Hardest Game Difficulty

[zin21]

The only reason a lot of older games were harder was because of 1)broken controls or 2)horrible save systems/mechanics/etc.

Battletoads falls into the latter. Silver Surfer in the former. Castlevania NES in the former. Super Ghosts and Ghouls would fall in the latter. Protip: If I had to restart the entire game every time I lost a few times, a lot of recent games would be ridiculously, tediously hard too.

The hardest recent game I can think of is Shiny Gold time trials on Donkey Kong Country Returns, or Mirror Mode level 6-K, Perilous Passge, same game. You will tear your hair out in painful agony for hours trying to get through that damn level. I had 99 lives and left with about 60, despite all the extra lives I got from bananas.

Alternatively, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia on hard. Level capped at 50, or even lower if you're feeling really ballsy. (PS: All the bosses nearly one-shot you, and can take quite some time to kill. Have fun.)

I'd actually say that broken controls typically made old games play much more fluidly and allows you to take control/advantage of your character. I.e bunny hopping. Abusing broken mechanics to play far beyond the level you were meant to have in old games are whats fun for me. One of my hobby is speedrunning old games. Mainly platformers like megaman series. But I do some fpses too. Doom2 mentoned earlier is VERY speedrun friendly. Even on nightmare.

The reason why old game was hard imo was because game was lot more simpler back then and you just didnt have alot of depth in how to handle the situation presented to you. As a result, they usually made up the lack of options by making everything just harder, making the gameplay much more brutal and less forgiving.

[Ganja0102]

Dante Must Die

On all the DevilMayCry games, that shit took ages.

[Irisel]

I remember playing Devil May Cry on hardmode when I was ~14. INSANE hard for me back then.

[Ganja0102]

That shit was brutal, good game though, loved it.

[Ravenblade]

There was this game which caught me pretty off-guard with its insane hyper-adapting AI called Rise of Nations. It's a fine game, gets pretty intense on medium and higher difficulty levels. In fact even 8 years later I cannot remember having played a RTS with such a superb (non-cheating) AI. Actually the only RTS I've ever played where the AI understood terrain, line of sight, timely withdrawal, proper flanking attacks, counter by type , counter-attack and distraction. An AI worth its name and not for the feint of heart actually Rise of Legends used the same AI just a bit more dumb to properly reflect difficulty settings. If you've never heard of either you're pretty much missing out two good RTS with replayability even years later.

[lanerios]

DDR anything on expert with everything turned on. Good luck to anyone in this topic trying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0mLXE7EvAY . Kind of sucks that he uses the hand rail. It is frowned upon by a lot of DDR players, but I have yet to see anyone really doing that song full combo without

[Halicia]

The only reason a lot of older games were harder was because of 1)broken controls or 2)horrible save systems/mechanics/etc.

Battletoads falls into the latter.

Battletoads generally wins at 'hardest game of alltime' not because of 'bad mechanics', but that games have been dumbed down as time has gone by.

When's the last time you saw a GAME OVER screen ? That didnt have a 'Continue ?' option pop up ?

Battletoads may not be the 'zomgimpossible', but it managed to get progressively impossible enough so that you felt the next try you'd be able to do better.

I remember cheating so bad in Civ1 with savegame/reload... and somewhere in Baldur's Gate they even made a joke about how abused save/reload was...

With the infestation of 'save anywhere, anytime, and if you HAPPEN to die... you can reload 5 seconds ago with no harm no foul', it means that 'hard' content has to require more technical perfection as the 'mundane' hardness has been all but removed.

Like most of the multiple level platformy NES games... any individual level may not be hard... but when you only have 3 lives from start to finish, the game demands a higher degree of overall perfection then a new game that only requires you to perform adequately once, or restore from 5 seconds ago til you do succeed.