Hard NES Games (We Can't Stop Playing)

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] I've always loved hard NES games but they didn't always love me back like training with a brutal Kung Fu Master I had to earn that love the 8-Bit days did not shy away from a serious challenge many of these games were hard Nintendo hard we cut our teeth on some of the most brutal games and living to tell the tale was a badge of honor this video was my journey through not only the hardest but also my favorite gaming experiences on the NES games with something special that no matter how they punished me I came back for more these are the games that were so good that even the struggle or especially the struggle remains a cherished memory look at him he's making the jump it's his second time through and he hasn't even taken a hit yet he's a wizard so he can play ninja guy and so on so what really Savage not everyone could just play Ninja Gaiden Ninja watching the wizard in 89 made me want to become a Ninja Gaiden Master the game is amazing still my favorite NES platforming series of all time making you feel like a real ninja slicing your way through levels but Ninja Gaiden wasn't for the faint of heart I tried and failed they tried and died oh and I did die and then I died and then I died and then I died again and I kept freaking dying until I got it right practicing Ninja Gaiden took so much training I may as well have just become a real ninja [Music] isn't isn't a game it's a dance a dance with death you don't play ninja guy and dance through it and just like dancing if you screw up and lose your Rhythm you die enemies respond mercilessly and you have to keep moving forward to stay in the flow oh and don't stop to look at those pretty birds oh no because these be ninja birds and they are the most powerful enemy in the game not the Assassins the damn Birds here's what the cover of Ninja Gaiden should have looked like because that's what you're gonna see when the birds are kicking your ass there's an army of these respawning flying mofos just waiting to get a piece of that sweet ninja ass and believing they will have it come on so what kept me going first off the cutscenes oh God cutscenes in 1988 this was state of the art 4K HDR Dolby Cinema amazeballs I just couldn't wait to beat the next level and see what happened next and it was all worth it for that happy ending no not that one oh and the chip Tunes in this game have got to be some of the best 8-bit compositions ever produced if I wasn't playing the game they were playing in my mind and I dreamed of swooping ninja Birds night after night once I learned to Dance with the Devil in the pale Moonlight finally making it to the end stage it won't be easy but I got this right wrong stage 6 Ninja Gaiden is no lose straight up Snuffleupagus you want to be a Ninja Master this level will make you straight cry it triples in difficulty and is what makes the game Infamous flying ninjas over Bottomless Pits check evil enemy placement over Bottomless Pits check endlessly spawning overwhelming incoming enemies from every direction over Bottomless Pits check and after endless attempts hours of deaths finally getting lucky and somehow making it to the boss I got not one but count them three bosses in a row to defeat and if that wasn't bad enough guess what happens when you die just once on any of them the game throws you all the way back to the beginning of the level I had to start over and do it all again and again and again this level chewed me up and spit me out like a couple of butt monkeys fingering their last banana nut cream cake and I was the cream cake [Music] there was only one solution to my Agony get the spin slash and keep the spin slash the most OP weapon in the game that tears through enemies and bosses like a great Vape on ecstasy problem is you have to memorize every single item drop and know which ones to avoid so you don't accidentally replace it with something else and it eats through nympho like crazy so you have to grab all the right power-ups and save it for the key moments you'll need most we didn't know that the spawning trick where you could just disappear this cross throwing granny gobbler and Walt your way over to the ladder having the spin slash was the only legit way to not end up at the bottom of this pit with old dingleberry donkey waiting to show he was eggplant collection [Music] okay I got this moving avoid the birds perfect jump timing avoid the birds stay in Rhythm avoid those goddamn birds and don't stop or turn around keep that spin slash and get ready to rip dear old dad a new one when I reach the boss fight then prepare for the game to take away my spin slash after the cutscene to fight the second form by far the hardest boss in the game with only my sword in one hand and my balls in the other four save states and rewinds existed imagine the torture of playing this level over and over I'll say it now and I'll say it again beware of 8-bit NES games that give unlimited continues there's a reason because you're gonna need them but for those of us that persevered and completed the gruesome Gauntlet of three we were treated to one heck of an ending of an otherwise incredible game including spoiler alert the absolute cheesiest pickup line ever uttered by a master Ninja seriously Tecmo more importantly I had bragging rights across the entire schoolyard and the chicks nah come on I was a nerd he didn't give a about me beating the game only real ninjas like Ryu get the chicks but hey I could still play the game and uh pretend foreign [Applause] Oh and stop calling it Ninja Gaiden the birds hate it when you do that and we don't want to piss them off do we [Music] ghosts and goblins isn't just hard it's straight evil so addicting and evil that it should have been illegal at least in 1985. you think either of the 16-bit ghouls and ghosts were hard but please I Waltz through them like Driving Miss Daisy after what it took to finish this NES Port ghosts and goblins almost became my white whale with the countless times it almost broke me 10 years old playing into the night only to fail yet again not to mention the nightmares it gave me afterward with that eerie music and those chilling sound effects likely programmed by the devil itself I just knew that if I let this game beat me it'd haunt me till the day I died the maddening thing about goblins is how it kept luring me back in because I loved the evil theme the atmosphere and music and the Monsters it never failed to Thrill and get my heart pumping the closer I came to clearing a hard section right before it pulled the rug out from under me no doubt to the endless Amusement of the programmers that's what it felt like every time the game unveiled a new and creative way to screw me like the game was designed by Satan and I was in a battle for my gaming Soul except it wasn't programmed by Satan but by the next worst thing my chronix oh God no wonder now it all makes sense responsible for some of the jankiest NES ports of all time it's a testament to how cool the original game and design by Capcom was that even my chronics couldn't completely ruin it but oh did they ever try enemies can spawn from directly beneath you or often right on top of you as you're moving usually at the worst times like surprise another is how they force that terrible flame weapon onto you oh and they knew it sucked too that's why they did it sometimes even in ways where you can't avoid it and are forced to choke it down or just die on purpose to avoid it often the better option now the flame weapon gets a bad rap because it's so slow and cumbersome to use making the stages extra hard but it is offset by being quite powerful for bosses of course the only all-around viable weapon is the knife fast High DPS it makes the game that much less impossible the Lance is slow and unviable and don't get me started on the ax it's possibly worse than the flame and near useless playing the game again it absolutely refused to give me the knife no matter how I tried I was stuck with the damn Lance at least until this Dragon boss which reminded me it's impossible to kill with it I hammered on this Falcor wannabe for over a minute and a half and it refused to die so the clock helped out you killed me instead foreign [Music] that's right don't crap on the flame it's near mandatory for some of the bosses it makes quick work of the Dragon if you happen to not have the knife which I didn't this last section has to be played strategically and perfectly or it's insta death avoiding all the enemies that don't need to be fought baiting this red aramer down to your platform to kill it before heading up to continue oh my God is that the knife [Music] literally the end of the game and now it gives it to me well heck yeah better late than never I guess at least I can make mince meat of anything left in my way and this boss oh baby where you been all my life who's next [Music] this weapon has not effect try again get a H why the hell did you give me the knife then okay so maybe I knew it was coming this time but as a kid I lost my barely kept it together to start playing this beastly final stage again oh at least I had the knife now thanks a lot oh but it gets worse I remember it like it was yesterday one of the most Insidious things that my chronics did with this port is the continue screen you see after running out of lives it brings you to the first menu and the option to continue is two clicks down that's right not the first option so you can just rage Mash start and try again no you gotta be super careful to click down two times then select continue well guess who wasn't super careful cause he was so damn angry at having to redo the level that when he died he started mashing that start button out of anger [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] let's just say I lost my gaming privileges for a few days and had lots of time to Stew over how I was going to murder this game when I could play it again and you know what didn't get much easier and after finally making it to the box with the right weapon mind you you're greeted with one of the greatest trolling of players in the history of gaming getting sent back to the beginning of the game and having to beat it again only this time even harder and more ridiculous than the first remember when I said Beware of NES games they give unlimited continues yeah poster child while I can look back at my personal hell decades later with some humor and Nostalgia I admit that by the time I finally claimed victory over this Beast of a game there was no love lost between us I vowed to never put myself through that again for any game which of course I promptly broke once the salt wore off but I kept my promise for this one has these old scars cut real deep never picking it up with the intention to beat it again at least until this video was it still as brutal and evil as I remembered hey you bet your Red Devil as it was [Music] when it comes to hard games no other genre rules the brutal Roots like shmups or what we call them in the eight bit days Shooters and no surprise I played the heck out of them Hudson soft was one of my favorite early developers not only responsible for the super fun star Soldier series on both Nintendo and PC engine but pioneers of video game competitions or what they called Caravans oh man did I ever wish I was a kid living in Japan and able to jump into those events and compete Star Force star Soldier Hector 87 they all kicked my ass and I loved every second of it the incredible Hudson music and fast addicting gameplay that kept me coming back over and over in my mind Hudson could do no wrong and then this happened [Music] Dino Ricky is the shooting game that'll bring even the most battle-hardened shmup experts to their knees by taking Hudson's usual fast-paced shooting prowess and combining it with punishing Precision platforming bet you can't say that five times fast before the game wipes the floor with you [Music] imagine playing this super fun but frustratingly hard Original Adventure Island one of the toughest Platformers on the system courtesy of Hudson saw only having to shoot down enemies that come flying at your face while you're doing it Hudson really got me with this one I already played many of their other games and was a kid who loved dinosaurs okay what 80s kid didn't love dinosaurs no real dinosaurs so when I saw the box art looked at the back and saw it was a shooter and a platformer with Dinosaurs sold and you know what the game is freaking Charming as heck the opening stage music is fantastic typical Hudson the graphics are colorful that enemies are very and you're a pudgy Encino Man making funny faces whenever you get smacked First Impressions I loved it if there's one thing that Hudson knew how to make it was a fast hectic shooting game and then came the platforming [Music] you've heard of seven minute abs well Dino Ricky is seven minutes sphincter cause if you manage to beat this game you'll be squeezing lemons completely hands-free with your butthole alone after all the puckering you've been doing to beat it which is a good thing cause your hands will be frozen up from the carpal tunnel you develop bashing away at the fire button for hours on end better have that butt paste on standby before picking this one up or better yet my official shmup junkie thumb Chom at only 8.99 operators are standing by Hudson is lucky I didn't disown them at 12 years old for this one because the platforming controls are absolute trash and near impossible to maneuver that speed will also make you so Twitchy on platforms it's almost impossible not to fall off which you'll definitely need to survive the onslaught of enemies making a beeline for your face it's like playing Frogger only a Frogger was high on crack and if it made you move with the scrolling platforms instead of just standing still on them like a normal person because you know Screw physics the only upside to being powered down and slow is it makes the platforming actually manageable in spots the sheer amount of luck finger gymnastics and work required just to stand on a moving platform is absurd at least in the early going it lets you focus on just the platforming but toward the end of the game it'll start chucking Crazy Fast enemies at you while you're trying to make jumps or avoid sand traps or Flames all of which are insta death foreign but Dino Ricky hides a secret that makes the game a whole lot better he's a caveman [Music] you can bypass almost all of these ridiculous platforming segments every level and often right before the sections there's a hidden bird icon that lets you fly hold down the jump button and turn the game into a traditional shooter almost like someone smart at Hudson played the game realized how ridiculous it was and made them add the power up be careful though because just one hit and you're back on the ground or more often than not falling to your death but now a game is totally beatable and the final stage can actually be routed quite nicely even though it seems impossible at first you can also find rare icons that turn you super buff overpowered and into a roided up caveman make no mistake even armed with this knowledge Dino Ricky will kick your ass getting hit will power down your shot and your speed and the ridiculously fast enemies will often swarm in and end you but if you you can manage to stay powered up through the hardest sections and bypass the platforming with the wings you'll find the bosses are super easy by comparison honestly Dino Ricky had so much potential had they tightened up the jumping to be on par with other great overhead Platformers like Gremlins 2 a game I absolutely love by the way it could have been up there as a favorite instead I get the feeling it was very rushed and Hudson may have been embarrassed to release it evidenced by the game having no ending or credits of any kind but just jumping right back to stage one it doesn't sound like anyone wanted to take responsibility I'll admit I do have a soft spot for it at the very least I can now make hands-free lemonade as a party trick though for some reason they always refuse to drink it within the juice [Music] no Bunch too The Adventures of fire bully [Music] oh boy you ain't Wrestled a cross-eyed pack mule jumping on a trampoline till you played yourself by you Billy it's got brawling shooting and driving all to a Hooten Konami soundtrack that'll have you cut in a rug like a greased up goat except you can't cause your sweetest honey this side of a bee's nest has been kidnapped no more bobbin for crawdads till you get her back so you reach for that foot long blade and hit the swamp cause ain't nobody gonna keep you from grinding the corn on a hot summer night with your honey [Music] if you think I'm joking with all this but you should see the manual to the game a bunch of that stuff is actually in it I clearly remember renting this game as a kid and laughing my ass off with a friend reading it it literally says that you were raised by a family of gators It also says that rescuing her will be anything but easy and it sure got that right but you know what I still have a good time with Bayou Billy after all these years even if it'll make it matter than a swap rat getting baptized partly because he struts around like his don't stink to some really catchy music while beating down goons with an ugly stick foreign you want to do is the practice modes because it'll not only train you how to play each of the game types but reward you with super useful items at the end buffing you up before even getting into the adventure your punch in this game is about as useless as a one-legged pole dancer so stick with your kicks and better yet jump kicks until you can grab an ugly stick and start handing out beat downs and yes that's what the manual actually calls it except you're the one that'll be getting the beat down if you go right at enemies because they're Relentless and can hand out some ass weapons no less than you so the tricking Billy is figuring out all the cheats and strategies like cheesing the Gators by standing in the right spot and simply using the right weapons and tactics with each enemy type the first stage is actually one of the hardest in the game so once you can lick it I'll bet you can stick ugly stick it that is there's a boss on stage three that's a real bastard and you better have the knife on you to cheese them even so I barely scrape by and almost ended up using the meatball I had saved from the practice buff the shooting stages are the easiest just don't miss the health and bullet pickups because if you run out of ammo you die but if you did the training you'll get a full bullet refill if you run out [Music] it's the driving stage is that first wrecked us all ate away our lives and made the game feel impossible and that's because your Jeep controls like a drunk raccoon in a corn maze while the road is full of rocks and side posts that are insta death what made it so hard for me is that it was fun to go fast so I'd screamed down that highway like a possum in heat it just begs you to keep the pedal to the metal and tear ass down the road but barreling through the corners at full speed without hitting the posts it's like a three-legged warthog walking a tightrope so guess what simply slowing down big time and taking the driving carefully makes it all so much easier running out of time only takes one life away gives you a new clock and lets you keep going I'll take that penalty over dying on a stupid rock or pole any day and it's the secret to the driving even if it sucks some of the fun out of it foreign it's all about getting the best weapon in the game the whippersnapper it makes most of the fighting going forward much easier letting you stun lock enemies from a distance and employ other cheating bastard tactics to your advantage the final stage has you fight kind of a mini boss and his two hounds that I kid you not is called swamp gas Charlie take him out easy with the gun before you can unleash a swamp ass on you where are those poor dogs that probably have to sleep next to the bastard and keep on cruising make sure you hold on to the bulletproof vest before you get to the big bad gourd who's a Shifty but pretty darn easy boss except he isn't the actual boss it's ignuke here that are a royal pain in the ass fighting him head on is about as fruitless as a jock strap on a unit you gotta evade them like a girl getting in a quick whip every so often and hope they don't smash you and they take a ton of hits to the point where you wonder if they're even taking damage but they are and once one meat head finally goes down the last only a matter of time and finally oh babe back in your arms where she belongs Oh Billy is that a foot long blade in your pocket or are you just happy to see me that blades for killing honey my ugly stick that's for fun [Music] Legend has it iron wanted to make a game so hard with a story so metal they could call it holy okay maybe not that last part but playing Holy Diver is like riding the tiger down to the midnight sea if you played and loved Castlevania but thought damn this game is way too easy and Holy Diver is for you if you're a Metalhead and dig the idea of a game Loosely based on Deal's album of the same name then Holy Diver is definitely for you it's the 666th year of the World of Magic and the black Slayer Demon King has created a world of darkness and weakened the power of King Crimson the main character Ronnie entrusted his two infant Sons Randy and Zach to his servant Ozzy as Randy you set out to battle the black Slayer so yeah the devs may have been some pretty big metal heads they were also obviously Servants of Satan because nobody else would unleash this kind of Hell onto kids to play on their Nintendo at least Japanese kids because it never made it to the US so I never got to play it until I was older and could import it lucky for me because playing Holy Diver was like the worst kind of Smash Mouth football a game that makes you fight for every single inch of progress nothing is easy every step forward and checkpoint is earned enemies are either tanky as hell or a pain in the ass and just one wrong or unlucky move will seal your fate it's a battle of attrition with your versatile and powerful character in one corner and a Relentless onslaught of enemies and devious level designs in the other that's one thing I do love about Holy Diver your character kicks ass or at least eventually he does as your energy and Magic increase with every new level and item discovery after a few stages you're a complete badass freezing time in lava unloading powerful breaker shots buffing yourself with protective orbs or straight up bringing the lightning not not to mention the moments where you transform into a freaking Dragon to Traverse otherwise inaccessible areas you're a lot more maneuverable too with a very high jump and can change direction in midair and every last bit of it is necessary as the enemies are so merciless and the pitfalls so egregious that old Belmont would have zero chance of traversing this world Holy Diver is beatable but it'll beat you into a pulp or piss you off to the point where you may not want to there's one thing I learned to absolutely despise about Holy Diver and what holds it back from being a classic like Castlevania or other great Platformers on NES the jump controls are unreliable I lost count how many times I've simply walked off an edge like an imbecile to my Doom like a lemon that blindly Koreans into Oblivion there are moments in the game where you literally have to make Precision last millisecond jumps at the very last pixel of a platform just to scale your way up while a bunch of enemies come flying at your face of course and it totally works then other times a seemingly mundane jump with no danger in sight completely screws you into losing a life it forces you to play with a sense of fear not being able to trust the responsiveness of your jump it also doesn't help that the magic switching system is kind of clunky using the start menu to switch and the select button to swap modes while completely stopping the flow of the action to hit the menu and man does this game go out of its way to brutalize you the difficulty curve never stops ramping and by the final stage some of these obstacles are straight up designed to frustrate you over and over putting you on Tiny platforms with walls of bullets spewing in your direction trying to push you off and this ridiculous jumping segment where you have to keep freezing these mini medusas while trying to get lucky and not have the controls falter as you jump your way up getting knocked to the bottom over and over until you finally get lucky iron later made an awesome platformer called Metal Storm that's one of my favorites using a gravity mechanic to great effect much more refined and hard without being over the top like Holy Diver but I tell you what if you're hardcore enough to jump on this tiger and ride it out of the depths of the midnight sea you'll have cleared a game that's as hard as steel Holy Diver is the cat in blue so you better run cause it's coming for you [Music] working on this video reminded me of how much I loved my NES despite some of the games reaming me raw I realize now it was those trials by fire that made me strong created incredible memories and set me up for gaming for the rest of my life there's so many more challenging games that left a long time impression on me like the Gory aesthetic of abadox that kept me beating my head against the wall trying to see it through or the super addicting timing based gameplay of Batman with that incredible Sun soft music to back it up that moment when I realized konami's Ninja Turtles wasn't going to be the arcade brawler I expected and it was so much harder that I'd be stuck navigating its waters for days without progress but never gave in until I finally reached the Technodrome I played the heck out of TNC surf designs despite how janky some of it could be simply because a vacation trip to Hawaii made me obsessed with surfing and what California Kid didn't have a skateboard Karate Kid had me take up real martial arts from the third grade but the game was so annoying I can't even recall if I ever saw it through yeah I'll remember that stupid blade dodging challenge till the day I die and of course genre defining games like Contra that seemed so hard at first that we couldn't clear it without the code yet after endless replays became a breeze to run through and we still play regularly for the simple thrill of it I freaking love my old Nintendo toaster and it'll forever remain a nostalgic favorite and I'll bet that most of you watching love it too with your own memories and stories to tell and that's what I want to hear so light it up in the comments and tell me yours because sharing these kinds of stories is what Retro Gaming is truly all about [Music] I'm also a huge fan of discovering awesome new games that somehow slip through the cracks and never made it big but are just so good that it's a crime they're still unknown so if you're new to the channel and haven't seen my last Smash Hit Video that just blew up the best run and guns you never played you can check it out next right here [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Shmup Junkie

Views: 236,982

Keywords: nes games, hardest nes games, nintendo entertainment system, video games, most difficult nes games, retro gaming, teenage mutant ninja turtles, nes, konami, hudson, ghosts n goblins, metroid, zelda, punch out, ninja gaiden, top 10 hardest nes games, retro gaming console, shmup junkie, shmups, shooters, bayou billy, castlevania, nintendo, famicom

Id: Jh1PqUaAvTc

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023