For some games yes but the say the mist/odd world series was more of a step between three media's puzzle/ board games, DND style games/adventure/books, and puzzles in general. And lack of game mechanics didn't help Though Puzzles where the more universal media in the early days... It was a logical step to bring in new gamers, I can't deny 90s though are really where video games and phycology meet
As a huge puzzle and rpg fan I loved the 90´s...Day of the tentacle, monkey island, grim fandango, sanitarium among others, all great games....Don't even going to mention the rpg part...to many great games was released during that time=) Man, I miss my high school days in the late 90's...
@@CNGtech I found it harder when I went back to it than when I was younger...maybe cause I was used to them games from back then ....yeah you had to go back to the start an try again a bunch of times but that's what games were like back then trial and error...but yeah I cant remember it being too difficult and I'm surprised it's so talked about as a really hard game.
Thank you for the nostalgic boost of Battletoads. I swear 10 to 20% of the things I see on this channel I forgot about and I’m very grateful for you attempting to revive those memories. Gameranx best video game channel on UA-cam no doubt.
I loved Tomb Raider games as a kid, I would get stuck a lot, but I also learned that there always is a way and I discovered new secrets every time I played it again
So when you bought Myst it came with a blank journal for you to use to keep track of everything. It was actually super cool because as you worked through the game and took notes, it'd end up looking very, very similar to the journal in the game (notes, little drawings, etc).
@@andreasoberg2021 Riven made me question the choices i made in video games. Because it just dumped you in this open world with no context or direction. But i will say the graphics absolutely amazing and beautiful
@@ClintonJRTR I am confused that author added Myst into the list while there is Riven. Riven is so ridiculously hard even compared to other games in the puzzle genre. It should be in the top 3 in this list to be honest.
Yeap i remember when i beat the final boss.... and then i realised that it was not the end ... i was supposed to play the game one more time yo beat the REAL boss .... yeap i throw the snes out of the window....
Great list. 👍 Really liked the quick Flashback reference. One of my favorite games. I always thought Comix Zone was crazy hard. Don't think I ever beat it, but could go back right now as well
I really loved Driver. It allowed me to entertain my fantasy of driving fast in my city and finding shortcuts. I felt the driver’s test in the beginning was very useful for learning the moves that would help you succeed in the game. Goodness forbid, but if I ever wind up in a chase in real life, I intend to try that 180 move. I am not terrible at games, so keep that in mind when I say I tried tirelessly to get thru the last level to save the president and couldn’t do it. Cops cars were actually falling from the sky !
What I hated about Driver was the tutorial, you barely got instructions on how to do the tricks and it was hard as hell. The regular missions were very fun, and even if they were hard it wasn't doing some random movements in a basement. Driver 2 had some missions that frustrated my teenage self. But I finished it, with the help of a friend that passed away some months later.
depends on what you think when you think about evil. Some people think being greedy is evil. Everyone thinks differently. But especially in todays times, its not a good thing to be greedy in general.
I watched through this whole thing waiting for A Boy and His Blob, and then I realized it was released in 1989. That is the first game that comes up in my mind when I think of hard games in my childhood.
Thankyou for reminding me about that driver tutorial. That was sooooo hard I only got past it twice and both times I forgot to save game! Also abes odysey had an amazing story line and the cut scenes were graphically way ahead of its time. Top game.
I played Driver on the PC. The pirated version we had allowed you to skip the tutorial entirely. I got quite far in the game, but was never able to do the tutorial.
I think it was a case of a game being hard because it was inherently terrible. Also all the turtles did the exact same thing with various length of weapons. If you’re down to just Raphael, well you might as well give up.
I must have been pretty good at driving games back then because I don't remember the tutorial being very hard. The very last mission and a couple before were what I remember being insane. But memories are fuzzy. I'd like to try it again being so much older, I bet I would totally suck at it. (I'm OP)
I actually loved lots of these games, and even beat a few. Myst, Super Ghouls n Ghosts and driver. And that tutorial from driver was stupid insane. And I have never met a person who has even lied about being able to beat the turbo tunnel.
The first Metroid was definitely one of these. I remember just walking to the right for about 1 hour and then giving up, because I didn’t know what even happened
@MasterStryfe They keep making videos - not Bootsy tho - but check out their channels - Cinemassacre and Cinemassace Plays. Also Mike Matei's channel. :)
Beavis & Butthead, X-Men (both Sega Mega-Drive) The Simpsons, Total Carnage (both SNES). My 2 best mates & I spent literally hundreds of hours on those 4 games back in the mid 1990s (we were all about 20-ish). While playing, we'd listen to such albums (CDs) as "Vs" by Pearl Jam, "In Utero" by Nirvana, "Superunknown" by Soundgarden, & "Muse-Sick & Our Mess-Age" by Public Enemy. We did eventually manage to beat all of those games, btw. Good times... :)
I'm surprised "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" didn't make the list. Insane "enemies" which were just people in the town doing all sorts of stuff to make you mad (often with rapid hits) until you turn into Mr. Hyde. Then when you transform, you pop up in a shadow world version of the real world; you defeat enemies to transform back into Dr. Jeykl, but if Hyde progresses farther than Jekyl the game ends.
Best games of the 90s where the n64 games Goldeneye 007, Starfox 64, Waverace, Super Smash Brothers, Extreme G, Mario Cart 64, Battle tanks global assault, Turok Dinosaur hunter, wcw vs nwo no mercy, mario 64 and body harvest. Also supernintendo donkey Kong country and Diddy Kong country and Sega genesis sonic 3 with sonic and knuckles attached this is technically two games but when you plugged them in together they where an awesome game a one of the best games ever.
@@danw6877 whoa that's a long list lol. i never played at least half of those games. loved Goldeneye 007 for its mutiplayer, enjoyed starfox 64 but never got the proper ending, loved all mario kart and smash bros. games. my favorite game from the past though was Donkey Kong Country
"If you Imagine Star Wars but a tornado... the game's just all-around chaos" Falcon's descriptions of Super Empire Strikes Back is _right on the money,_ lol
As a 90’s kid i used to hate burger king, but always insisted we ate there because they had a snes and genesis for open play in the play area. Combine that with the pokemon collectible toys, pokeball keychains, and limited edition cards and shiny metallic tokens, and i can safely say that burger king got several hundred dollars that year that they wouldnt have gotten if they didnt make it fun.
I'm actually surprised to learn that so many people had problems with TLK because I found it quite easy. Ecco the Dolphin however... yeah I eventually beat it, but figuring out exactly what to do was such a pain. And the sequel, Tides of Time... that one had me SO frustrated.
I think it depends on how old you were - I remember this game so well. That puzzle with the monkeys was impossible for 8 year old me on my friend's sega genesis, but when I went back to it as a teenager, playing via an emulator, I found it trivial.
That first level of Driver can hardly be called a tutorial since it doesn't teach you how to do anything. It's more like an exam that expects you to have mastery of a game you've never played, before you can actually play it.
The irony of the Silver Surfer dying so easily in that game is that Silver Surfer is one of the more powerful and invulnerable characters in the Marvel universe.
I forgot when Driver came out but I remember renting it from Blockbuster possibly, and Linkin Park came out around then, so when I hear Linking Park I think of riding around town in Driver with no purpose other than thinking it was cool to drive in 3D ...cooler than Mario Kart for SNES....i was poor hahahha
Battle Toads was brutal! I played this game for weeks until I finally beat it. It's one of the most difficult games I've ever completed but I still remember loving it.
I can't recall if it was that level or one after that but I agree. I found the monkey one reasonably easy. A few levels later however has apparently been suppressed with all but the frustration and approximate location of the level. I definitely never completed the game though
Stampede was pretty tough, but the waterfall log climb was even harder. And it took me like a whole year to figure out that to beat scar you have to throw him off pride rock.
@@danb.709 I think the game isn't as hard as people say, I knew you had to judo scar's ass off pride rock and I still never beat it. Got to scar every time. Couldn't do it
Lion King on SNES was the first and last time i legitimately Rage Quit. I've gotten frustrated and turned games off, but that was the only time I literally stomped a game out of existence.
Fun fact, I played Battle Toads/Double Dragon with my cousin and my cousin was hanging off the edge while fighting a boss and I said "you stay down there while I beat him off" and that will forever be in the 'book'
Back in the 90s I used to be able to beat a lot of games after countless hours memorising the layouts of levels and enemies a lot of the time through muscle memory most people now don't have that level of patience and would rather be able to have 90 checkpoints through even the smallest of levels often stumbling through on the hardest difficulty to get to that next checkpoint and call it an accomplishment. Even games that did save you often had to travel backwards to save that progress and could potentially die on your way to that save point. Going back to older games it can be a jarring difference in how easy even some of the hardest games these days can be because if you die you just simply restart where you died of close to it yes games are larger but permadeath should be a thing more often on the hardest difficulties because only those who have actually put the time in will actually beat them.
I agree that current games are a walk in the park compared to the old ones, but let's be clear about this, most old difficult game were unjustly and unnecessarily difficult. It makes me think that the developers made games difficult so that they are not finished quickly.
R-TYPE was a lot like Silver Surfer. I don't remember HOW my brother and I beat it, but I know it was one of the greatest accomplishments of our childhood.
Tomb Raider 3 was significally harder on the Playstation because you needed to collect Diamonds to save. On the PC you could save every time and the Diamonds gave you full health back. Thats why its actually only real hard on the Playstation.
@@Stanna44 Yes, there are. There is a level select (B, A, R, R, Y on option screen, and gain infinite health option), and a level skip (B, A, A, B, A, A).
The Lion King was traumatising. It made me think I was a bad gamer for YEARS of my life. I kept thinking over and over how they couldn't possibly make a game aimed at such young kids that hard so it must be me.
They were so hard because theres was not youtube tutorials, guides, nobody had experience in video games and it was just pure effort to beat the game. Good times
I'm surprised Contra III for SNES isn't on this list. I remember having to use a game genie to beat it, and while going through it and seeing how crazy later levels were I kept thinking "how the hell did they expect kids to beat this without cheating?".
Agreed that game is insane but never played it. Contra hard cops was also pretty hard which my brother and i accidently completed with the secret ending. Lol.. I was 8 or something
I remember being stuck with the Driver tutorial...but I also remember just letting the game go idle and it literally showed how to do the tutorial...it made all the difference
I remember being SO excited to get Tomb Raider 3 for PC back in the day...I clearly wasn't ready as a kid. Besides my ancient family computer barely being able to run it at a playable level, the controls were super janky and it was HARD! I had no strategy guides or tips whatsoever. Never made it past the first level, but still played it all the time because I loved the graphics and you could shoot stuff.
My brother and I playing Battletoads obsessively whilst listening to Nevermind by Nirvana on Cassette is a memory that will never go away. Yes. We beat it
Mad props for that, I think it's hard af but maybe also the damn stage with the scooters was designed like hell.I mean, I remember past through it a couple of times and the subsequent levels are not that hard
@@biteum Truth 💓. I've been playing video games since childhood. Lion King was my ABSOLUTE favorite,In fact I plan on adding the remastered one to my Switch library here soon.
I can't believe that, as a child, I was able to finish the tutorial in Driver. The checklist was so cryptic that I got stuck on slalom. I asked my mom what it meant and she was like "that's when skiers go between the flags, right?". And then I was able to figure out that you needed to go between the supports. Screw you Driver! I never beat it because we rented it, but at least I got through the tutorial
I once beat Battle Toads as a young man, and I still wear it like a badge of honor and bring it up at any opportunity. Sad but true. I also loved Driver. It wasn’t so bad other than the cursed training level at the start.
Lion King had the opposite affect on me that Disney intended. My friend and I rented it and after we FINALLY got past the cant wait to be king level, we decided that doing literally anything else would have been more fun. So we turned the game off and shot at cans with BB guns out back.
hhaahah we did too. bb gun cans was the best 90s past time! and early 2000s, im not really sure ppl do that much anymore after fortnite. my moms students have battlepasses and theyre children so thats whats big now.
There is a difference between being hard because it’s designed that way vs hard because the game controls were crappy, unresponsive, or just over bad game design. I’ve played most of these and they were hard because they were poorly made. Super ghouls and ghost I think was the only one I enjoyed enough to beat.
There are still some NES/Super Nintendo games I haven’t beaten yet….one of the things that made the games so hard to beat back then was NO SAVE….you had to literally sit there and play non stop if you wanted to beat the game.
Man. I was hoping to see Exhumed in this list. That game was hard as nails but oh so much fun. Still one of my GOATs. The PlayStation version was even harder than Saturn
The tag line for this and the thumbnail made me watch. What was funny was I git through the Lion King level just fine, but rarely beat the level after that. I wasn't adult Simba until years later (thank you Game Genie).
The bitter taste of defeat. They teach you how to take a loss, thats for sure. The games Adventure and paper boy almost destroyed my psyche as a child. 😆
I am surprised to see Lion King being talked about as a difficult game. I was a small kid when I learned how to destroy it every single time. I never thought it was difficult. On DOS though, never played it on a console.
That lion king level for "I just can't wait to be king" eventually made me soooo sick of hearing that song over and over and over again after dying 100000000000000 times
Driver... that brings back memories, same with Battletoads, me and my brother played it non stop. Have good memories of Silver from 1999 I think on Windows
"I don't know a game that frustrated me more that I kept going back to" if you do a 2000s era video on games that were hard, that line also works for stuntman.
It might just be me, but in my opinion, games in those days were sooooo much tougher. Even as an adult I still struggle like crazy, just to beat the first few levels of your average platformer.
Video games have at least some if their roots in arcade machines. Those made more money, the more often you fail… I guess that difficulty stuck, for a long time, even when it wasn‘t about money per game, anymore.
I actually didn't think Zombies Ate My Neighbors was a hard game. It was damn fun but not particularly hard for the generation. Dragon's Lair was the stuff of nightmares. However, I left the 8-bit generation long before it hit. Yes, I did come back for SMB3 but that's really it. I was all about my Genesis and Snes back then (divorced parents).
My mom and uncle beat these games while I watched as a kid, at 5 I was taught to play beating mortal Kombat at 6 and lion king's game at 8. Now I struggle midway before rage quitting wondering how I so effortlessly beat them at that age so many times.
I’m actually playing Super Ghouls N Ghosts with my son on the mini Super NES. We can’t stop playing it, but man it’s challenging! We keep getting a little further and finding the secret chests that keeps us coming back for more!
I remember playing Driver! Whilst it had the most difficult, insanely confusing tutorial, in fairness once you got over the urge to burn the console and finished it, it did make you an expert driver and the levels suddenly became more bearable (though still super hard).
I really enjoy Driver, it was an amazing game. And not that difficult indeed, but for the damn tutorial (which was bypassed by saving right after it!) and the last mission, which was insanely hard after relatively cozy previous missions.
The driver game brings back all the memories, i remember after coming back from school, i used to go at my uncle's home and he got this p4 , i play this game without even changing my uniform and play some cool 90s songs in the background in windows media player.. and driving skidding drifting and bouncing on those los Angeles roads . . what a golden time it was
Im so glad someone covered this. My friend was really good at the Lion KIng game, I thought I was just insane for thinking it was the hardest game I played at that point.
The waterfall was the part that I could not get passed as a kid. Everyone else seemed to be stuck at the monkey part which I don't remember being that hard.
It was always that second level. I could play the whole game on one life if I made it past the giraffe heads, the hippo tails, and then the rolling lava rock in “Be Prepared” I think it was.
Driver tutorial is a piece of cake compared to the final level. Managed to complete the entire game without cheating but not sure how. The final level is insanely difficult and just downright unfair. Only completed it because of sheer perseverance and luck.
dude. Thank you for taking me back to the 90s, and literally making me realize so many things I never understood because... well.. there was no internet. Sweet
Sometime ago somebody asked me how many throphies do you got on PS4. I told him: look man back in the day finishing a game was a throphy in itself because the games were so difficult on the older gen consoles before internet. This video is proof.
I mean having a good or bad class can also influence the game's difficulties. Like Faith Magic was OP in the 1st Game, Medium in the 2nd, and BAD in the last game (For interesting Lore Reasons).
Dark Souls is only as hard as the hype says if you don't have patience. It's not easy by any means but the difficulty depends more on your ability to watch and learn, rather than rushing in and treating it like an action game. Watch some blind playthroughs, the people who take their time the most, while they seem to frustrate the already in the know audience the most make progress pretty fast, those who give in to the audience and dive into everything are the once who hit road-blocks.
@@VideoGameVillians Also there isn't really any randomness in the souls games. In those old sidescrolling games things could fly at you from any direction and it would change constantly/each time you play. At least with souls you know there's set locations for each enemy spawn, the only bit of randomness would be which attack they might use.
Fun fact, the reason why the Japanese versions of some games tended to be easier is because games in Europe and the USA were made harder to fight against game rentals while in Japan they got game rentals banned.
Ah, the 90's. The time when developers were truly sadistic.
For some games yes but the say the mist/odd world series was more of a step between three media's puzzle/ board games, DND style games/adventure/books, and puzzles in general. And lack of game mechanics didn't help
Though Puzzles where the more universal media in the early days... It was a logical step to bring in new gamers, I can't deny 90s though are really where video games and phycology meet
As a huge puzzle and rpg fan I loved the 90´s...Day of the tentacle, monkey island, grim fandango, sanitarium among others, all great games....Don't even going to mention the rpg part...to many great games was released during that time=) Man, I miss my high school days in the late 90's...
@@fredrikjonsson8126 Day of the tentacle was a great game!
When game-time is measured in hours, making it more difficult is a great way to give the consumer "more game" xD
1990s logic was so great.
Elder Scrolls over Dark souls!
The Lion King game made me want to throw my SNES from the Pride Rock.
I beat Lion King when I was young and don’t remember it being overly difficult. I have to replay again.
Lol
Those levels were so awesome e though.
I don't remember that game being too hard, though i could be mistaken. The one i remember being fucked up was Aladdin
@@CNGtech I found it harder when I went back to it than when I was younger...maybe cause I was used to them games from back then ....yeah you had to go back to the start an try again a bunch of times but that's what games were like back then trial and error...but yeah I cant remember it being too difficult and I'm surprised it's so talked about as a really hard game.
I remember Earthworm Jim being fun but pretty challenging. The level going through intestines with the villi was ridiculously hard.
Oh man!! You have no idea what you just reminded me!!...
Absolutely loved earthworm Jim on the genesis growing up don't think I ever got too close to the end of it but I had fun for sure.
It wasn't too difficult, challenging yes. I finished the game more times than I can remember. Excellent game.
@Wichard it absolutely was difficult especially in the 90s as a kid.
The cow has launched😅
Oddworld was genius. The difficulty ramped up well and it just expected you to keep up.
The save system was still fucked though.
That lion king game gives me PTSD flashbacks.
Vyper_ x_ Aladdin was worse . I hated that game
Lion king was a great game don't remember it being hard though.
@MasterStryfe looks like we gotta badass on our hands
@@keraatkins7833 I've beaten the Aladdin game but the climbing the waterfall in the Lion King took me forever and I still never beat the game
They remastered Lion King and Aladdin for Xbox and PS4. We can all play the pain again!
You know what's impossible to beat? Battletoads with a friend
and they hated the 1st Turbo Tunnel wait till pt 2 Tuh 😂😂😂
Literally!
@@durrtyjerzeeable we never made past the first stage lol, it was torture playing with him
Indeed.
That in Ninja Turtles 1 also double dragon 1 2
Thank you for the nostalgic boost of Battletoads. I swear 10 to 20% of the things I see on this channel I forgot about and I’m very grateful for you attempting to revive those memories. Gameranx best video game channel on UA-cam no doubt.
I loved Tomb Raider games as a kid, I would get stuck a lot, but I also learned that there always is a way and I discovered new secrets every time I played it again
I completely forgot about tomb raider. It was so long since I watched my aunt play it when I was a kid
Same here
So when you bought Myst it came with a blank journal for you to use to keep track of everything. It was actually super cool because as you worked through the game and took notes, it'd end up looking very, very similar to the journal in the game (notes, little drawings, etc).
That's cool! Very creative!!
Riven is much harder than Myst. Both great games
Me and my friend were breaking our head for months trying to beat Myst. If we had money for another game we probably would have gave up tbh.
@@andreasoberg2021 Riven made me question the choices i made in video games. Because it just dumped you in this open world with no context or direction. But i will say the graphics absolutely amazing and beautiful
@@ClintonJRTR I am confused that author added Myst into the list while there is Riven. Riven is so ridiculously hard even compared to other games in the puzzle genre. It should be in the top 3 in this list to be honest.
Ghosts N' Goblins was the game that got me hooked on gaming back in the mid 80's. Super hard, but I love it. And the music was excellent.
"Super hard, but i love it."
Thats what she said😂
Dark Souls? Before there was dark souls
Yeap i remember when i beat the final boss.... and then i realised that it was not the end ... i was supposed to play the game one more time yo beat the REAL boss .... yeap i throw the snes out of the window....
I only finished the Master System version because it gave you infinite continues. Dunno if other versions had that?
Great list. 👍 Really liked the quick Flashback reference. One of my favorite games. I always thought Comix Zone was crazy hard. Don't think I ever beat it, but could go back right now as well
Comix Zone was great game. Fun and hard
One of the best games of his generation. Hard but not impossible
I really loved Driver. It allowed me to entertain my fantasy of driving fast in my city and finding shortcuts. I felt the driver’s test in the beginning was very useful for learning the moves that would help you succeed in the game. Goodness forbid, but if I ever wind up in a chase in real life, I intend to try that 180 move. I am not terrible at games, so keep that in mind when I say I tried tirelessly to get thru the last level to save the president and couldn’t do it. Cops cars were actually falling from the sky !
Yep I beat driver and driver 2. Was alot of fun back on the day.
What I hated about Driver was the tutorial, you barely got instructions on how to do the tricks and it was hard as hell. The regular missions were very fun, and even if they were hard it wasn't doing some random movements in a basement.
Driver 2 had some missions that frustrated my teenage self. But I finished it, with the help of a friend that passed away some months later.
And people think I'm crazy when I say Disney is evil.
A.... hm..... forget it
disney is not evil... it's in another whole level of evilness, that words can't describe...
There's a big difference between evil and greedy as fuck.
depends on what you think when you think about evil.
Some people think being greedy is evil.
Everyone thinks differently.
But especially in todays times, its not a good thing to be greedy in general.
@@Cardinalbins Greed has always been a trait of evil, but as the years pass, the people are different, and the lessons are lost.
When i was a kid I thought the Driver tutorial was the whole game, imagine my surprise when I beat it and found the rest of the game
Good times
Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool
I remember renting the game and getting so upset because I couldn’t get past that part and just wanted to drive around. Waste of a rental
I didn't know there was more to Driver until now!
That tutorial was the first time for me that a controller did not survive a gaming session.
I watched through this whole thing waiting for A Boy and His Blob, and then I realized it was released in 1989. That is the first game that comes up in my mind when I think of hard games in my childhood.
Thankyou for reminding me about that driver tutorial. That was sooooo hard I only got past it twice and both times I forgot to save game! Also abes odysey had an amazing story line and the cut scenes were graphically way ahead of its time. Top game.
I did too. Beating the tutorial was actually better than beating the game honestly
I played Driver on the PC. The pirated version we had allowed you to skip the tutorial entirely. I got quite far in the game, but was never able to do the tutorial.
Maybe it's just me but I remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES being damn hard
bruh there isn't a single game on the nes or snes that isn't damn hard
I think it was a case of a game being hard because it was inherently terrible. Also all the turtles did the exact same thing with various length of weapons. If you’re down to just Raphael, well you might as well give up.
I just jump kicked lol beat that game so many times that way
@Mma Asshole lol yea in TMNT you can jump kick and you'll never get hit
@@gshivs793 I think you're thinking of TMNT2 the arcade game (also released on NES). They are not even remotely similar.
I beat Driver. I remembering feeling like I just accomplished something almost impossible.
I felt the same way... after I finally crossed out the "Slalom" on that tutorial 😂
I must have been pretty good at driving games back then because I don't remember the tutorial being very hard. The very last mission and a couple before were what I remember being insane. But memories are fuzzy. I'd like to try it again being so much older, I bet I would totally suck at it. (I'm OP)
I used to try to play it on the PC with a keyboard and no instructions to keys etc. Destined to fail for MONTHS I genuinely thought that was the game.
I believe I had Driver the demo via PC gamer magazine and I would just play it over and over again because it was fun escaping pursuit.
Terry Lee maybe that’s where I got it from god bless pc gamer the amount of demos I used to play over and over
I actually loved lots of these games, and even beat a few. Myst, Super Ghouls n Ghosts and driver. And that tutorial from driver was stupid insane. And I have never met a person who has even lied about being able to beat the turbo tunnel.
I beat all 3 Drivers.
@@crazboy84 That's impressive. I remember how bad the framerate on Driver 2 was. I beat 1 but don't think I beat 2.
Beat all the drivers as well. Just did a replay of the original, love that game! And driver San Francisco is just amazing
The first Metroid was definitely one of these. I remember just walking to the right for about 1 hour and then giving up, because I didn’t know what even happened
I'm shocked Aladdin didn't make this list. That game owned me when I was a child.
I got further on that than any of the games on this list lol
Yeah the added story levels were pretty dope too
@Shadowreeper213 😩 almost cried
Nick DiBartolomeo
Aladdin game was pretty cool though.
Or contra. Most kids today can't even beat the first stage.
"Its technically not possible to be good at it" Cinemassicare's Bootsy would beg to differe.
Lmao..Bootsy...lmao
@MasterStryfe They keep making videos - not Bootsy tho - but check out their channels - Cinemassacre and Cinemassace Plays. Also Mike Matei's channel. :)
Mike actually beat Silver surfer on stream- along with Ninja gaiden, TMNT 1, etc.
Rumour is he had a falling out with Mike.
Beavis & Butthead, X-Men (both Sega Mega-Drive) The Simpsons, Total Carnage (both SNES).
My 2 best mates & I spent literally hundreds of hours on those 4 games back in the mid 1990s (we were all about 20-ish).
While playing, we'd listen to such albums (CDs) as "Vs" by Pearl Jam, "In Utero" by Nirvana, "Superunknown" by Soundgarden, & "Muse-Sick & Our Mess-Age" by Public Enemy.
We did eventually manage to beat all of those games, btw. Good times... :)
Damn Xmen was hard
I'm surprised "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" didn't make the list. Insane "enemies" which were just people in the town doing all sorts of stuff to make you mad (often with rapid hits) until you turn into Mr. Hyde. Then when you transform, you pop up in a shadow world version of the real world; you defeat enemies to transform back into Dr. Jeykl, but if Hyde progresses farther than Jekyl the game ends.
Driver, Lion King and Oddworld were 3 of my most favorite games back then..
so much nostalgia with lion king
Best games of the 90s where the n64 games Goldeneye 007, Starfox 64, Waverace, Super Smash Brothers, Extreme G, Mario Cart 64, Battle tanks global assault, Turok Dinosaur hunter, wcw vs nwo no mercy, mario 64 and body harvest. Also supernintendo donkey Kong country and Diddy Kong country and Sega genesis sonic 3 with sonic and knuckles attached this is technically two games but when you plugged them in together they where an awesome game a one of the best games ever.
@@danw6877 whoa that's a long list lol. i never played at least half of those games. loved Goldeneye 007 for its mutiplayer, enjoyed starfox 64 but never got the proper ending, loved all mario kart and smash bros. games. my favorite game from the past though was Donkey Kong Country
"If you Imagine Star Wars but a tornado... the game's just all-around chaos"
Falcon's descriptions of Super Empire Strikes Back is _right on the money,_ lol
It took me a long time to finish this game. The relieve was great, haven't played it again.
As a 90’s kid i used to hate burger king, but always insisted we ate there because they had a snes and genesis for open play in the play area. Combine that with the pokemon collectible toys, pokeball keychains, and limited edition cards and shiny metallic tokens, and i can safely say that burger king got several hundred dollars that year that they wouldnt have gotten if they didnt make it fun.
Lost Vikings. I got stuck countless times as a kid only to revisit it and finish it in my late twenties. Amazing but tough game.
Driver's last mission was madness. I remember making to the garage with my car upside down and about to explode after trying for years
Yeah that last mission is crazy difficult. The test in the beginning didn't bother me too much but that last i tried to so many times
I’m shocked they didn’t talk about that last mission… I’m happy I’m not the only one who remembers it
Good for you for completing it. I never could.
i remember playing driver with my friend, even his dad couldnt beat the tutorial.
I knew I always had the memory of Lion King being the hardest game ever, but you've just unlocked the dolphin game memory as well. thank you
I'm actually surprised to learn that so many people had problems with TLK because I found it quite easy. Ecco the Dolphin however... yeah I eventually beat it, but figuring out exactly what to do was such a pain. And the sequel, Tides of Time... that one had me SO frustrated.
I think it depends on how old you were - I remember this game so well. That puzzle with the monkeys was impossible for 8 year old me on my friend's sega genesis, but when I went back to it as a teenager, playing via an emulator, I found it trivial.
That first level of Driver can hardly be called a tutorial since it doesn't teach you how to do anything. It's more like an exam that expects you to have mastery of a game you've never played, before you can actually play it.
But once you passed it, it made the game easier
@@djmalic3 and the game was awesome
That’s funny, the surfer is one of the most op characters out there and he was getting blasted by frogs
Driver was absolute class, the police chases with the wheel trims (hub caps) flying off around corners looking cinematic
The irony of the Silver Surfer dying so easily in that game is that Silver Surfer is one of the more powerful and invulnerable characters in the Marvel universe.
Never actually did beat that 1st level in driver, just played free roam.
I forgot when Driver came out but I remember renting it from Blockbuster possibly, and Linkin Park came out around then, so when I hear Linking Park I think of riding around town in Driver with no purpose other than thinking it was cool to drive in 3D ...cooler than Mario Kart for SNES....i was poor hahahha
the smurfs brah!!
Same bro 😂
I beat the tutorial 1 time I was ecstatic until I realized it was practice mode, I put the game down and never picked it back up.
@Mister Fields Or just play on a ps1-2 or 3? Or just buy the pc version instead? They are dirt cheap today, you know?
Battle Toads was brutal!
I played this game for weeks until I finally beat it. It's one of the most difficult games I've ever completed but I still remember loving it.
Most frustrating game I've ever played. Great game, fucking hard.
Came here looking for this comment
You finished it?? WOW. My brothers and I played it coop for months and could never finish that freakin game. We always died in the wagons section.
Htf did you finish that game its almost impossible
@@GoldChocobo77 Battletoads is actually easier as a one player game. Saying that, I never beat the game.
90s are just brutal, it was tough being a video game kid back then as I rarely finish any game back then lol
When you pass the Driver tutorial, it makes you a pretty good driver
The stampede level of lion king was the real make or break level of the game imo.
I can't recall if it was that level or one after that but I agree. I found the monkey one reasonably easy. A few levels later however has apparently been suppressed with all but the frustration and approximate location of the level. I definitely never completed the game though
I never got past the level in this video. Thanks for wasting my time and rental money, Disney.
Stampede was pretty tough, but the waterfall log climb was even harder. And it took me like a whole year to figure out that to beat scar you have to throw him off pride rock.
The stampede level has a spot where you can stay and not get hit a single time for the whole duration of it, with no further controller input needed.
@@danb.709 I think the game isn't as hard as people say, I knew you had to judo scar's ass off pride rock and I still never beat it. Got to scar every time. Couldn't do it
Lion King: the rest of the game is not that hard.
Me: still having PTSD from the Hakuna Matata logs on the waterfall level.
This part was really the hard one. The monkeys are easy!
I agree the difficulty of this game is just Right, Alien Soldier for The Mega Drive Is much hardest
Oh GAH that freaking gorilla!!
@@EtaCarinaeArt the gorilla was doable. It was getting to him that was hard... still, how he gave me just a casual slap was offending me to no end
I could never get past the waterfall
Lion King on SNES was the first and last time i legitimately Rage Quit. I've gotten frustrated and turned games off, but that was the only time I literally stomped a game out of existence.
Fun fact, I played Battle Toads/Double Dragon with my cousin and my cousin was hanging off the edge while fighting a boss and I said "you stay down there while I beat him off" and that will forever be in the 'book'
When I was a kid, completing Ecco the Dolphin was my porpoise in life.
Hah
Stanetti Els
L
Wait you actually beat it lmfao! I gave up on the second level XD
Delimon007 I don’t think any of us legitimately beat it. 😆 this guy must be a robot
A porpoise driven life
Back in the 90s I used to be able to beat a lot of games after countless hours memorising the layouts of levels and enemies a lot of the time through muscle memory most people now don't have that level of patience and would rather be able to have 90 checkpoints through even the smallest of levels often stumbling through on the hardest difficulty to get to that next checkpoint and call it an accomplishment. Even games that did save you often had to travel backwards to save that progress and could potentially die on your way to that save point. Going back to older games it can be a jarring difference in how easy even some of the hardest games these days can be because if you die you just simply restart where you died of close to it yes games are larger but permadeath should be a thing more often on the hardest difficulties because only those who have actually put the time in will actually beat them.
I agree that current games are a walk in the park compared to the old ones, but let's be clear about this, most old difficult game were unjustly and unnecessarily difficult. It makes me think that the developers made games difficult so that they are not finished quickly.
Dude I mastered battle toads as a kid. So much fun. Great memories.
I loved the games in the 90s, to this day I still will go back to play them.
Dude. Dragon's Lair for the NES. That game absolutely destroyed my mind.
R-TYPE was a lot like Silver Surfer. I don't remember HOW my brother and I beat it, but I know it was one of the greatest accomplishments of our childhood.
Tomb Raider 3 was significally harder on the Playstation because you needed to collect Diamonds to save. On the PC you could save every time and the Diamonds gave you full health back. Thats why its actually only real hard on the Playstation.
I got chills when you mentioned Battle Toads! Oh man I love that game I rented that so many times. It was awesome
Lion king game was impossible for me when I was a child. I guess this was the first time I used a cheat code.
There was no cheatcode for the lion king
@@Stanna44 Maybe they mail like...a Game Genie code or somethig?
@@Stanna44 Yes there is. Invencibility and skip levels.
I've beaten it on Difficult, where you start with 0 lives and 0 continues. Lol
@@Stanna44 Yes, there are. There is a level select (B, A, R, R, Y on option screen, and gain infinite health option), and a level skip (B, A, A, B, A, A).
Final misson of driver was the only one tougher than the tutorial!
nah trying to do the police survival run is the hardest thing in that game like holy shit don't do that
@@Delimon007 that was only a mini game in which you technically couldn't win, just live longer.
Wait....There were missions in Driver1???
Good driving son
HA, Driver IS the Tutorial, there is no more game.
The Lion King was traumatising. It made me think I was a bad gamer for YEARS of my life. I kept thinking over and over how they couldn't possibly make a game aimed at such young kids that hard so it must be me.
They were so hard because theres was not youtube tutorials, guides, nobody had experience in video games and it was just pure effort to beat the game. Good times
Its 2:30am here and I'm just here to rejoice my 90's memories.
I'm surprised Contra III for SNES isn't on this list. I remember having to use a game genie to beat it, and while going through it and seeing how crazy later levels were I kept thinking "how the hell did they expect kids to beat this without cheating?".
I remember being a kid watching my dad kick this games ass. Those where the days
Agreed that game is insane but never played it. Contra hard cops was also pretty hard which my brother and i accidently completed with the secret ending. Lol.. I was 8 or something
Contra III is tough but fair. Battletoads, on the other hand...
I don't blame you! Some games from konami are so hard even one of the game makers had to use a cheat Code to finish it.
Contra III is easy.
I remember being stuck with the Driver tutorial...but I also remember just letting the game go idle and it literally showed how to do the tutorial...it made all the difference
I remember being SO excited to get Tomb Raider 3 for PC back in the day...I clearly wasn't ready as a kid. Besides my ancient family computer barely being able to run it at a playable level, the controls were super janky and it was HARD! I had no strategy guides or tips whatsoever. Never made it past the first level, but still played it all the time because I loved the graphics and you could shoot stuff.
My brother and I playing Battletoads obsessively whilst listening to Nevermind by Nirvana on Cassette is a memory that will never go away.
Yes. We beat it
That spiraling tower that required 2 players to beat? Many many nights over with friends on that one. I tip my hat to you!
Lies. Battletoads is impossible without game genie or tool assist. This has been a known fact since The Offspring Smash album.
Bro, this memory you mentioned has me in my feels 👏
Battletoads was crazy tough...when you can jump and somehow totally MISS the next platform...sorry, I don't have the nerves for that! 😤😬🤯
Mad props for that, I think it's hard af but maybe also the damn stage with the scooters was designed like hell.I mean, I remember past through it a couple of times and the subsequent levels are not that hard
I actually grew up with most of these games.#9 was my childhood.
Sounds like you had a good child hood mate
@@biteum Truth 💓. I've been playing video games since childhood. Lion King was my ABSOLUTE favorite,In fact I plan on adding the remastered one to my Switch library here soon.
I can't believe that, as a child, I was able to finish the tutorial in Driver. The checklist was so cryptic that I got stuck on slalom. I asked my mom what it meant and she was like "that's when skiers go between the flags, right?". And then I was able to figure out that you needed to go between the supports. Screw you Driver! I never beat it because we rented it, but at least I got through the tutorial
I LOVED The Lion King game. But that level actually made me take out a pen and paper to note down how to do it. It was absolutely INFURIATING!
I once beat Battle Toads as a young man, and I still wear it like a badge of honor and bring it up at any opportunity. Sad but true.
I also loved Driver. It wasn’t so bad other than the cursed training level at the start.
Lion King had the opposite affect on me that Disney intended. My friend and I rented it and after we FINALLY got past the cant wait to be king level, we decided that doing literally anything else would have been more fun. So we turned the game off and shot at cans with BB guns out back.
hhaahah we did too. bb gun cans was the best 90s past time! and early 2000s, im not really sure ppl do that much anymore after fortnite. my moms students have battlepasses and theyre children so thats whats big now.
I miss those days so much!!!
There is a difference between being hard because it’s designed that way vs hard because the game controls were crappy, unresponsive, or just over bad game design.
I’ve played most of these and they were hard because they were poorly made. Super ghouls and ghost I think was the only one I enjoyed enough to beat.
There are still some NES/Super Nintendo games I haven’t beaten yet….one of the things that made the games so hard to beat back then was NO SAVE….you had to literally sit there and play non stop if you wanted to beat the game.
My next door neighbour finished Myst, I always thought he was so smart.
The Gunman I think your neighbor was/ is so smart... Lol gotta be either so smart, persistent or often just that bored lol...
Myst is beatable?
@@axelwulf6220 what you never did ?
I finished Myst on my iPhone… no guides, just took notes with a pen & paper
he was lol
Abe's Exodus also had another part that depending on how many of the people you save also setup the ending you got.
Abe's Odysee also had that, my brother beat the game twice to get the good ending saving everyone, I'm surprised he kept his sanity.
People? Mudokons you mean.
@@EnricoZulu Couldn't remember what they were called. Been years since I played it.
@@jonathonpion2042 np.
Oddworld abe's Oddysee was such a breath of fresh air 🙏
Man. I was hoping to see Exhumed in this list. That game was hard as nails but oh so much fun. Still one of my GOATs. The PlayStation version was even harder than Saturn
Especially when you want to get all the dolls.
The tag line for this and the thumbnail made me watch. What was funny was I git through the Lion King level just fine, but rarely beat the level after that. I wasn't adult Simba until years later (thank you Game Genie).
Knowing that I never finished a single one breaks my heart
The bitter taste of defeat. They teach you how to take a loss, thats for sure. The games Adventure and paper boy almost destroyed my psyche as a child. 😆
You can try round two as Aladdin and Lion King have been recently remastered for Xbox and PS4!
Despite the pain I loved paper boy as a kid. Wish they remaster that in some way!
🍜Yaaas
I remember playing Ninja Turtles on the NES when I was a kid, that was hard as hell! :D
that sure was a hard one, i think I beat it once, eventually, but it took me a few hours for sure lol
You mean hard as...shell 😁
@@oshikuru09 Just came here to comment that. ha ha
We, the kids from the 90s, didn't have "nerf" in our vocabularies.
I am surprised to see Lion King being talked about as a difficult game. I was a small kid when I learned how to destroy it every single time. I never thought it was difficult. On DOS though, never played it on a console.
Not difficult. I beat it on the SNES.
I never finished the Driver’s tutorial.
Bidonga same. So damn frustrating. Your screwed no matter what you do!
I've beaten that game...once you get passed the tutorial its a little easier. It took me a while to beat it tho. Just keep trying
You gotta read the manual cuz it shows you how to preform all the maneuvers
That lion king level for "I just can't wait to be king" eventually made me soooo sick of hearing that song over and over and over again after dying 100000000000000 times
I remember I would just mute the TV
"The king has returned."
Driver... that brings back memories, same with Battletoads, me and my brother played it non stop. Have good memories of Silver from 1999 I think on Windows
"I don't know a game that frustrated me more that I kept going back to" if you do a 2000s era video on games that were hard, that line also works for stuntman.
It might just be me, but in my opinion, games in those days were sooooo much tougher. Even as an adult I still struggle like crazy, just to beat the first few levels of your average platformer.
Video games have at least some if their roots in arcade machines. Those made more money, the more often you fail… I guess that difficulty stuck, for a long time, even when it wasn‘t about money per game, anymore.
The lion king was painfully hard especially when you had to use the giraffes hahahha
yep, monkeys were a lot of trial and error but Fuck the giraffes and the ostrich.
I can beat it no problem.
The Lion King game was my jam. The scene when you are running away from the stampede was crazy cool
That Driver tutorial was insane....the relief from finally getting past that part.....
I remember being able to beat lion king on my brother’s Sega. He couldn’t even get past the second level and was a lot older than me.
I got two that were pretty tough for me in my youth: Dragon's Lair and Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Zombies ate my neighbors was one I was hoping to see here.
I beat Dragon's Lair on the SegaCD flawlessly ONCE. Memorized the entire game. Zero deaths. It takes 11 minutes to play through the entire game.
ZAMN is the one. Dang spiders. Dang baby. Dang werewolves. Dang Martians. Dang ...
dragon's lair would have been my #2
I actually didn't think Zombies Ate My Neighbors was a hard game. It was damn fun but not particularly hard for the generation. Dragon's Lair was the stuff of nightmares. However, I left the 8-bit generation long before it hit. Yes, I did come back for SMB3 but that's really it. I was all about my Genesis and Snes back then (divorced parents).
When lists of the "hardest games of all-time" are made:
My mom and uncle beat these games while I watched as a kid, at 5 I was taught to play beating mortal Kombat at 6 and lion king's game at 8. Now I struggle midway before rage quitting wondering how I so effortlessly beat them at that age so many times.
I’m actually playing Super Ghouls N Ghosts with my son on the mini Super NES. We can’t stop playing it, but man it’s challenging! We keep getting a little further and finding the secret chests that keeps us coming back for more!
I remember playing Driver! Whilst it had the most difficult, insanely confusing tutorial, in fairness once you got over the urge to burn the console and finished it, it did make you an expert driver and the levels suddenly became more bearable (though still super hard).
The tutorial has been hard but not that hard. The hardest thing was to find out what you had to do. After that it was just 1 or 2 hours of training.
I really enjoy Driver, it was an amazing game. And not that difficult indeed, but for the damn tutorial (which was bypassed by saving right after it!) and the last mission, which was insanely hard after relatively cozy previous missions.
The driver game brings back all the memories, i remember after coming back from school, i used to go at my uncle's home and he got this p4 , i play this game without even changing my uniform and play some cool 90s songs in the background in windows media player.. and driving skidding drifting and bouncing on those los Angeles roads . . what a golden time it was
I almost forgot I played that Lion King game. Unlocked a memory I never knew I had.
Im so glad someone covered this. My friend was really good at the Lion KIng game, I thought I was just insane for thinking it was the hardest game I played at that point.
The waterfall was the part that I could not get passed as a kid. Everyone else seemed to be stuck at the monkey part which I don't remember being that hard.
I must have had a similar experience, except as the friend who found it easy
It was always that second level. I could play the whole game on one life if I made it past the giraffe heads, the hippo tails, and then the rolling lava rock in “Be Prepared” I think it was.
Driver tutorial is a piece of cake compared to the final level.
Managed to complete the entire game without cheating but not sure how.
The final level is insanely difficult and just downright unfair.
Only completed it because of sheer perseverance and luck.
Haha. I remember people changing the code of the game, so you didn't have to do the tutorial anymore... Yeah. People is me.... ;D
dude. Thank you for taking me back to the 90s, and literally making me realize so many things I never understood because... well.. there was no internet. Sweet
there was, you just didn't have it.
Sometime ago somebody asked me how many throphies do you got on PS4. I told him: look man back in the day finishing a game was a throphy in itself because the games were so difficult on the older gen consoles before internet. This video is proof.
The 90s when u had to be a gamer to play games.
Stop it man, don't be that guy.
Here we go
I kmow exactly what you are saying but have to be over 35 to understand what your saying lol
um surprised they chose 10 because most games of that period where that hard
Correction: Dark Souls is Hard but these are Brutal
I mean having a good or bad class can also influence the game's difficulties.
Like Faith Magic was OP in the 1st Game, Medium in the 2nd, and BAD in the last game (For interesting Lore Reasons).
@@TheAyanamiRei very true!
I don't play dark souls games because I know I'll brake my control or punch a hole in my computer monitor
Dark Souls is only as hard as the hype says if you don't have patience. It's not easy by any means but the difficulty depends more on your ability to watch and learn, rather than rushing in and treating it like an action game.
Watch some blind playthroughs, the people who take their time the most, while they seem to frustrate the already in the know audience the most make progress pretty fast, those who give in to the audience and dive into everything are the once who hit road-blocks.
@@VideoGameVillians Also there isn't really any randomness in the souls games. In those old sidescrolling games things could fly at you from any direction and it would change constantly/each time you play. At least with souls you know there's set locations for each enemy spawn, the only bit of randomness would be which attack they might use.
Fun fact, the reason why the Japanese versions of some games tended to be easier is because games in Europe and the USA were made harder to fight against game rentals while in Japan they got game rentals banned.
Driver was awesome. Definitely remember it, and that tutorial. We had the whole gang trying their best just to make it out of that garage.