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what Nintendo game do you consider the hardest?
- Thread starter Mezati99
- Start date
Ha yea great example. Like, one almost doesn't know where to start with countering this "nintendo games are easy" nonsense. It's telling that this topic comes up two weeks after another Yoshi game and two months after a port of the infamously "you don't take damage" Kirby game came out (and after we've had a few genius gaming elitists throw out "if you want an easier time play Mario" statements during the recent "accessibility" discourse lol).
Octo Expansion is hard core. But there's still an "easier" way for you to just "get to the end" if that's all you're there for. Like with most Nintendo games this century. That's where that "Nintendo game x is easy" issue always gets hung up, the open-ended fluid difficulty being player-driven and most of the time completely dynamic throws people into the "I don't need to have an 80s training montage of me getting better at this game and see the credits roll" so this is (too) easy. Pikmin 3 was one such example. Just wanna see the end? Ok, cool. Pretty doable. But kind of the point is you being some psychopath work-exploitation monster who has no qualms sending hundreds of the little bastards to their doom so try finishing the game with minimal losses (as encouraged by the deaths being tracked throughout the game and tallied at the end) and you'll have a much tougher time and are asked to play the game on a different level.
May be because it's a game I didn't experience in the NES era, but Nazo no Murasame Jo is atrociously difficult for me and a good candidate for this thread.
I'd say F-zero GX but I realize I've never beaten Punch Out despite trying several times since I was 4. I'm gonna say Punch Out.
Hardest series:
Fire emblem
Hardest game:
Fzero GX
Hardest segment (level or boss):
Level 1 of Kid Icarus
Fire emblem
Hardest game:
Fzero GX
Hardest segment (level or boss):
Level 1 of Kid Icarus
even with save states i have never been able to beat Zelda 2
Kid Icarus is easier if you draw a map in the labyrinths. Backtracking just sucks in both games though
Kid Icarus is easier if you draw a map in the labyrinths. Backtracking just sucks in both games though
Lucas, did your friends not know that they should save the crystals in the palaces for the higher levels? If you grind in the first palace against the skeleton heads until level 3/4 in everything, it really makes the game a breeze.
Fire Emblem Gaiden. The Famicom one not Echoes. It's BRUTAL. The RNG is god awful and playing it without save states you might as well give up.
You can start a turn and a summoner will spawn anywhere between 1-8 gargoyles and if it spawns 8 then you're so screwed. Same goes for the summoners who summon the dragons. The maps are huge and empty, enemy reinforcements appear in insane places and you have to hurt your healers to heal so it makes it even harder.
I got so far into the game with bad RNG that I got to a mission and I literally could not beat it, I had to quit the game. It was impossible for me to win.
You can start a turn and a summoner will spawn anywhere between 1-8 gargoyles and if it spawns 8 then you're so screwed. Same goes for the summoners who summon the dragons. The maps are huge and empty, enemy reinforcements appear in insane places and you have to hurt your healers to heal so it makes it even harder.
I got so far into the game with bad RNG that I got to a mission and I literally could not beat it, I had to quit the game. It was impossible for me to win.
Amusing how many people are saying "Zelda 2."
The primary audience for that were what...12 or 13 when that game came out? I couldn't have been older than 10 when I played and finished the thing. Game Genie hadn't been invented yet, there was no internet, and I didn't have a guide. just trial and errored through the thing along with a handful of playground hints.
Zelda 2 isn't "difficult" so much as it is kinda tedious. Starting ALL THE WAY FROM THE BEGINNING when you run out of lives is an insane design decision. The dungeons are all pretty straightforward hack and slash fests that require almost no puzzle solving. Just try not to get hit, you'll be fine. Weirdly enough it plays very similarly to Simon's Quest, but Simon's Quest is WAY, WAY more difficult because it obscures a ton of gameplay behind obscure puzzles and design decisions. (Simon's Quest is also timed, and the game does not tell you this. Good luck with any ending that isn't horrible.) Zelda 2...doesn't do this.
There are a lot of NES games that gave me the fits (Hell-lloooooooooooooo Abadox, Bayou Billy, and Solomon's Key) but Zelda 2 wasn't one of them. Hell, I'd even say trying to finish Mario 1-3 without warping is a lot more challenging than Zelda 2.
edit: that being said, Lost Levels is the the most difficult thing Nintendo released that I've ever played. I didn't get to that one until Mario All Stars on the SNES- I couldn't imagine having played that in the mid 80s- many, many broken controllers would have resulted.
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Terrible OP. Interesting question though; I played so much fzero x and gx that i end up finding them not so hard, but those are objectively brutal.
Recently, I found tropical freeze to be challenging, though coming out of Celeste B sides it was ok.
In general, Nintendo games are in my view harder than most AAA games though, with exceptions such as Kirby I guess (i do not play kirby anyway).
Recently, I found tropical freeze to be challenging, though coming out of Celeste B sides it was ok.
In general, Nintendo games are in my view harder than most AAA games though, with exceptions such as Kirby I guess (i do not play kirby anyway).
no need for Japanese titles anymore, that game was officially released as The Mysterious Murasame Castle several years ago.
The second secret stage should be studied by every dev who is developing a platform game.
When I decided to go as fast as possible, everything clicked.
I was playing like this and I was dying a lot:
Then I decided to just go as fast as I could and I begun to see that stage like Neo saw the Matrix:
Nope. Again, this was 30 years ago. The game was brand-new, there was no Internet, he might have had a Nintendo Power or two with scattered tips, but he was eight years old and doing the best he could. All the strategies and tricks people have discovered over the years to make the game easier were totally unknown. Farming slimes worked in the opening part of the game to gain a few levels of experience, so he just stuck with what worked and kept at it.
Yup. that was pretty much everyone. Even if you HAD a nintendo power subscription, you'd only get a few hints or tricks here and there- IF you were lucky enough to have the issue in question. It was always just "figure it out."
if you were renting the game (edit: or buying it from a rental chain), you might have been even worse off. After a couple of years lawsuits meant that video chains couldn't distribute manuals with the games anymore, so you'd MAYBE get a single sheet with some button explanations and the general point of the game before getting tossed into it. I got Milon's Secret Castle for free from a friend since HE had gotten it sans manual and just said "fuck this, I can't understand what's going on here." The game was so inscrutable without a manual he just gave up on it. I did eventually get through it, but that took a VERY long time.
I can't imagine having access to save states AND complete written AND video walkthroughs for all of these games and STILL complaining they're too hard- having that kind of access would have trivialized most of the games I played back then.
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"if you want an easier time play Mario" is such a funny statement considering how brutal NSMBU is.
I sure don't know about that label of "Nintendo games are easy". Because, generally, they're not in the slightest. Of course you get your Kirby games sometimes, but there are plenty of different franchises... have any of you guys played The Wonderful 101? (a Platinum game, I know, but the IP owned by Nintendo.. so that counts. The lenght of each mission doesn't help a lot either)
but I can say without a doubt that The Lost Levels gets the crown. And it's not "fair hard".. you don't even feel accomplished when you beat the game. And I did it twice recently in a sequence... I don't recommend it.
but I can say without a doubt that The Lost Levels gets the crown. And it's not "fair hard".. you don't even feel accomplished when you beat the game. And I did it twice recently in a sequence... I don't recommend it.
I mean, with a bit of practice, you can cheese through the races with snaking. It's like saying Super Mario Kart on 150cc is difficult without knowing how to powerslide.
The average Nintendo game isn't any less challenging than the average AAA production. A game like Red Dead Redemption 2 allows you to skip entire sequences if you fail enough times.
I didn't have much of a problem with those, but I am getting my ass handed to me in DKC2.
And not even all yoshi games at that.
Yoshi Island DS is rather brutal for a Yoshi game.
Clearly said by people who've never played a Mario game :)
Ironically I find all of the Rare DKC games much easier than the two Retro-made ones.
Or just the GameBoy and 3/DS ones.
They are, they're the easiest DK games around.
DKCR is brutal and the end part is usually infuriatingly hard.
Nothing Rare produced for Nintendo was ever as hard as the last level before the boss of DKCR.
And it's not even close.
Having flashbacks to finally winning the final grandprix after weeks of trying daily and cussing out Ricky Winterborn because I finally bested him.
F-Zero GX story mode was near impossible on the easiest setting for me.
Zelda 2 and early Fire emblem are tough, but atleast they're manageable and fun to me
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Bringer of Chaos mode is absolutely ridiculous if you try it with a fresh file. The game was absolutely NOT balanced around BoC mode, instead more meant for NG+.
Ignoring selectable difficulties, The Lost Levels gets my vote. Although I actually really like that game so I don't have TOO much trouble with it nowadays.
Ignoring selectable difficulties, The Lost Levels gets my vote. Although I actually really like that game so I don't have TOO much trouble with it nowadays.
The final bonus level of Super Mario 3D World is just brutal.
F-Zero GX was also ridiculous, I remember my best friend's brother being amazing at it, so watching him play on Very Hard was pretty awesome.
F-Zero GX was also ridiculous, I remember my best friend's brother being amazing at it, so watching him play on Very Hard was pretty awesome.
I remember Metroid Prime 2 being fairly tough at certain points, I don't think Nintendo games are really any easier than most other game companies.
This question is definitely more interesting to me when you approach it from angles like more modern Nintendo games and taking them as a whole as opposed to say pointing out the one super secret finale stage that stands in contrast to the rest of the game.
Because otherwise I just feel like I have to default to the classic NES selection of either janky or balls hard titles, I'm giving the original Lost Levels a swing at the moment thanks to Switch online and it's showing me that the Mario DX version on the GBC was nerfed big time from this cruelty.
And of course Zelda 2 is Zelda 2, I never make any headway there.
So going by my own rules, I think Octo Expansion is quite notable among recent nintendo outings for being quite the dick kicker, though this is DLC where they clearly planned it to be tougher than the standard fare so even then it kinda bucks my silly self imposed rule.
So maybe Fire Emblem Conquest for modern Nintendo? playing on normal/classic was too much for me that I had to submit to easy/classic and it was still bloody tough!
Because otherwise I just feel like I have to default to the classic NES selection of either janky or balls hard titles, I'm giving the original Lost Levels a swing at the moment thanks to Switch online and it's showing me that the Mario DX version on the GBC was nerfed big time from this cruelty.
And of course Zelda 2 is Zelda 2, I never make any headway there.
So going by my own rules, I think Octo Expansion is quite notable among recent nintendo outings for being quite the dick kicker, though this is DLC where they clearly planned it to be tougher than the standard fare so even then it kinda bucks my silly self imposed rule.
So maybe Fire Emblem Conquest for modern Nintendo? playing on normal/classic was too much for me that I had to submit to easy/classic and it was still bloody tough!
If we're counting extra modes and difficulties, then even Kirby can throw some tough challenges at you, because I've certainly never been able to complete the latest boss rushes in Star Allies and Robobot. Octo-expansion's boss was a piece of cake compared to those.
I think people just don't really understand how to play it.
Hint: they point out your rival for a reason. You don't have to place 1st every time if you can make the next closest racer get 0 points from a race.
There's also no rubber band rival AI BS, so different racers will win different races and the points will be further distributed. Just like real life, you don't need to place 1st every time to win.
Story mode is fucking hard, though.
