The Nintendo Entertainment System was the Big N’s first foray into the console market. At the time, the industry was just coming out of a major crash, so the Japanese company jumped in at the perfect time. The problem for many players is that much of game development was still focused on the arcades. There, companies wanted tough-as-nails games that were sure to eat as many quarters as possible. At home, that was less important, but developers often fell into those same traps, giving players devilishly hard games that put their skills to the test.
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Here are the six hardest NES games of all time.
6) Fester’s Quest
Fester’s Quest has a lot of things working against it. For one, Fester controls like a kindergartener who just took a quadruple shot of caffeine. It’s imprecise, which isn’t ideal when you realize that most of the environments are relatively small. There are also weird first-person sections that sort of feel ahead of their time, but not in a good way.
Plus, enemies constantly respawn, leaving you struggling to get through tight corridors. They’ll force you to absolutely hammer that attack button if you want to stay alive. Then, you have to deal with the confusing puzzles that, like a bad adventure game, make it nearly impossible to know what you should do next. Fester’s Quest is simply a slog to play through.
5) Ghosts ‘n Goblins
Remember when I said many NES games were influenced by the extreme difficulty of arcade games that were trying to steal as many quarters as possible? Ghosts n’ Goblins took that to the extreme. You can only be hit twice before dying, and you’ll probably die a lot because of how impossible the mix of level design and enemy movement is.
Even worse? You’ll need to play through Ghosts n’ Goblins a second time on a harder difficulty if you want to finish the game. Oh, and you can’t save. Yeah, this one is not for the weak of heart.
4) Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse
The third Castlevania sounds great with its upgraded chip and adds several fan-favorite characters to the mix. It also has those stairs. Anyone who has played Dracula’s Curse will remember trying to climb those seemingly simple steps while enemies and projectiles bombard you.
It’s a nearly impossible platforming challenge that makes the original Castlevania look cute by comparison. If you’re able to conquer the stairs, you’ll be met by three-stage boss fights that aren’t cakewalks either. When you fail (and you will several times), you’ll have to start over. At some point, it starts to feel like Konami is playing a joke on you.
3) Silver Surfer
Silver Surfer is a side-scrolling shooter in the vein of Gradius or R-Type. Like those other shoot ’em ups, Silver Surfer is seemingly built to eat quarters; it just so happens to be on a console.
Enemies come at you fast, the screen is filled with projectiles, and Silver Surfer loves to put you in tight quarters that make it difficult to dodge everything without getting hit. On top of all that, it looks ugly. You might think that’s me being rude, but it actually affects gameplay. You often can’t tell what’s an enemy and what’s just a background element, leading to confusing situations that, more often than not, result in your death.
2) Mega Man
Many people credit Capcom’s Mega Man as setting the bar for difficulty on the NES. While there might be other games that came first, Mega Man is undoubtedly one of the toughest games on the system. It has it all: tricky platforming, difficult bosses, and enemies that take a punch before they’ll go down.
The big difference between Mega Man and most of the other games on this list is that Capcom’s platformer is a great game. In fact, many players would point to Mega Man being one of the best games on the NES, despite it being such a tough challenge for most players. This isn’t difficulty for the sake of difficulty. This is a finely crafted game that’s stood the test of time.
1) Battletoads
At this point, most fans know about Battletoads‘ bike level. It’s nearly impossible, causing most players to toss their controller aside and give up. That alone would get it on this list, but it’s really just the tip of the difficulty iceberg.
Battletoads also includes beat ’em up and platforming sections. None of these really flow together, feeling more like a haphazard effort from several developers working on different games that were bundled together. Sure, you could memorize the bike section to trivialize it after several tries, but that first playthrough was like a bad ER visit.
Then, there’s the co-op mode. When two players are “enjoying” Battletoads together, they’ll quickly learn that the team at Rare isn’t really interested in keeping those friendships together. See, if either player lost all of their lives, both players had to start over. Let’s just say a certain younger brother may have never wanted to play again after all the yelling.
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Image courtesy of id Software
