Really Difficult Sega Genesis Games

[Music] [Applause] [Music] we all have had games that have given us a ton of trouble no matter how good you are at some games others can present a challenge in difficulty that will have you screaming at your television or tossing controllers across the room I was also the kind of gamer that wanted to do everything on my own by the 16-bit era so I never used cheats or strategy guides until I beat a game on my own I hated even getting advice from friends before I played a game for the very first time high difficulty doesn't always ruin a game as long as it's coupled with strong design but I have encountered a few games on the genesis where it simply made a game with weaker elements a chore to slog through in this episode we are gonna look at Sega Genesis games that absolutely destroyed me when I was younger and continues to challenge me even today some of them were good enough that the challenge just made me want to play it that much more while the extreme difficulty of others just made me want to quit trying at all I hope you guys enjoy really difficult Sega Genesis games I still remember when this one was released in the summer of 1995 comics zone was pretty late in the Genesis life and though I had my Sega Saturn for a while at that point I still zeroed in on it because it looked like it would be extremely fun and make no mistake it is quite a good game from a design perspective set in the comic book world that the hero is banished to by his own creation you fight across the pages scene-by-scene chat bubbles progress the story and the solid gameplay is mostly centered around a beat'em up style combat system and puzzle like hidden items and areas that setup should have made this a grand experience start to finish but the game is absolutely brutal from the very first page even the most basic enemy soak up tons of damage before they fall in battle and things only get harder as you progress even better once your ass is kicked you're looking at a game over screen assuring that you'll be repeating the opening stage numerous time comic zone was loaded with a style and atmosphere that could challenge some 32-bit releases and the solid gameplay mechanics did the game proud but it was also a game that drove me nearly insane trying to beat it games rarely in the 16-bit era could keep me down after enough playtime but comic zone was a beast start to finish that brought me to my knees [Music] when I got x-men for the Genesis in 1993 I had just discovered the cartoon series that premiered the year before I loved the characters and stories and it was all new to me since I had not read any of the comic books up until that point it was a completely new franchise and the Genesis game looked like it would be everything I wanted it to be there's a number of things that irritated me right from the get-go each character's special power is extremely limited allowing you to only use them here and there I mean it was a game about super-powered mutants that didn't let you actually play as super-powered mutants making things worse was the unbalanced gameplay that put enemies in the cheapest places for easy damage to you boss battles were the worst often giving you little chance to even figure out a pattern before you were defeated the difficulty ramped up in the later stages to nearly unfair levels and there is a system reset trick you must perform that makes the game unbeatable on certain Sega machines the sequel to this is much better and while the core platforming and combat mechanics here are sound enough the difficulty spikes that lack of powers really had an impact on my enjoyment of it [Music] the immortal I was so excited when my best friend picked it up for the genesis in 1991 the graphics on the back of the box looked awesome and the description matches the images perfectly selling me on the need to survive the dungeon lair and win immortal Fame and then I played it I had never died so fast and so many times in the beginning of a game in my life every nook and cranny of The Immortals world was lethal from death pits that would open up beneath you to poison darts shooting from the walls to dungeon dwelling enemies that thirst it for your blood death was a guaranteed outcome yet it captivated me in every way the game was indeed visually awesome with gruesome details everywhere and fantastic animation to go along with her mini death scenes puzzles and hidden elements were everywhere and the blood and gore that accompanied the combat made sure you wanted to see each and every death scene as you became more familiar with the ways to survive each encounter obsession was set in to survive how long could you make it before something in did you run the immortal is one of the most punishing games I played during the 16-bit era but it's also one of the most addictive often dying in a game over and over as an instant turnoff but when the hook is as strong as it was here you find that the test to your resolve is worth the pain [Music] most shoot-'em-ups have a certain level of difficulty that challenges us it's in the nature of the genre to test your reflexes and memory with some even implementing subsystems that changed based on how you played it I found that my success with shoot-'em-ups depended greatly on my level of patience and commitment but thunderforce to here still whooped me into submission while I was able to have success in Thunder force 3 & 4 - was something else entirely most of my troubles centered around the overhead stages with deaths coming frequently no matter how much I played the fast side-scrolling stages were a bit more forgiving but still gave me a ton of trouble it's the only Thunder force game I can't beat on my own and despite me loving to play it it simply has my number when it comes to challenge [Music] I am not a fan of this next game I never have been I know a lot of Sega fans consider 1992's chuckling the forever man a Genesis classic but I'm not in that camp in fact I consider it indicative of everything that was wrong with western Genesis development the Jim's driven sound effects some music or god-awful the gameplay is made infinitely harder by incredibly cheap enemy placement and painful platforming segments stages are designed to slow you down and everything looks the same I spent most of the time playing trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go while the fatiguing combat just seems to never let up and give you a chance to catch your breath there's always an enemy or obstacle to hit you slow you down or make you repeat some tedious platforming sequence I was intent on giving the game another chance a few years back and actually played pretty deep into it my opinion did change but only strengthened my previous resolve even more that the challenge of this one was directly due to cheap enemy placement and terrible platforming segments a shame too because a game about a guy that could beat death and live forever should be awesome for me it was anything but I was a big fan of revenge of shinobi so when shadow dancer dropped in 1991 I was there early ready to use my ninja powers to save the world yet again much unlike revenge of shinobi however shadow dancer returns to its arcade roots with one hit deaths a punishing style that made the original shinobi a difficult game in its own right and boy did shadow dancer here put me to fits of rage at times even the weakest enemies can send you back to the beginning of a level and the stronger enemies you'll meet in the later levels put the stress of dying on you every second you allow them to stay on the screen I was enthralled with it's great graphics sound and gameplay however so I pushed back played the absolute hell out of it trying to memorize each enemy placement and every ball spat urn to finally see the end a great game tends to do that and shadow dancer here ranks right up there with some of the best it's the hardest of the 16-bit shinobi games by quite a stretch in my opinion but the solid design will keep you coming back for more it still gives me a solid challenge all these years later [Music] 1990s Budokan the martial spirit was a fighting game that had you learning to use various weapons and combat techniques and then entering into a tournament to prove your skills I won't lie here nearly 30 years after the fact I still suck at this game I own it have the instruction manual for it and I honestly give it a real try to figure out how to do the moves it always ends up with me fumbling with the controller and nothing I want to happen actually happening I don't button mash and my moves are very deliberate yet my on-screen alter-ego was doing things I'm not wanting him to do this has led me to some of the most frustrating gameplay I've ever had in a fighting game again and again I fall to my opponents in the tournament often preceded by countless moves I didn't mean to do I have no idea what to think about this one does the game just suck too high heaven or do I just suck that bad at it I have no clue but Budokan here is without question a game that I have completely failed to understand even at the most basic fundamentals of its design be wary if you want to buy a copy as it only works on early released model 1 Genesis systems when Double Dragon hit the genesis in 1992 I couldn't believe the screenshots it looked better than the arcade version and having been a big fan of the Sega Master System version I was excited to give it a go my friends and I were ready for the co-op multiplayer that defined the experience and it sure did look the part when I fired it up for the very first time I wasn't a big fan of the music however as much of it was nearly ear piercing and its implementation but it was the gameplay that I couldn't get past its overly fast and the hitboxes on your character seemed to be a fair bit bigger than your enemies so being powered on by a few bad guys usually meant I was on the ground repeatedly just couldn't find a good rhythm no matter what I did and despite beating the arcade the Sega Master System and NES versions of the game I could not beat the Genesis version here my friend discovered that you could spam the heck out of the elbow move to some pretty good results but I wasn't that kind of player spamming just one move in a beat'em up with only a handful of moves to begin with wasn't my idea of fun [Music] I was drawn to 1992's Ecco the Dolphin the very first time I saw it I loved the graphics in the setting and I can't say I'd ever played a game starring a dolphin before what I thought looked like a kids game that would be a walk in the park actually ended up being one of the most challenging Genesis games I would ever play this game is no joke filled with sprawling levels that you easily get lost in and difficulty spikes that render some levels nearly impossible the core gameplay was strong enough and the feeling of swimming around and being able to jump out of the water was really cool what shocked me was echoes extremely dark story that was akin to mass effects Reaper mystery in effect an alien force returns to earth every 500 years to harvest its oceans for food upon learning this I was obsessed with beating the game to see the ending and it was a painful trip nearly start-to-finish getting lost or not knowing where to go came as often as a death and the later stages were point-blank masochism there's a good game here though and the story is truly compelling if you have the patience to survive it's design to see it all [Music] one of my favorite games on the Genesis was 1991's Road Rash I loved nearly everything about this game even its music which is admittedly an acquired taste that there ever was one one of my good friends had actually recommended it to me after picking up a copy so I asked to borrow it I was blown away by its great combat racing and atmosphere a combination that made it unlike anything I had played up until that point I had dominated the game in its early levels too making me feel like such a badass that I went into every battle fearlessly man did that change once I got to the higher levels Road Rash here transforms from a game anyone can enjoy to a game that only the most skilled should even try once you get to the longer tracks and the faster bikes wrecks come often without warning cops and other riders are more aggressive and each mistake puts victory that much further away nothing beats battling for miles to hold first place only to have the hill before the finish line hide a car that you smash into and lose everything the speed of the most powerful bikes you need to compete leave little room for error and meet crashing so much easier Road Rash is an incredible game on the genesis but it's also a game that has made me toss my controller and anger many times this would actually become a staple of a series with all the Genesis Road Rash games being incredibly difficult late in the game even the 32-bit version [Music] [Music] so there we go some of the hardest games I encountered on the Sega Genesis I'd be really interested to hear which games for the system you guys thought were really hard or gave you a ton of trouble let me know down in the comments in a way with saved systems in game maps and checkpoints becoming commonplace many modern games are a lot more forgiving than the games from the 8 and 16-bit eras I suppose many of those old action games had to be hard as heck because they were often really short once you knew where to go and what to do this was especially true of arcade-style games that were only a handful of levels long getting your ass handed to you was half the experience i'm siga lord x thank you guys for watching and I will catch you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 262,760

Keywords: sega, sega lord x, segalordx, sega genesis, sega saturn, sega cd, mega cd, mega drive, 32x, sega nomad, sega cdx, sega master system, game gear, sega dreamcast, road rash, comx zone, thunderforce, immortal, x-men, double dragon, chakan, ecco dolphin, shadow dancer, video games, retro games, retro gaming

Id: nLiBBCcKnfk

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019