We all come to video games for different reasons. Sometimes we want a chill game to relax to, others a fun co-op experience with a friend, but other times we’re looking for a challenge.
Early on in the console generations, difficulty was the norm and it took a lot of trial, error, and skill to even see the end of most games. We still face hard bosses in modern games, but it usually isn’t the entire game that is punishing. There’s an expectation that most people will be able to beat most current and upcoming video games, but not all games are so kind.
Whether it be due to bad controls, unfair mechanics, or simply because the developers wanted to make things unfair, these are the most difficult video games of all time.Before getting to the list, we are basing this list on the core game itself and not any extra challenges or going for secret endings.
We also won’t be including games that are meant to be impossible or that feature user-generated content.
Superman
In the pantheon of notoriously terrible video games, Superman: The New Adventures (aka Superman 64) may be the most infamous. A major reason it earned this reputation is because it is so difficult that most people haven’t even beaten the first level. This game is the perfect storm of terrible controls, bad graphics, and incredibly strict time limits Each level is basically a time trial where a single mistake will send you back to the beginning of the game.
The first level where you need to fly through a series of rings is as far as most people get, but even those who manage to get beyond that will only be met with more janky systems and tasks that feature very little actual fighting.
Ghosts ‘n Goblins
Ghosts ‘N Goblins looks like a fun arcade 2D action platformer, but it is clearly from the era of arcade design principles where games were made to drain your quarters. You play as a knight on a quest to save a princess by completing various stages filled with monsters. You can run, jump, and throw various weapons you pick on in the levels. The wrinkle here is that you can only take two hits, are constantly swarmed with enemies, and are under a strict time limit. While it is very, very punishing, you can at least learn and overcome most of the game’s challenges with a ton of practice.
However, if you put in all that time and reach the final boss without the cross weapon, well, too bad because that’s the only one that can defeat it. If you did figure this out then your reward is getting sent back to the beginning of the game and forced to go through every stage a second time, only with an increased difficulty.
Battletoads
The NES had a ton of great beat ’em ups, and Battletoads starts off looking like it could rank among the best. The first level is a fun romp where you can do little combos and use weapons on waves of enemies. However, things take a turn for the horrible when players reach the Turbo Tunnel stage. This level puts players on speeders moving at break-neck speeds towards obstacles they need to either avoid or jump over. While that sounds simple enough on paper, in practice it is nearly impossible.
The perspective makes it very hard to know where the walls will appear and your jump has so much air time that you are likely to land right in the path of the next wall with no way to avoid it. There’s almost no way to pass this level without memorization, and even if you do, the difficulty doesn’t drop much in the levels afterward.
Ninja Gaiden
There are few franchises that have been around as long as Ninja Gaiden that have never lost their reputation as being brutally difficult. The original Ninja Gaiden on the NES looked like a fun action game where you played as a ninja slashing enemies, climbing on walls, and using cool throwing weapons. Instead, it is a relentless onslaught of enemies that will drain your health or knock you off the stage.
What makes this so annoying is that enemies will respawn if you scroll the screen back even a pixel from where they spawn, meaning you can’t take a step back to avoid a hit without causing that same wave of enemies to appear again. Bosses are almost worse than the stages, and losing to one sends you back multiple stages before you can fight them again.
Takeshi’s Challenge
The way Takeshi’s Challenge subverts expectations and messes with the player feels like it was designed today rather than in the mid-’80s. Designed by Takeshi “Beat” Kitano and based on the hit reality show Takeshi’s Castle, this game bears no resemblance to the show in the slightest. Instead, you play as an average office worker and are given essentially no direction. The player has to somehow figure out that they need to do unintuitive things like get a divorce and quit their job.
The game is regarded as joke on the player, with requirements like making the player sing into the controller’s microphone to complete a karaoke challenge or holding a button down for an entire hour.
Driver
The game Driver itself isn’t actually super hard. The problem is that most people will never see it because of how hilariously difficult the tutorial is. Instead of using the tutorial to, you know, teach the player the mechanics of the game, Driver treats its tutorial like a final exam. You’re set in an empty parking garage with a list of moves you need to pull off within 60 seconds. Putting a time limit on a tutorial is one thing, but it also doesn’t actually tell you how to pull off the moves it asks of you.
Instead, players were left to fumble around trying to figure out how to even do all the moves but only had 60 seconds to even figure it out. If you somehow do eventually figure out the controls, even pulling off all the moves within 60 seconds is harder than anything the actual game throws at you.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
Bennett Foddy makes intentionally difficult games to control. QWOP became a bit of a meme game for how difficult it made the act of running but it wasn’t so much a real game as Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy. This obstacle course where you need to carefully lift and launch yourself around with a big hammer is the definition of tough but fair.
Climbing the entire mess of random objects is completely possible with patience and skill, but the physics are so unforgiving that one mistake will usually send you back to the start with no checkpoints. Because it is played only with the mouse, players need to have a steady hand or risk losing everything to a bad launch or accidental bump.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
In the modern era of games, FromSoftware games have made a reputation for themselves as being challenging. Of all the games the studio has released, none is quite as punishing as Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While other games like Elden Ring or Dark Souls are by no means easy either, only Sekiro forces the player to use one primary build and gives no opportunities to grind.
If you can’t master the basics of parrying, attacking, and dodging, you will never be able to brute force your way past a boss. And bosses will not allow you more than a few mistakes.
