Yes, I know it is hard to believe in this day and age of a game going unbeaten. Unbeaten in the sense we still enjoyed the game, but can never quite beat it. Todays gamers may have not met a game they could not best or at least mod it to beat! Hahaha. Alas, there was a time where save points were a glimmer of hope in the future. During the time of the Atari and Nintendo Entertainment System all we cared about was having enough time to even complete a game. You know, before we got yelled at by our noob parents to go to bed, finish your homework, or go outside and play. There was no 20 plus hours of game play being logged, instead it was more like 5 0r 6 hours of intense game play before we threw our (wired) controllers at the tv. You see there were some truly f***ing difficult games that caused many a tantrum and sweaty hands. We sat glued to our boob-tubes staring at a brand new world of 8 bit design, testing our hand and eye coordination in the comfort of our own home! Some of the games listed have never been beaten by us or we did succeed, but at the near cost to our sanity. I have tasked my fellow Gamer Laughs friends to talk about their harrowing events that unfolded while playing a game.

Ninja Gaiden-NES

I shall go first since this was my idea and in hopes they shall follow suit. My own personal demon title of the NES variety was a little gem called Ninja Guiden. I love this game, hell I even downloaded on my Wii years back in hopes to best my old nemesis. I will be damned if this game still eludes my completed list. Although I can say I have gotten farther than my 10 year old self ever could. A huge feat if I do say so myself! Ninja Gaiden has everything my childhood dreamed of in a game. The graphic pushed its 8bit limits, the story was engaging with the young ninja Ryu, and the blade wielding fighting style was exciting! Even today I get a rush as I dispatch enemy after respawning enemy in the unique (at the time) settings. Then there were the floating power-ups you could obtain to gain secondary weapons that were very limited. You really had to pay attention to your little arsenal to use them at proper times in the game. Not all of these power-ups were useful in every situation so if I got certain ones like the shruken, that circled the character, I held on till I really needed it. Those times were during the terrain where enemies stood in the most obnoxious of places and I had to jump to get there! The levels were fun and engaging, but they were also littered with roaming enemies. I had to take precaution to keep my health bar full before I engaged the level’s boss. Those bosses were some of the most unforgiving bosses of their time! There I was trapped in a small room with a guy/monster twice the size of me and a health bar to match. I spent more time evading and jumping than fighting the damn things! Not to mention they had their own set of basic moves and weapons that could whittle my health bar down in seconds. I did not have the luxury of health vials stored up or mushrooms. It was kill or be killed and I did just that…..got killed. This only furthered my obsession with beating this game, which I still have yet to do. I wouldn’t even consider the sequels until I knew what happened to Ryu. Still to this day I have never played the NES sequels because I never finished the original game!

Grand Theft Auto III – PS2

Picture this: You’re 11 years old, just started high school and your parents have just split up. You need to find a way to rebel. Your mate, who for the purpose of this we shall call Adam, because that’s his name and I am determined to bring him down with me, invites you over for a sleepover to take your mind off your parents. You meet his parents, and it turns out they’re very liberal because they’ve just bought him Grand Theft Auto III. You and Adam spend all night playing it and you’re fragile 11-year old mind is forever warped, but you know that you need to find a way to play this game yourself. Adam promises to you that you can borrow it when he has finished.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful that my parents instilled in me that age ratings exist for a reason (even though they did let me watch Broken Arrow once one night because I couldn’t sleep) but that didn’t mean I chose to always follow the ratings. But sure enough, a month later, Adam brought GTA III into school for me to borrow. And here’s why it became my hardest game ever:

I took my parents splitting up pretty bad, and spent most of my time in my bedroom. My mum would be checking up on me pretty regularly, as a good parent would. But that meant I had to hide all knowledge of GTA, even when I was playing it. Discs got put in different cases, sleeves transferred over, I did pretty much anything. But the absolute hardest part was when I was playing it and she came in. All I wanted to do was find a hooker, or run a few pedestrians over, or get my UZI out and do a drive-by, the missions didn’t matter to me at all. But my mum would come in, and I had to treat it like a bog-standard driving simulator, stopping at every traffic light, keeping to the speed limit, avoiding the red light district and gangs, basically removing all the fun from the game whilst ramping up the difficulty. I could have paused it yes, but I wasn’t in the mood for talking so I didn’t want to. But I implore anyone to play GTA like that because pretty much everything is out of bounds, and obeying the speed limit whilst stuck behind a Perennial may just be the hardest things Ive done in gaming.  -Richard Dobson

Bart Simpson’s Nightmare – SuperNES

Whenever the subject of the most difficult games comes up people like to mention Dark Souls or any number of rogue likes but a lot of people forget that there used to be a time when crappy unbalanced licensed games were being pumped out on a regular basis. I started gaming on the Super Nintendo and as anyone who owned a Super Nintendo as a kid can attest to there were tons of these games being released. We all were burned on a few of them before we finally learned our lesson; Don’t buy licensed games. Thankfully, the industry has gotten better and has been releasing fewer, more quality titles like Rocksteady’s Batman games or the now defunct Disney Infinity games. Back in the SNES days there was one game that me and my brother constantly banged our heads against; Bart Simpson’s Nightmare. This game was essentially a collection of mini games where you played as Bart in different scenarios. The mini games were based on episodes of The Simpsons or spoofs of pop culture. Most of these mini games were brutally difficult or borderline unplayable in some cases. To add insult to injury the hub area was just Bart walking down the street in an auto scroller style, which sounds pretty interesting, but with no setup or real explanation, everything that happened was cryptic and confusing for a young child. There were random floating heads that hurt you for some reason, sentient skateboards, and just a multitude of random unexplained things that hurt you without any real way for you to avoid them. After you lost all your lives you would get a grade on Bart’s homework based on how well you did in the game. The best grade I ever got was a D- along with a scolding from Homer. Why would I still play this game if it was so terrible? Because it was one of the few games I had at the time and as a kid you will play almost anything. I have gone back to it as an adult and can confirm it’s just as confusing and stupidly difficult as it was when I was a kid. It’s just this time I know better and have better games to play. -Travis Cummings

XCOM 2 – PC

The hardest game I can recall to a recent date is XCOM 2. XCOM is a punishing game where if you lose your A-team of best soldiers then you will lose the game, unless you’re a strategist God and can do a mission 10 hours in with a bunch of peasant soldiers. For instance, I made my team based off Youtubers I enjoy watching and are my top 6 all got slaughtered on an easy job. Which is the main story of XCOM, a small easy to do mission will be the one you screw up on because you know to be careful when doing a “Destroy Advent facility” mission. -Aiden Botfield

Really Big Sky

When pondering upon the futility of life and tasks that ne’er shall be completed, the game Really Big Sky comes to mind. Having acquired it for free, upon loading it up I flew a spaceship around, shot some ‘baddies’, got power ups, and generally felt really kick ass. It was fun.

Then came the boss rushes. Though unique in design I felt I could not appreciate them because they were just so FUCKING DIFFICULT. From dodging dinosaur fossils shooting fire to shooting a giant alien mothership that can wipe me out in one shot, I found that my feelings of child-like wonder, naive enjoyment turned to pure unabated rage. With multiple bosses in one run, I have never completed a single run through. Though I tried and tried again I simply ended throwing my keyboard at my monitor, ordering a dominoes and crying in the dark while musing on how I shall never be worthy.
10/10 would ruin hundreds of pounds worth of hardware again. -Samuel Myerson

Hotline Miami 2 – PC

I remember finding Hotline Miami 2 so hard that I still haven’t finished it. I would spend hours on one level alone, and rage quite multiple times. Once I had my tantrum, I would return to the game, only to break into fits of rage again, and turn off my computer completely, until one day I just uninstalled it. So now it just sits there in my Steam Library. Mocking me. But one day, I shall return to it, and I shall conquer it, for I am mighty, and many a feast and celebration shall be had on that day. -Jordi Steel

Mega Man X6

I freaking love the Mega Man series but there have been many times while playing said series that I just wanted to chuck my controller across my room. The hardest game that I have ever played and STILL CAN NOT BEAT BECAUSE IT INFURIATES ME SO GOD DAMN MUCH, is Mega Man X6. Trust me there are other Mega Man games in which I get angry at (that freaking snowboarding part of Wily’s Castle in Mega Man 8 comes to mind) but none compare to the sheer madness and self despair that I have felt while playing X6. There are secret bosses in which you can do NO DAMAGE. None, you find them, there’s some dialogue, and they proceed to kick your ass and you keep shooting them and use all the special weapons you have and you STILL can’t hurt them. Finding the armor pieces requires cheat codes and crossing bottomless death pits that are way too long unless you have a certain piece of armor and time the jump exactly, and perfectly right. I remember wasting so many hours just so I could clear a jump or doing something else that shouldn’t be frustrating but was. Also the whole premise of this game was that (spoiler alert) Zero was presumed dead and X had to continue on without him, but after killing 3 of the mavericks, he comes back into the fold with the lamest entrance I have ever seen in a video game. I mean the only thing that would suck more than X6 is if the next installment had you NOT play as Mega Man X for half the game because of some stupid reason. (Looks over at Mega Man X7) Oh dear God that’s right! -Ben Magnet

Spec Ops: The Line

I think the hardest game I ever played was Spec Ops: The line. Don’t get me wrong, the game’s an easy-peasy 3rd person cover shooter. But it was difficult on the psychological level because the more you play, the more you feel like a huge prick, and you see your character’s descent into madness all because you keep playing the game- it’s entirely your fault. There are lots of difficult choices to be made, but the hardest choice was whether to keep playing or not. And when I got to the end with hopes being repaid somehow for all this nonsense, I just got a final kick in the stomach that hurt the most. This game may be great, but it’s NOT fun at all. -Benny Gurov

Bad Rats – PC

Hardest game, huh? Does life count? No? Fine. I’m going to go with Bad Rats. I picked this game up during a Steam sale for around 9 pence after hearing about its infamy and the fact that the Steam trading cards sell for more than the price of the game. The game wears the disembodied skin of an actual physics-based puzzle game and shows up at the physics game parties before dripping entrails on the cashmere rug. The joy comes when you make a solution to a puzzle and it doesn’t work. Just keep on pressing the go button and eventually the janky physics will decide that that’s fine and that works this time round even when you’ve not changed a thing. What a time to be alive. -Maddison Leeding

Habitrail Hamsterball – PS2

Completing Habitrail Hamsterball is still to this day my greatest achievement. I see videos online of people yelling and nearly sobbing whilst playing dark/demon souls and it’s nothing. There is no ‘near-sobbing’ with hamsterball, you get to the point where you can’t cry anymore, and instead of tears there is only blood. The game has two reskins which I am yet to fully subject myself to, out of sheer willingness to be a member of the living. Can you believe one of them is on the Wii? Habitrail Hamsterball is pretty much worse than syphilis. -Samuel Marshall

Bound By Flame

The hardest game I’ve ever played was Bound By Flame. Not that it was difficult, just so shit I couldn’t stomach more than the first 30 minutes. -Cameron Corliss

Dark Souls

Even though the rewards are monumental, Dark Souls punished me like no game ever has. It encourages you to explore off every set path, but there are numerous enemies at every turn with an unnatural eagerness to mutilate your every limb. Dark Souls knows you will fail over and over again but it is a game that teaches patience like no other. You fight enemy after enemy and spend hours waiting to get to the next bonfire, only to be greeted by a boss than destroys you in two hits, then it’s back to the old drawing board to start all over again. Damn you Dark Souls. -Ethan Palmer

Altered Beast – Sega genesis

Altered Beast, this fucking game was the bane of my childhood a decade ago when I couldn’t get past the second to last level of the game where you played as a damn humanoid leopard/tiger whatever the hell it is. The boss turns to a hovering little dragon that you can only hit if it’s on the altitude where your projectiles fire, if the damn projectiles can even travel fast enough to hit the damn target! You can also try to attack with a vertical dash attack but you have to be so precise where you hit him or else you damage yourself and have to keep trying only to fail again! And that’s if I could make it to the boss without getting killed by the enemies from different platforms and that one flying demon that really wants to drop-slam you as if trying to make raspberry jelly out of me! A decade later I finally made way to the final level, raged at the punching enemies, turned off Genesis, raged at boss, turned off Genesis, enemies and boss still killed me and couldn’t get the power balls, turned off Genesis, condemn the game for awhile, gets back on game and beats the whole level on a single health point, happiness overload, milestone achieved in gaming career, then faced reality of my life and find my old friend darkness. At least I finally beat the fucker! 😀 -Gerardo Sanchez

Skyrim

The game I never managed to finish, funnily enough was Skyrim. Not because it was too difficult, in fact I think Skyrim was one of the easiest games I have ever played. Sneaky, rolling backstabs FTW. And certainly not because I got lost in world of untold fantasies, overwhelmed by all the choices, and swept away by the story of deep political intrigue. NO. It was because I was bored shitless. Before Skyrim, I was a huge Elder Scrolls fan, if only because of Morrowind, even Oblivion seemed to disappoint me after that jewel of a game. But at least it didn’t offend me like Skyrim did. The ceaseless battles with lame Dragons that almost always glitched out on me. The hours I wasted trying cheat my way over mountains to get to my destinations quicker, only to fail midway and forced to walk around anyway like a chump. The mire of a story that is so mediocre you would be hard pressed to think anyone that worked on the Elder Scrolls III and IV had anything to do with it. That one poor voice actor, forced into voicing every damn character in the game at gunpoint most likely, because if he had a choice in the matter, surely it would have been to run as far away from the script as humanly possible. Those Kill Cams, that worked so well for Fallout 3, shoehorned into the game haphazardly to appeal to all the children under twelve. I could go on, and on, and on, but I won’t, I’m sure I have ruffled enough feathers as is. I never did manage to finish it. I let the bad story; the uninspired dialogue and bland level design get the better of me. I mean, I finished God Hand with the Kick Me Sign still on my back for fuck’s sake, Google it. But this, this was something else. Paying Skyrim felt like inserting hot hypothermic needles full of AIDS right into my eyeballs. Worst of all, I was so convinced I was going to love the game; I bought that huge Collector’s edition, with the dragon statue, art book and a whole mess of other assorted nonsense. Now it sits atop the shelves of good games, gathering dust, serving as an endless reminder to never get my hopes up ever again. (Cough, cough, MGSV, Cough.) Actually, anyone interested in buying it? Let me know in the comments, I can’t stomach the sight of it anymore. -Benjamin Porter

So there you have it, did you agree or disagree with our lists? Maybe you have some games to add. Feel free to let us know in the comments. We look forward to hearing what you think!