20 Most Difficult NES Games

NES Battletoads The original Nintendo Entertainment System had some of the most infuriating games ever made. While some games were better than others, most NES games shared a common theme... Fucking impossible. How many NES games do you remember being easy? Not that many. Hell, the original Mario Brothers and Zelda games were hard as hell. Compare that to this generation and how incredibly easy Mario Galaxy is. Here are the 20 I think are the hardest, along with some honorable mentions, because no list is ever big enough to cover all of them

20. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

NES Wizardry

One of the most unforgiving rpgs I’ve ever played. There is no saving and reloading in this one. Just lost your entire party? Too fucking bad! Now you have to make a new party to go pick up your dead characters. And since dead bodies take up party space, you have to go down there with a fraction of a party. By the time you are good enough to help out, you are more badass then the party you wanted to go reclaim anyway.

But it isn’t just dying that is brutal about this game. This is one of those harsh d&d games obsessed with shit like level draining. You might fight a vampire who upon hitting you will paralyze, poison, and drain multiple levels in 1 hit. Or you might get the teleport spell and teleport into rock, losing your entire party permanently (I’ve done this). The dungeons were also confusing, even when mapping. You’d go into a dark area, or be turned in a random direction without a compass. My graph paper had a lot of erased spots, because of this.

19. American Gladiators

NES American Gladiators

One of many nes games which is hard, because it is just so awfully bad. The control in this game is horrendous. It feels like you are driving a tank disguised as a person. And instead of clothes, you are coated in super glue. If you touch ANYTHING you get stuck and stop in your tracks.

The main reason this game was difficult, though, was the stupid wall obstacle. You used ‘a’ and ‘b’ to climb, with ‘b’ moving the left hand and ‘a’ moving the right. And while climbing the wall you’d have gladiators rush up to pull you down. This was damn near impossible, and too annoying to try and master. The only positive aspect of this game is the death yells when you knock someone off the platform while jousting.

18. Shadowgate

NES Shadowgate

This game reminds me of a choose your own adventure book. One of the ones where there is really only 1 path, and hundreds of ways to die. Everything you do kills you, and the whole time you have this creepy as hell music in the background. And your torches would run out on you if you took too long. Here's a good video showing all the ridiculous ways to get killed in the game. What other game does the fucking dark kill you?This game seemed so much scarier when I was a kid. I remember having nightmares while trying to play through it. It's like the movie Final Destination, but worse.

Here are quite a few ways you can die in Shadowgate

17. Top Gun

NES Top Gun

This was a suprisingly good game, but hard as hell. Every time I played it I'd get to the same spot and die. At the end of mission one I’d crash trying to land on the carrier. Then on mission 2 I'd get fucked over by that tease of a refueler. This was fucking impossible. Especially when you don’t realize the game means “down” when it says “up” and vise versa. Here is a nice vid of someone actually landing for those of us who were never able to do it.

I still say it's impossible

16. Double Dragon 2

NES Double Dragon 2

I wasn’t sure which double dragon to put on this list, because they are all retarded hard. Double Dragon 2 wins out, because it turns into a near impossible platformer near the end. First, there was that stupid tank thing that would enter the screen, let you make an ass out of yourself by trying to climb it, then leave the screen. This was infuriating, and would take forever for me to eventually climb.

And after you complete that level you have a terrible last level from developers who for whatever reason decided to make a Mario Brothers game. Replace Mario with a peg legged retard, and you have the last level of Double Dragon 2. You basically just fall into pits you can’t jump over until you’re out of lives. Good game…

15. Wizards and Warriors

NES Wizards and Warriors

In this turd you play a knight named Tigger hopping his way towards various princesses while wielding the pussiest sword in the history of swords. You couldn't cut play-doh with that 2 cm toothpick of a fucking weapon. You basically kill enemies by running into them (which hurts you as well), while constantly hopping.

This video demonstrates what it's like to play Wizards and Warriors.

14. Ultima: Exodus

NES Ultima Exodus

Ah, Ultima. A series I mostly remember for the ludicrous amounts of dialog. And it isn’t the kind of dialog you can skip, either. The most random ass people in this game will tell your something important. For instance, the end of the game involves a card sequence you learn from some random crazy near the start of the game. You have to write all this shit down, or there is no way in hell you’ll finish the game.

The way we finished this game in a time before internets was to keep a binder full of all the info we could gather. We mapped every town, dungeon, outdoor area, and ocean on graph paper. We had corresponding numbers on the map to mark npcs along with their dialog on a separate page. And we STILL had to call Nintendo power to figure out how to beat it.

13. Contra

NES Contra

This is still my favorite side-scroller of all time. Maybe that is why I put it this low on the list, because I’ve played it so damn much that I can beat it no problem. In any case, beating contra without the konami code was pretty impressive back in the day.

Dying with one hit from everything is what truly makes this game so damn hard. And it is one of those games that really tests your patience. Most of the ways you'll die is simply by moving too fast, as this game loves spawning shit that instantly shoots you, or those spiked walls that pop up out of nowhere on you. Sure, you can slow crawl your ass through with spread for a much easier time, but that's boring. Another roadblock is how easy/fun it is to fuck over your teammate on the waterfall level. I got in more than one fight with my younger brother over staying in a spot where he’d just spawn and die. And a griefer is born…

Here's part 2 of a no konami code run I recently did

12. The Adventures of Dino Riki

NES Adventures of Dino Riki

This game is like Galaxian, except on foot What made this game so hard was just keeping a good weapon. You start with a rock, upgrade to flowers, then to boomarangs, and finally fire. Fire was the shit, but nearly impossible to keep. And as soon as you got downgraded back to flowers you were pretty much fucked. And all of this while leaping over various pits, all of which fucking kill you.

I was able to get through this one only after finding a cheat that let me continue. Without that cheat, I probably would have never beaten it

It's even harder than it looks

11. Mega Man 1

NES Mega Man

The start of a trilogy of insanely difficult games (4 and after were easy). I remember first playing this game, and not being able to beat a single stage. Later on I was able to get through it, but that was after I learned about the pause damage bug. You couldn't charge up in this one, nor could you even slide. The worst part was how demotivating starting this off was. Whoever you killed first you had to take out with the mega buster, which was near fucking impossible.

And fuck those disapearring blocks. Whoever came up with that deserves to be water boarded in my urine.On a side note, mega man games have always had kick ass music.

10. Mike Tyson's Punch-out

NES Mike Tyson's Punchout

This one at least had the courtesy to let you get through most of it before becoming crazy hard. The first 2 circuits aren't all that bad, and the enemies are predictable enough. Where it gets insane is when you get to Mr Sandman. I only got past him once as a kid, because his triple uppercut crap was just too fast for me to dodge.

Hell, everyone had the code to get to Tyson, and most of them still couldn't beat it. There was a kid at my school who claimed to have beaten him (with the powerglove no less), but we all knew he was full of shit. Here's what it feels like the first time you have to go up against Iron Mike.

9. Paperboy

NES Paperboy

This game was a complete pile of shit, and still is. You ride your bike down the goofiest haunted street ever portrayed by man. You dodge breakdancers, tires, possessed lawnmowers, and dogs while throwing paper at doors. If you survive that you are rewarded with a booby trapped area that would make the goonies blow a load. That's the premise of the game.

Here is what I'm talking about. This guy quits when he realizes it's impossible. And are those tombstones at 46 and 58 seconds in? Maybe if you didn't build your town on a burial ground this type of shit wouldn't happen

8. The Adventures of Bayou Billy

The average enemy in this game could survive a nuclear explosion without breaking a sweat. That was what was so hard about this fucking game. You'd start attacking an enemy, and he would just run through your attacks until he was behind you, then start kicking your ass. And the strategy worked great, because it took 300 fucking hits to kill anything.

It was also crazy hard to dodge anything. The enemies in this game have 2 animations. 1 is not hitting you, and the other is fucking hitting you. Don't even get me started on the slide show crocodiles or the impossible driving levels.

7. Friday the 13th

NES Friday the 13th

This game damaged more children when it was released than if Jason had actually existed. First off, the rock was completely useless. Any time you'd try to hit an enemy, it would just go over their head. It isn't like it mattered, though, because Jason had what seemed like infinite hitpoints.

This game should have been retitled "where the fuck am i?", because that is what you will constantly ask while playing it. Sometimes moving right on your screen moves you left on the map, and vise versa. You can even get lost inside an empty house, because this game's shitty attempt at 3d is retarded and unintuitive. And when you finally do find Jason, he fucking destroys you. He has infinite hitpoints and hits like a train.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This game was the bane of my existence as a kid. You start off with 1 turtle, Donatello. You have 3 others, but those are basically just cannon fodder for the water level, because you don’t want to lose Donatello there. To put it simply, if you lose Donatello you’re fucked. The other turtles are armed with nail clippers and Popsicle sticks. How they can even manage to hit anything is beyond me. Oh wait, it isn’t! Because they fucking can’t!

I can hardly ever get past the water level. And when I do, I get lost and die on the next stage. I eventually save/reload stated my way through on an emulator, but I got stuck on this one stupid sewer jump. I've yet to play a game that angers me as much as this game used to

This level is beyond infuriating

5. Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden was a retardedly hard game with enough cutscenes to make peter griffin wet the bed. While it did kick quite a bit of ass, it was also fucking impossible.It was so hard to avoid getting hit, then if you got hit you'd bounce off like Link in the Adventures of Link (fuck that game as well).

The worst part, though, was how hard the bosses were. Just look at stage 6 in the video below. That just doesn't seem possible. At least it wasn't when I tried

Trust me. This game is not as easy as this video makes it look

4. Silver Surfer

NES Silver Surfer

If you want a good idea of what it's like to play this game, go to your local theme park. Stand on that bridge after the log ride where everyone gets splashed. Wait for the next ride to come down, then try to dodge the water that comes splashing towards you. Now you know how hard it is to dodge all the shit coming at you in silver surfer.

Just like in Contra and Paperboy, everything kills you in one hit. But Silver Surfer takes it a step further, and tosses a lot more shit on the screen. You also have precise areas to navigate through, all the while dying if you even touch the fucking walls. This is the same super hero who was able to prevent Galactus from devouring Earth, and he gets killed by walls. Good thing the closing in walls in Indiana Jones weren't this hardcore. That movie would have lasted about 5 fucking seconds. Performing open heart surgery would be easier

This guy just makes it look easy. Another thing I forgot to mention was how you had to constantly spam the fire button. If you don't have a controller with turbo on it, you are in for a long night.

3. Ghosts and Goblins

NES Ghosts N Goblins

If there is a hell, they make you play this game there. If you get hit once, you're naked. Hit again and you're dead. But what really made this one hard was how fast some of the enemies could pop up and hit you coupled with your lack of air control. Sometimes enemies would spawn right on top of you, or maybe they would spawn while you were mid jump. Other times you'd have one of those stupid gargoyles that is 100 times faster swoop down and push your shit in.

The fact this game was so impossible with unlimited continues is what really sets it apart. In Battletoads you get a game over and decide to call it quits. In Ghosts and Goblins you quit when you are at your furthest, because it has broken you. In defeat, you hurl your controller right into the tv set. Now your parents won't let you play it anymore, which sucks cause you had FINALLY gotten past the stupid house in level 2 :(.

This no death run is just awe-inspiring

2. Deadly Towers

NES Deadly Towers

Take Zelda. Now make it much shittier. Make Link a lot weaker and easier to kill. Now make it to where you start all over if you die. That is Deadly Towers. Not only that, but the game is really, really confusing. Some of the areas are just mazes, and you don't have a map to use if you get lost. You also have to deal with the fact that most of the entrances are invisible. You just walk to some random ass spot to enter some random ass area

It is SOOOOO fucking boring, and the music is so fucking monotonous that it makes my brain go emo and cut itself. This of course makes beating the game a lot harder. I can't even fathom someone suffering through this garbage long enough to complete it. This is one of the worst games I've ever had the misfortune of playing

See what I mean? This guy dies from 2 hits, then has to start over from the beginning. And all the enemies have way too much health. You have to run up and jerk off on anything to kill it, which brings you in range of getting hit.

1. Battletoads (2 player)

At first I was hesitant to put Battletoads at number 1, but thought about how impossible 2 player mode was. This game was hard enough trying to survive in single player. Hell, the fact most people got stuck on the damn hoverbike portion of level 3 (out of 13) should tell you something about the difficulty. But once you add another player, it becomes something else entirely

First, there's no “a mode” or “b mode” like double dragon. You are in b mode, and can always damage your teammate. And you don’t gain lives from killing him like in double dragon, either. You simply kill your teammate, who then loses a life and gets pissed. Dying also fucks your teammate over at places like the hoverbikes, where one person dying starts both of you over at the last checkpoint. Basically, 2 player is impossible, and I’ve never even heard of anyone beating this game with 2 people.

Just look at how much trouble Bill O'Reilly has with only 1 player

Honorable Mentions

There are obviously more than 20 hard nes games, so I figured I'd do an honorable mention section. If there are any games I missed (I'm sure I have), then let me know and I'll include them below. If I'm suicidal one day I might try and make a top 50, but just replaying the above games pissed me off quite enough for now.

Fester's Quest
Kid Icarus
Bionic Commando
Rygar
Marble Madness
Solstice
Double Dragons 1 and 3
Bart vs the space mutants
Mission Impossible
Abadox
Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde
Blaster Master
Solomon's Key
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Rush N Attack
Back to the Future
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Castlevania
Takeshi's Challenge
Star Voyager
Metroid