what Nintendo game do you consider the hardest?

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

Nintendo games are no easier than stuff like God of War, Halo, etc.

The generalization that their games are the easiest is nonsense.

As for the topic, probably Zelda 2.

 

[andresmoros]

They mentioned it already, but yeah, F-Zero GX. I still don't know how I beat everything in that game. I guess I used to be good at games, now I suck. I still love to play, though.

 

[slashf]

Ok. Dk tropical Frezze have a good chalenge.
The mario Games after the end, The Star road and other have a good chalenge for the people that want to throw the Joystick away

 

[Evil Lucario]

A lot of people say Octo Expansion, but I never really struggled with it that much personally. Unless you're using the non-recommended items, every stage is still a challenge, but it isn't really "hair-pulling hard". That really goes to The Lost Levels imo.

Then again I also didn't struggle too much with other games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, so maybe I'm just an anomaly.

 

[trugs26]

F Zero GX.

 

[Kiraly]

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:

Click to shrink...

Man, I can't get over how good that music is. David Wise the GOAT.

 

[Wood Man]

I had a rough time with the axe crocs in Zelda 2

 

[TheMoon]

Ghosts and goblins, ninja Gaiden, battletoads. I'm not even going to pretend to play those games too beat them since I don't have the patience. I'll play to certain points and be fine not getting past them.

Click to shrink...

not one of them is a nintendo game.

 

[Bigwombat]

not one of them is a nintendo game.

Click to shrink...

They are Nintendo games my friend. If you mean they aren't developed or published by Nintendo then you are correct. I'm 37 and those are Nintendo games.

 

[The Anonymous Wizard]

F-Zero GX is easily the hardest if we're talking about games that are hard and still fair. The missions were bloody hard. I remember feeling a great sense of accomplishment in completing it.

Mario: The Lost Levels is also very hard.

There are games like Kid Icarus on the NES that are hard because they're trash to control.

 

[Red Arremer]

F-Zero GX, though the entire F-Zero series is no slouch.
Several NES games are quite difficult (Zelda 2 has been brought up, but I'd also add in Metroid and Kid Icarus as being pretty relentlessly hard).
The Mother series is pretty tough, especially the first game.
Both of the GBA Advance Wars games have extremely difficult missions, especially Hard mode.

 

[Deleted member 3700]

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.

Click to shrink...

Haven't played the original but only Echoes. Played on hard and fuck those summoners. Every stage with them took me multiple tries and 1-2 hours per trials to beat because I need to be extremely careful in moving my units. I can only imagine how bad they can be in Gaiden if they have adjusted the RNG.

 

[Vivian-Pogo]

Completing F-Zero GX story mode on very hard was a challenge, but it doesn't compare to the physical fortitude required for Tug o' War. Legit felt like you had ropeburn irl after playing this.

 

[Lucas M. Thomas]

Completing F-Zero GX story mode on very hard was a challenge, but it doesn't compare to the physical fortitude required for Tug o' War. Legit felt like you had ropeburn irl after playing this.

Click to shrink...

"Games That Caused You Physical Pain to Play" could be a good thread sometime. :p

 

[Nocturnowl]

minigame island is truly the European extreme difficulty of Nintendo outings.
My hand was scarred for years by pedal power.

 

[Mezati99]

well this thread made me realize i really REALLY fucking need to play some of those Nintendo NES games huh

 

[Vivian-Pogo]

"Games That Caused You Physical Pain to Play" could be a good thread sometime. :p

Click to shrink...

..I don't know if there's any I've played besides Mario Party. Well that and DDR.

 

[Indelible]

F-Zero GX story mode, absolutely brutal.

 

[FreddeGredde]

I am surprised everyone says F-Zero GX is one of the hardest games ever? I beat unlocking all the AX cups but I can't get past the first boss in Bloodborne....

SMB:lost levels is the answer OP. It's cruel-hard.

Click to shrink...

And for me it's the other way around! The Lost Levels are quite straight-forward and not too hard if you're into platformers. F-Zero GX on the other hand, I don't think I beat level 7 in the story mode...

 

[FrostyLemon]

It's obviously F-Zero GX, but for the sake of variety I'm going to lend another vote to Fire Emblem Conquest. It's tough on normal, made me rage on hard and I don't hate myself enough to make it any harder.

 

[GKSilKamina]

Another vote for F-Zero GX. That game does not screw around.

 

[Barn]

F-Zero GX is uber-challenging, but I found a lot of it surmountable, and I'm not that great. Still plenty of stuff in there that I just said "no thanks" to, though. For pure, abashed difficulty, I've got to give to the Lost Levels. That game is just intentionally cruel and wholly mean-spirited, which is interesting to see from Nintendo (they were clearly learning and establishing their game design principles).

Also a shout out to Kid Icarus. I love playing it with save states, but god damn is it relentless otherwise.

 

[CNoodles]

Umm I would bet that Nintendo games are a lot harder than the majority of AAA games, so I don't know where you are getting those stats from. Also that "target audience" is bullshit.

 

[RelaxItsJustMe]

I died more in Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze doing the secret levels than I did in Sekiro.

 

[Deleted member 42484]

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.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, this.
I mean you can win the hardest cups by coming in 4th or 5th every race. If you land 1st, you can practically afford to come in 10th. And yes, destroy the rival.

I also just really loved GX. I beat the story mode. I sunk hours into it. It was just my jam. One of the best games ever.

 

[grimrepo]

F-Zero GX - My most precious save file, yet uncompleted.

 

[GamerJM]

I actually think Zelda 2 is harder than F-Zero GX and Lost Levels probably. That's just me for some reason though, I have no idea what it is about Zelda 2 that makes it infuriating for me but it is. LL and Z2 are both pretty hard but I think Zelda 2 is harder. GX is difficult but probably doable for me today.

I haven't played FE Thracia 776 (it looks kind of ridiculous), but I think US released Fire Emblem at its hardest is difficult in a very specific way. In that you can mostly only play the game in a specific few ways in order to achieve victory. I don't really know how I'd quantify that in comparison to other games, it's a very different kind of difficult than other Nintendo games or even most video games.

 

[Mekanos]

Within the last ten years or so, I would probably say DKCR. TF felt a bit toned down in comparison, but DKCR really rocked me quite a bit, as a veteran of the SNES trilogy. The final cave level with the bats probably ate ~40 of my lives or so on my first playthrough (on replay I did it on my first try, strangely enough).

 

[azeke]

Nintendo games are well known for their easiness

Click to shrink...

Bullshit.

There is no correlation outside of "tough guys" who derive their manliness from not playing "games for children" and who only play so called "hard games for men" and only on the hardest difficulty mode.

 

[Deadpool_X]

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.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough. I played it back then as well, but had a friend who'd gotten the game before me, and told me about that. Has always made the game fairly easy for me.

 

[Version 3.0]

I think the only Nintendo game I ever tried and failed to beat is Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Just cant take Iron Mike. So that.

I 100%-ed F-Zero GX, which I'm proud of, but that was top tier. The fish boss in Majora's Mask was memorably frustrating. Also the melty-face machine thing in Metroid Fusion, the Boost Ball Guardian in Prime 2, and definitely the bonus secret stages in Tropical Freeze.

Zelda 2 is not one of their hardest, at all.

Nintendo has plenty of difficult games, but often the most difficult parts are optional. And they do make some very easy ones. Overall their games' difficulty is about average, I suppose.

 

[Hace]

It's lost levels. Fuck that game.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

It is The Lost Levels, but not really for good reasons. That game is fascinating but you could not get me to ever want to try and beat it again. Just obtuse for no good reason.

I do not think the concept of Nintendo games being easy is completely out there. A lot (but certainly not most!) of their more mainstream modern games are outrageously simple pretty much all of the way through. It is the end game that completely flips that on it's head though usually. Still mad about how the last level of Pikmin 3 made it turn from a game I was totally down to replay several times to something I have not booted up for years. Just thinking about that last area gets me frustrated.

Easily F-Zero GX even F-Zero X is already difficult.

No it doesn't count as a Sega game.

Click to shrink...

Why not? It was entirely made by a SEGA team (same team that went onto make the Yakuza series) with their design sensibilities and interests with the arcade version as a focus to boot. Nintendo themselves had no idea what the devs were doing for a large amount of it's development. There are some interesting articles about it's development out there if you are interested.

It is both a Nintendo and SEGA game technically! Especially as it was their first proper collaboration, it is a damn historic game in my eyes. A crying shame we have not gotten a new version probably soley due to Nintendo refusing to have proper triggers on their controllers.

 

[SuperFakerBros]

It is The Lost Levels, but not really for good reasons. That game is fascinating but you could not get me to ever want to try and beat it again. Just obtuse for no good reason.

I do not think the concept of Nintendo games being easy is completely out there. A lot (but certainly not most!) of their more mainstream modern games are outrageously simple pretty much all of the way through. It is the end game that completely flips that on it's head though usually. Still mad about how the last level of Pikmin 3 made it turn from a game I was totally down to replay several times to something I have not booted up for years. Just thinking about that last area gets me frustrated.


Why not? It was entirely made by a SEGA team (same team that went onto make the Yakuza series) with their design sensibilities and interests with the arcade version as a focus to boot. Nintendo themselves had no idea what the devs were doing for a large amount of it's development. There are some interesting articles about it's development out there if you are interested.

It is both a Nintendo and SEGA game technically! Especially as it was their first proper collaboration, it is a damn historic game in my eyes. A crying shame we have not gotten a new version probably soley due to Nintendo refusing to have proper triggers on their controllers.

Click to shrink...

No, it's because the game didn't do so well and there's only so many games they can develop and publish so they focused on other games inzgead. We've had F-Zero games before pressure sensitive triggers, you know?

 

[AtomicShroom]

Super Mario Bros. 2 JP (aka The Lost Levels).

None of you have legitimately beaten that game without cheating, warps, or save states.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

No, it's because the game didn't do so well and there's only so many games they can develop and publish so they focused on other games inzgead. We've had F-Zero games before pressure sensitive triggers, you know?

Click to shrink...

The game is specifically designed around analog triggers and cannot properly function without them. What does it matter if prequels existed? They have different designs entirely.

The triggers are the absolute biggest hurdle. It is why we never got a new version of Super Mario Sunshine as well.

 

[Richietto]

Zelda 2. Dark Link is bullshit. Always cheese that fight.

 

[SuperFakerBros]

The game is specifically designed around analog triggers and cannot properly function without them. What does it matter if prequels existed? They have different designs entirely.

The triggers are the absolute biggest hurdle. It is why we never got a new version of Super Mario Sunshine as well.

Click to shrink...

F-Zero GX is designed around analog triggers and it's the only one to date. The rest aren't. If they really wanted to and felt that F-Zero could be viable today, they could design a new one without them. I mean, hell, we've even gotten games that use analog triggers ported to the Switch, like Rocket League

That could be it. At the same time, we haven't gotten most GameCube games brought over to any of Nintendo's HD systems, save for the Zelda remasters, so it could also be that they simply don't often bring over a lot of their GameCube and Wii era titles to newer systems. I wouldn't exactly say that the game depends on sensitive usage of the analog triggers either. I've always went full throttle with it myself

 

[Evil Lucario]

F-Zero GX is designed around analog triggers and it's the only one to date. The rest aren't. If they really wanted to and felt that F-Zero could be viable today, they could design a new one without them. I mean, hell, we've even gotten games that use analog triggers ported to the Switch, like Rocket League

That could be it. At the same time, we haven't gotten most GameCube games brought over to any of Nintendo's HD systems, save for the Zelda remasters, so it could also be that they simply don't often bring over a lot of their GameCube and Wii era titles to newer systems. I wouldn't exactly say that the game depends on sensitive usage of the analog triggers either. I've always went full throttle with it myself

Click to shrink...

As another example, Super Mario Sunshine sure as hell doesn't need triggers. L can let you move while spraying while R lets you lock in place. Especially true that the Switch has three extra buttons over the GameCube controller.

 

[SuperFakerBros]

As another example, Super Mario Sunshine sure as hell doesn't need triggers. L can let you move while spraying while R lets you lock in place. Especially true that the Switch has three extra buttons over the GameCube controller.

Click to shrink...

Exactly. In this case, there's ways to work around it. The lack of analog triggers was never the limiting factor

 

[Evil Lucario]

Exactly. In this case, there's ways to work around it. The lack of analog triggers was never the limiting factor

Click to shrink...

Honestly personally speaking I never liked analog triggers because you can't spam the buttons as easily as digital.

Racing games are the only games that benefit from triggers, but even then there are workarounds like how Trials Rising on Switch uses the right analog stick to simulate it.

 

[SuperFakerBros]

Honestly personally speaking I never liked analog triggers because you can't spam the buttons as easily as digital.

Racing games are the only games that benefit from triggers, but even then there are workarounds like how Trials Rising on Switch uses the right analog stick to simulate it.

Click to shrink...

There is that but, normally, you're not spamming these sort of triggers anyways. I myself never had any issues with, say, the Xbox triggers

Oh yeah, there aren't many games that really depend on them which is mainly why I never saw a lack of them as a particularly bad thing

 

[Deleted member 48897]

Super Mario Bros. 2 JP (aka The Lost Levels).

None of you have legitimately beaten that game without cheating, warps, or save states.

Click to shrink...

Does the SNES rendition's ability to save after every level count for cheating or save states? Because if so, probably.

Honestly I think the hardest game might be Mario 64, but mainly due to the way that Mario's stiff jump frequently fails to play nicely with the camera. It's not a bad game by any means, but it is clear that you're getting a view of the game provided by one of Bowser's minions.

 

[JustJavi]

Nintendo games are well known for their easiness

Click to shrink...

I challenge you to play Zelda 2, or even any of the Super Mario Bros.

 

[Kapryov]

I don't know if it counts exactly, but I tried out the Gamecube F-Zero game once.
There's a story mode of some kind, and it is some bullshit. I barely made a dent, the requirements are stupidly difficult.

Wipeout is a hard game, but it gradually eases you in. F-Zero though... I don't have time for this.
I do hope they remaster it for Switch, if only to see new people online reacting to the difficulty.

 

[scitek]

F-Zero GX is one of the hardest games I've ever played.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Lost Levels. The Famicom original, not The Lost Levels version. Lost Levels is still hard, mind you. But the Famicom original beats it.

Click to shrink...

There's a difference?

 

[Evil Lucario]

There's a difference?

Click to shrink...

The Famicom version, should you get a game over, starts you over from the beginning of the world. Lost Levels has a save feature.

Also to get to World A, you needed to beat the game EIGHT TIMES. In Lost Levels, only once.

There's also some very slight physics changes.

 

[shinespark]

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest (at the highest difficulty) is definitely one of their harder games in recent years. I had a rougher time with it than I did with XCOM: Long War, which is itself famously difficult.

 

[Robin]

A lot of the good ones have already been said, F-Zero GX, Lost Levels, Zelda 2, and Fire Emblem Conquest are all good picks. I found playing ARMS on the higher difficulties legitimately hard.