What do you think the #1 hardest NES game is?

[MajorTomServo]

We all know how unforgiving NES games can be. Stuff like Castlevania, Battletoads, Megaman... They can be a bit tricky.

Which game from the controller-snapping days of yore would you say is the hardest one of all? And I mean the "hard, yet possible" kind, not the "so fundamentally broken you can't even beat it" kind (there were plenty of those on the NES too...)

Personally, I give my vote to Ghosts N Goblins. It's genuinely an accomplishment for me if I get past level 1...

 

[Maximum Bert]

Er lets see memories a bit hazy from those days but the ones I remember being hard as balls were

Battletoads- seriously I hope whoever came up with that scooter level got fired.

Punch Out - all about pattern recognition and reflexes but mr Dream (M Tyson) was a joke one wrong move and bam your out although I never got to him on my own I was bad at this game despite how much I liked it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - actually finished this but bloody hell some bits were insane especially that underwater bit where you had to navigate through electric rope things in a stupidly tight space. Also Raphael was shit and Donatello was the shit in this game.

Ninja Gaiden - never got far here didnt like it but I do remember it being pretty brutal.

Obligatory mention to Mario the lost levels I never played it until it came out on the SNES with all stars but I suppose its still a NES game officially I got to the last level and gave up finally completed it 18 years later. Goddamn that castle.

Never played Ghost N Goblins or Contra and all that but apparently they were pretty tough as well.

 

[thiosk]

I am most familiar with super ghouls and ghosts. Getting past 1-1 is indeed an accomplishment.
But 2-2... My god.

Nes tmnt is one I never finished. Again, impossible water level.

 

[saintdane05]

Battletoads.
Fucking. Damn. Battletoads.
You see, Ghouls and Ghosts is beatable. I'm not so sure about Battletoads.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Silver Surfer, bar none.

I wish you luck in your search for a more difficult assbag of a game. Anyone daring enough to play it better get used to seeing:

Spoiler

 

[Something Amyss]

There's probably a couple dozen games so broken as to be literally impossible to finish. Does that count?

Two Player Battletoads was actually one of them.

 

[Carlston]

I'd say the #1 hardest game was a little Capcom gem called Section Z. I played lots and lots of games...

But this one you needed a NES Advantage with slo mo just to barely play through the last half it go so fast and insaine.

Second give me any of the Koai military sims. On hard level PTO was a pain...

As for games like Ninja Gaiden, get the spin attack and as long as you can make the jumps you can beat it in one life.

TMNT as well, once you pass the underwater parts, you can grab scrolls at the end of one area, leave come back and bang you hit the easy button.

 

[floppylobster]

Seriously though, I want one person to come on here and tell me they've actually beaten Cobra Triangle. I still have an NES and that game specifically because one day I want to beat it. (I've finished Battletoads and Ghosts 'n' Goblins by the way.)

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/cobratriangle/cobratriangle.htm

 

[thejackyl]

As someone who beat the turbo tunnel in Battletoads(I had a "map" of it that I sort of memorized), I have to say TMNT 1 is probably the hardest game I've ever played on the NES. I think I beat the dam level... once, twice... but even after that I never managed to beat the third area.

Friday the 13th is pretty brutal as well. I never managed to kill Jason once, let alone the 3 times required

Any of the Simpsons games: All of them have a point that require some "precision" platforming (Museum, Ice World, Sewers), It doesn't help that you can fall through the platforms even if you land dead center.

Final Fantasy was pretty brutal, though after 20 years I did manage to beat the original.

 

[Snotnarok]

US version of Battle Toads was probably the hardest game that wasn't flat out cheap, why the US version? Because the Japanese version was signifigantly easier. It was a bit of a myth back in the 8/16-bit era that japanese games were far harder when the case was they were ported to the states harder.
Go try playing Streets of Rage 3, then put on the jap version: Bare Knuckle 3 I'm pretty sure the hardest mode on Bare Knuckle 3 is easier than Normal on Streets of Rage 3.

 

[Lionsfan]

Ninja fucking Gaiden.

As a kid I never even got past the first level

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

Any of the NES games that flat-out could not be beaten. I'm not talking Battletoads where it's just too insanely hard but still physically possible, I'm talking Action 52's ilk where the games sometimes would not work or literally did not have a way to win. Think along the lines of the Running Man from Ocarina of Time - even if you used a Gameshark to beat the race with a time of 0:00, you would still lose as the game's hardcoded to always make you lose. The NES was full of games that were truly unbeatable either due to unintentional glitches / level design or intentional hardcoding. I'm pretty sure games like that take the cake no matter what you come up with.

 

[vasiD]

Bad Dudes

It was a rough game in Arcade form, but the buggy NES port made it even crazier.

No seriously though, were you a bad enough dude to save the President?

I doubt it.

 

[lRookiel]

Ghosts n goblins is the only NES title I've played as well as the original castlevania.

Both fairly difficult, but Ghosts n goblins takes the prize

 

[Zeckt]

Silver Surfer is just not possible and is broken hard. Ghosts and Goblins is at least playable.

 

[shadowsandwich]

Silver surfer...
My god, people say that nes games were better because they didn't hold your hand and just threw you into the action?
This game kicks you into some sadistic Tohou like game, where everything is on glass cannon mode and you can only use 1/2 the screen most of the time.
You die in one hit and the levels are very long and full of bullets.
Also you have a huge hitbox rather than the pixel hitbox of better made games...

 

[xPixelatedx]

Battletoads
Punch Out
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Ninja Gaiden
Mario the lost levels
Ghost N Goblins
Contra

This has me feeling pretty bad ass since I beat all those games, save for TMNT.
I think Battle toads and Ninja Gaiden were the hardest, but I might be remembering things wrong. Lol, my mother was able to get half way through Battletoads. I know most current gen players couldn't even get that far.