
But this morning, at 2:45 in the AM, with eyes heavy and with all hope nearly gone, I finally managed to prevail, beating the game the whole way through, without the use of save states during this one particularly glorious run. I have never felt such a feeling of accomplishment from beating a game as I did with this one. Finally, the lovely Tina is mine! And after everything I freakin’ had to do to save her, I better never hear any dumb complaints from her about me leaving the toilet seat up.
Next, I will probably try Ninja Gaiden and then maybe Silver Surfer, because yeah, I’m that much of a masochist.
So, what’s the hardest or most difficult game you’ve ever played?
I just got the best ending in Metroid for NES for the first time ever! Beat it in under an hour and got to see Samus in her bikini.
I did it as old-school as you can get, too. Never resorted to any maps or playthroughs online. Played the game entirely from scratch for hours and hours, drew my own map of everything as I discovered everything for the first time, mapped out a streamlined route to the end, never used a save state, and still finally after many fails…
VICTORY IS MINE!!!
Getting the best ending is definitely one of the hardest challenges for NES that I’ve experienced so far.
Nice! That’s the best way to beat a game too, way more rewarding if you didn’t rely on the internet. So you have to beat the game in less than an hour for the good ending?
Yeah, that’s the one thing I did look up on the internet, in order to see if I got the best ending. The difference between the best ending and the second best ending is so small that one might not notice the difference. In the second best ending, which occurs by beating the game in between 1 to 3 hours (a reasonable challenge), Samus is wearing what looks like just a one-piece swimming suit, but some say it is technically a leotard. Then, in the best ending, which the internet says occurs if you beat the game in under an hour, she is wearing a bikini, which is just slightly less clothes than the leotard (you can now see her stomach). With my run, I can beat it in just under 50 minutes, but not reliably, as small mess-ups here and there will result in extremely frustrating deaths.
supahotfire wrote:
Super Contra. I must have quick saved and loaded at least 100 just to beat that game.
Yeah, I definitely plan to try that game out sometime. The Contra games usually frustrated me with their difficulties.
Lately, I have been playing “Perfect Bowling,” a game that was originally only released in Japan for the NES/Famicom, and it is the hardest bowling video game I have ever played. The timing to get your desired bowl is so ridiculous. Getting a perfect 300 score in this game might be nearly impossible for me. This one is way harder than Nester’s Funky Bowling.
Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Lately, I have been playing “Perfect Bowling,” a game that was originally only released in Japan for the NES/Famicom, and it is the hardest bowling video game I have ever played. The timing to get your desired bowl is so ridiculous. Getting a perfect 300 score in this game might be nearly impossible for me. This one is way harder than Nester’s Funky Bowling.
Dude… “Dynamite Bowl” for the Famicom is even worse in its difficulty than “Perfect Bowling”! It’s not even consistent. There are only a limited number of pixels to which you can move your bowler and on which you can stop the curve meter and power meter, and many times, I will line up my guy on the exact same pixel as before, stop the curve meter on the exact same spot as before, and stop the power meter also on the exact same spot as before, yet one time I will get a strike, and another time I will have one pin left standing… What the heck?! How is anybody supposed to account for and compensate for the random punkness?!
