Classic arcade games that were HARD...

[stargate]

There were quite a few, but what games really grinded your gears and munched your quarters? The worst, IMO, were the games that were so much fun to play that they kept you coming back only to eat your quarters and send you running back to mommy.

One such game for me was 10-Yard Fight. I loved the gameplay (still do). It has an addicting quality to it. Fairly simple controls, but difficult to master and a lot of finesse required.

BUT, the game was flippin hard. I only made it past the high school level once. Never saw anyone make it to the pros, let alone the super bowl. The defenders all run faster than you, the game ends when you run out of time (which happens quickly) EVEN if you are on the 2nd down. The game seems to get pissed at you if you do good and will send 6 defenders to jump on you. I mean, the defensive coverage in this game is ridiculous! Interceptions are rampant and send you back 20 yards which is near impossible to recover from considering the time factor. I could go on and on. Yet, I still play it on MAME hoping to get to the pros someday. :)

[Baloo]

TRON is a big one for me. Love the game, but I can barely get past level 3! I can't imagine people who manage to get up to 12, especially on tanks!

Defender is another one, love the game but it's just extremely difficult. Enemies are erratic as anything, tons of bullets coming at you, a limited amount of bombs, and your guys quickly getting abducted.

[Flack]

I just played 10-Yard Fight last night. I can get to the first half of college every time, but I rarely make it past the first half of that. If you don't have an amazing kick return (before the timer begins counting down), forget it.

[XYXZYZ]

I didn't really start gaming until the NES era, and to me all of the early 80s classics are pretty damn hard.

I can't play Pac-Man to save my life, I don't see how people memorize those patterns. I can rarely finish the first loop on Donkey Kong and though I'm not too bad at modern shmups from Psikyo and the like, Galaga does me in shortly after the first bonus round. Robotron 2084 is hard as hell and my game usually ends at stage 4 or 5 if I'm lucky.

They're great games, but I guess I just don't have the patience to learn them.


Oh, and another game that comes to mind is Raiden. I love that game, but goddamn it's hard.

[InsaneDavid]

Quantum. I'm sure considering its rarity that not a ton here have played it but it gets balls crazy after a few stages. Tailgunner is another one that just gets over the top and I'm pretty good at Tailgunner.

[Smashed Brother]

Renegade: A game that's moderately fun, but wtf is with the difficulty? The controls aren't that quick on the draw and the enemies have a hitbox that registers something like "if I didn't see it, then it doesn't count". Oh, and you have only 2 minutes in each stage to beat the regular enemies and the cheap-ass boss. Did I mention that you only have one life and no opportunity to continue? There are only 4 stages to this game and I've managed to make it to the 3rd one just by spamming the jumpkick over and over.

The Combatribes: This game has some of the best beat-em-up mechanics ever, but have no fear... it will relieve you of your quarters....fast! There are only 6 levels to the game, but the cheapening goes into full effect on level 3. You will take plenty of unavoidable hits and the later bosses all of a sudden gain a Renegade-like hitbox while easily pummeling you and rapidly draining your health. I've beaten this on MAME and the watered-down SNES version, but I could never beat this in the arcade; I think it would literally take $20 in quarters to see the end.

[Clownzilla]

I'm convinced that Robotron 2084 isn't made for human consumption. I think level 3 is the farthest I can get and my game is over in a little over a minute. I know that there are people who are good at the game but are they really people........or robots dressed like people?

[Collector_Gaming]

I'm convinced that Robotron 2084 isn't made for human consumption. I think level 3 is the farthest I can get and my game is over in a little over a minute. I know that there are people who are good at the game but are they really people........or robots dressed like people?

http://www.cinecon.com/frontimages/2456-956-067terminator-2-posters.jpg

"come with me if you want to beat the game"

for me since i am not amazingly great at classic arcade titles then take you pick lol

[stargate]

I'm convinced that Robotron 2084 isn't made for human consumption. I think level 3 is the farthest I can get and my game is over in a little over a minute. I know that there are people who are good at the game but are they really people........or robots dressed like people?

A few years back I started playing this on MAME every night with a dual analog joystick (similar to the real arcade controls). After hours of gaming every night, I think I made it to level 7. It was basically a frantic blur. You start with like 100 enemies on the screen and literally cannot move a millimeter without being hit by something. I have no idea how many levels the game has, but it is sheer insanity.

[Edmond Dantes]

"Classic arcade games that were HARD"

You mean all of them?

Right now, I can't get past the first level of Legend of Hero Tonma. I'm going to be heartbroken if it turns out that's a legendarily easy game and I just suck that badly.

[InsaneDavid]

Jack the Giantkiller is also damn hard, even once you get the hang of the different stages.

[Compute]

I struggle with most games. Pac Man always kicks my ass. If I didn't own P-47 Phantom Fighter I would probably not pay money to play it. It's a decent shmup, but it's tough. The first time I saw Strikers 1945 on location I must have dropped about $20 trying to be halfway good at it.

[cyberfluxor]

Tough classic arcade? Tempest. It's fun until you die over and over.


A few years back I started playing this on MAME every night with a dual analog joystick (similar to the real arcade controls). After hours of gaming every night, I think I made it to level 7. It was basically a frantic blur. You start with like 100 enemies on the screen and literally cannot move a millimeter without being hit by something. I have no idea how many levels the game has, but it is sheer insanity.

Robotron: 2084 is my favorite arcade game and I was dedicated to finding it as my first machine. There's not much to the game other than running around trying to dodge and land hits on the enemies. There are plenty of strategies from staying tight in the middle to wandering around the edges or weaving throughout the screen. I would suggest reading the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron:_2084) on the game and over on Strategy Wiki (http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Robotron:_2084/Walkthrough) look over the wave information. The patterns of the robots are not that random so you can plan your rescuing of the family upon entering a wave as it offers you a second before the robots appear. If you want to find out more about the creator, Eugene Jarvis, he's a real interesting programmer that I believe has had an epic career as he worked on Defender + Stargate and the Cruis'n series as well. Also check out Smash TV as that was what he wanted to aim for with Robotron: 2084 but technology limitations cut it back.

Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/robotron-2084-retrospective)

[JGD CHAOS]

SVC Chaos. I beat it with one quarter.

[Tempest]

TRON is a big one for me. Love the game, but I can barely get past level 3! I can't imagine people who manage to get up to 12, especially on tanks!.
The secret to the tank levels is to hide inside the center teleporter. If you go 'almost' inside but not all the way the tanks won't shoot at you (they'll still ram you though). They can only shoot at you if your tank is touching the white line that goes down the center of each row, so you can hide in crossing rows, but without the emergency teleport it's a bit harder to run if something goes wrong.

Bagman is insanely hard to me. That and Cliffhanger.

Tempest

[Collector_Gaming]

the one thing i can think about when i re-read this thread is this

those damn game developers sure were smart making a game addicting but making up spend more and more and more and more money. Therefore making arcade owners able to pay for its electric/maintenance bill x10!

[Rendclaw]

The problem is that there are not nearly as many arcades as there use to be, and not many who frequent those that do exist.

I admit I was one of those kids who used to hang out at every arcade I could get to, and used to watch people who were good at the games I was interested in and get tips from them. I played against them constantly, because that's the only way to get better is to play someone who is better than you. I bought books that gave strategies on those games. Its different nowadays, radically so.

Playing Mame is one of the only ways you can get better at an arcade game these days without spending a lot of money, and there are tips on those games if your Google-fu is decent. If you want to get better at an arcade game, it does require a bit of dedication.

[Sunnyvale]

Street Fighter II. Before the internet, we had to just spend money learning specials. Used to hit the arcade before school... till others started doing the same. Damn, that game... I coulda afforded Harvard :oops:

[WoodyXP]

Haunted Castle was hard as hell.

[slapdash]

I'll second Defender (don't forget the fact that one of the controls is a lever, not a joystick, which requires a "Reverse" button to change directions) and add Stargate, its sequel, which added yet ANOTHER button to the mix. Oy vey.

[NE146]

I always say this.. but the cool thing about Defender & Robotron, Joust, etc. was they were hard, but very masterable. i.e The more you played, the better you could get. And the amount of control you had in Defender from the controls was liberating once you figured it out.. it works a lot better than the dumbed down versions that came later on where you just point the joystick in the direction you want to go.

Williams had a good thing going until they did Sinistar. Which had a lot of style but was pretty much a turd as far as it's gameplay (yes I said it). You could play that thing hundreds of times and never get past the 4th level or so. LOL

[Baloo]

I always say this.. but the cool thing about Defender & Robotron, Joust, etc. was they were hard, but very masterable. i.e The more you played, the better you could get. And the amount of control you had in Defender from the controls was liberating once you figured it out.. it works a lot better than the dumbed down versions that came later on where you just point the joystick in the direction you want to go.

Williams had a good thing going until they did Sinistar. Which had a lot of style but was pretty much a turd as far as it's gameplay (yes I said it). You could play that thing hundreds of times and never get past the 4th level or so. LOL

This is very true. Sinistar is a good example of a game that's too difficult to really be fun IMO. Everything moves too fast and the controls are too damn floaty.

[Emperor Megas]

I'll definitely second Haunted Castle, Sinistar, and Defender.

A few that come to mind that I thought that were really tough were:

After Burner
Karnov
Raiden (any of them)
R-Type
R-Type II
Smash T.V.
Space Harrier
Thundercade
Tiger Heli
Twin Cobra
Twin Eagle
Total Carnage
Victory Road

Those games were all tough, but Total Carnage was complete bullshit, IMO. That game was ridiculously hard. Unlike it's predecessor, Smash T.V., there's no way that I could ever beat TC on a single quarter, and since I never continue arcade games (or used the warp codes) it just wasn't going to happen.

[InsaneDavid]

Good point about the Williams games, NE146. Strangely enough I'm only good at Sinistar when playing the cockpit. For whatever reason, I plateau really early with a standard upright but I can hammer out a solid game on the rare occasion I can get to a cockpit cabinet.

[Shaggy_Arcade]

After Space Invaders, most classic games seem like they thrived on being difficult. There wasn't much of a challenge built into many games before that. I find it interesting though that when you read documents from the time, it sounds like players wanted the games to be harder and the developers obliged. Unlike today where everything holds your hand (although not so much on modern arcades which can still be difficult in many instances)

[Baloo]

After Space Invaders, most classic games seem like they thrived on being difficult. There wasn't much of a challenge built into many games before that. I find it interesting though that when you read documents from the time, it sounds like players wanted the games to be harder and the developers obliged. Unlike today where everything holds your hand (although not so much on modern arcades which can still be difficult in many instances)

Interestingly enough, a guy named Richie Knucklez who runs an arcade just recently set the world record on Space Invaders with 110,51, shattering the previous record of like 48,000.

Now I don't know how he actually played Space Invaders that long without getting just plain bored.

[Yago]

For me it was Jungle Hunt. The last stage after the rocks where you have to jump over the 2 ooga booga guys to the gril. Your timing has to be within .05 seconds of the gap allowed or buh bye. Second level... Forget it. I think most people knew this game was impossible which is why you never really saw anyone ever playing it that much. And when you did, they were nowplaying it for very long.

[Tempest]

For me it was Jungle Hunt. The last stage after the rocks where you have to jump over the 2 ooga booga guys to the gril. Your timing has to be within .05 seconds of the gap allowed or buh bye. Second level... Forget it. I think most people knew this game was impossible which is why you never really saw anyone ever playing it that much. And when you did, they were nowplaying it for very long.
Speaking of the cannibal level, I was shocked to find out that there's a guy shooting at you in the trees once you get to the second level. That never popped up in the home versions, they only had the monkey on the second vine level.

I agree, it was hard, but they made it a bit easier on the home versions.

[Bloodreign]

Master of Weapon from Taito, most folks don't like this shmup, I do. It's a very punishing unforgiving game that wants you to die, and die lots.

[jammajup]

Most arcade games are hard so you spend as less time as possible playing it and the next person gets to put their quarter in,although they are all difficult to me because i also suck at games so this did not help.
I have only completed a few arcade games and they are Rastan Saga and Golden Axe because i own them,i think the hardest arcade game of all is Defender and i will be honest i do not like the game very much because of this.

[Leo_A]

i think the hardest arcade game of all is Defender and i will be honest i do not like the game very much because of this.

It can't be the hardest since it got a even more difficult sequel called Stargate that ramps up the difficulty even more. :)

[Baloo]

Defender and Stargate are hard games when ported, but the original arcade setups are just stupidly hard. Great games, but that fucking 5-button layout on Stargate makes me wish I had a few extra fingers on my right hand!

[NE146]

If the original arcade Defender/Stargate are so hard, why were there no shortage of people who could score a bazillion points on them? :p

[tom]

Beat 'em and eat 'em is very hard, in a different manner speaking

[DreamTR]

Mikie is hard. One of the hardest classics ever. R-type is pretty hard as well. Some of the other mentioned are very very simple, though

[jammajup]

If the original arcade Defender/Stargate are so hard, why were there no shortage of people who could score a bazillion points on them? :p

Yeah there is always someone out there probably with a dedicated cab and months of practice who will be the `Billy Mitchell` of the Defender game world who can carry a humanoid around for 24 hours,i have to be honest i really admire these people who crack really difficult arcade games.

[NE146]

Yeah there is always someone out there probably with a dedicated cab and months of practice who will be the `Billy Mitchell` of the Defender game world who can carry a humanoid around for 24 hours,i have to be honest i really admire these people who crack really difficult arcade games.

Right! Which proves they were masterable if you practiced them and is the mark of a great game. On the other end of the spectrum you have games like Sinistar where no one could get even past the 4th or 5th stage max.. it just had poor gameplay design.

[cityside75]

Since Williams is a recurring theme in this thread, I'll add Blaster. I've only played it in MAME and Midway Arcade Treasures, so maybe in a dedicated cabinet it's easier, but that game seems ridiculous to me. Cool...but ridiculous.

[drthielegood]

As someone who purchased, restored and owns a Defender I can absolutely agree that it will hand most players their @$$. That, as mentioned, was the brilliance of that era of gaming...super fun and addictive but hard as nails.

Later in the 80's and early 90's the strategy seemed to change with the invent of "Continues". Many collectors and gamers hate the idea, claiming that it ruined classics like Gauntlet (when played at home). There is some brilliance worked into those games as well however. I can think of several beat-em-ups, that allowed continues, where a player would get 80% through the game only to run up against an end boss that is nearly invincible. You know the type... a health bar that refills a bunch of times and who features a gun or attack that is unblockable. That far into the game, I must have spent a massive amount of quarters just so all the work I'd done wasn't wasted.

I could walk away from a hard fought, 5-minute game of Robotron but there was no way (unless I was out of quarters) that I could leave a game on the 2nd to last, or last, boss. While some of those later games will never be compared to the difficult classics, their sudden, steep, and often cheap difficulty curve made ops alot of money.

Bob

[Genesaturn]

Maybe it was just me...but every time I see a Metal Slug machine somewhere I feel my wallet loose a couple pounds..and I don't think I've ever actually beat a single one of them...I usually run out of quarters or patience...

[Tempest]

Maybe it was just me...but every time I see a Metal Slug machine somewhere I feel my wallet loose a couple pounds..and I don't think I've ever actually beat a single one of them...I usually run out of quarters or patience...
I'd agree with this on all the Metal Slugs except for 2. Normally it cost me about $4 (quarter a play) to beat a Metal Slug, but back in the day I could beat 2 for $1. I think it was the rampant slow down that made it easier because X (which is just a special edition of 2 with the bugs worked out) is just as hard to me as the rest.

[Ed Oscuro]

Haunted Castle was hard as hell.
Some versions decidedly more so than others.

Y'know, there's a few games in MAME that are actually pretty easy...those were the ones that win the arcade version of a Darwin award, mainly (e.g. Who Dunit?) but there are some pretty good titles in amongst the easy ones, like some of the Seta titles (Thundercade isn't hard, for example, at least on default settings).

Apparently one of the hardest of the classic spaceship shooters is Truxton 2's Japanese version (Tatsujin Oh / Ou) - that's saying something because this is a Toaplan title. I've gotten a ways into it but even the first boss will usually take me down without question. Of course, it's a checkpoint game, so you can't wear anything out with persistence - you MUST figure out how to do everything right to proceed.

Many games are tougher when you play them for points and some you can play faster as well - like flying to the right side of the screen in Irem's Gallop - Armed Police; Konami's City Bomber and I think also Data East's Break Thru allow faster speed as well.

Edward Randy kicks my ass, which is kinda ironic I suppose.

There are some games I can't see myself coming to grips with - most beat-em-ups; most racers ('specially the Le Mans or Outrun type); some others.

[16bit_chainsaw]

Rygar is one of the hardest

[jibmums]

You guys have already hit on a few of my 'hardest' peeves, namely Defender/Stargate and Jack the Giantkiller, so I'll add a few not mentioned yet:

SUPER ZAXXON: Take a fun but hard game like Zaxxon, and then speed it up so it's nearly impossible to play.

VENTURE: Good game, very difficult gameplay, but the horribly clunky joystick kills any potential fun. Not as bad in MAME, but still hard.

SPACE DUNGEON: Again, a really good game....in theory....but it gets way too tough, way too soon.

[ChickenPotPie]

I thought Double Dragon II was quite hard considering the amount of tokens I used to beat the game. The first Double Dragon was beatable with just 1 token using the same rear elbow move on all opponents so I suppose the designers fixed it by making the bad guys smarter in the second game. The later levels in Combatribes were hard too.

[otoko]

After Space Invaders, most classic games seem like they thrived on being difficult. There wasn't much of a challenge built into many games before that. I find it interesting though that when you read documents from the time, it sounds like players wanted the games to be harder and the developers obliged. Unlike today where everything holds your hand (although not so much on modern arcades which can still be difficult in many instances)

Interesting you should say that (being off topicish) I've worked in a arcade for two years now and I can tell you people who come in now are pretty stupid. We have an arcade machine called stack n' grab. If you've ever played "Stacker" you know what I'm talking about, but you add a claw into it. The prize being a stuffed animal. Now this machine yells out every 30 seconds "STACK THE BLOCKS TO THE TOP AND WIN A PRIZE!", it is posed in three different places how to play, and it gives five audio clues. As well as when you try to move the joystick it buzzes at you to inform you that you're not playing correctly. So... people, being the geniuses they are, come to me and complain that I've stole thier money. Yes, they blame the arcade attendant of purposefully stealing thier money. When I show them how to play any game they usually get angrier. People are fun to deal with sometimes.

[Rendclaw]

I thought Double Dragon II was quite hard considering the amount of tokens I used to beat the game. The first Double Dragon was beatable with just 1 token using the same rear elbow move on all opponents so I suppose the designers fixed it by making the bad guys smarter in the second game. The later levels in Combatribes were hard too.

Double Dragon II is not that hard.. its just a lot faster and requires more movement.. the Dragon Elbow still rules the day, only now you have to be at a 45 degree angle when you start it, and to move the second the animation is over. The problem with that game is that some operators would set the number of lives at 1 instead of 3, and that's just not right.

Yes Defender and Stargate were hard (Stargate much more so), but they weren't impossible. I can't play either one on a controller either.. can't fire fast enough using thumbs... I think I could still pull down 70,000 if I played an original cabinet, and I used to average over 100,000 at one point.

And yes, the difficulty curve on Metal Slug 2 and above was just ridiculous, but I have come to expect that from SNK games going all the way back to Fatal Fury and Sengoku.

[Detonator]

Peter Pac-Rat (Atari) is pretty damn hard... I've played it on MAME and can't get anywhere. Defender & Stargate too... and I've never been a great Asteroids Deluxe player. It's pretty tough compared to Asteroids and Space Duel.

[Clownzilla]

Peter Pac-Rat (Atari) is pretty damn hard... I've played it on MAME and can't get anywhere. Defender & Stargate too... and I've never been a great Asteroids Deluxe player. It's pretty tough compared to Asteroids and Space Duel.

I loved that game when I was a kid. Haven't found ANY in the wild since the 80's though which is sad because it was a charming game. Played it on MAME last month and I never realized how unrelntlessly hard this game was. I want kids that think their geniuses on games like Halo to pick up a game like this so it can crush their egos and put them in their place.......Oh no, I'm starting to sound like a cranky old man now........

[Gunstar Hero]

I didn't really start gaming until the NES era, and to me all of the early 80s classics are pretty damn hard.

I can't play Pac-Man to save my life, I don't see how people memorize those patterns. I can rarely finish the first loop on Donkey Kong and though I'm not too bad at modern shmups from Psikyo and the like, Galaga does me in shortly after the first bonus round. Robotron 2084 is hard as hell and my game usually ends at stage 4 or 5 if I'm lucky.

They're great games, but I guess I just don't have the patience to learn them.


Oh, and another game that comes to mind is Raiden. I love that game, but goddamn it's hard.


It's strange I never memorized any patterns and yet I got the highscore on nearly every Pac-Man machine I've played. I once got 60,000 on a machine off of one credit.

[MasterFygar]

Cyber Lip was a total quarter muncher, but it was fun. Now, Stargate? It was just hard. I know it must be great once you learn to play it, but after 20 quarters I just gave up. Strike Fighter is also brutal as far as new stuff goes.

[Froboz]

"Classic arcade games that were HARD"

You mean all of them?



Haha... that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, I was always better at the console or computer versions of most of those games. I guess the arcade versions were intentionally harder just so they could munch your quarters. But then, it might have been the distraction of other people playing other games next to me, or people standing behind me waiting for their turn, or just watching me, or even commenting on how badly I sucked. :p And of course, the knowledge that I had a limited amount of quarters and had to be on the top of my game might have made me doubly nervous as well. But I'll say that the most difficult ones for me were Pacman (I did a bit better with Ms. Pacman), Sinistar (as cool as it was), Joust, and fighting games like Street Fighter. I also didn't do too well with Punch-out or Dragon's Lair. I found Zaxxon difficult as a Colecovision game... I don't think I ever played the arcade version. I think the only arcade game I wasn't embarrassingly bad at was Millipede (as I recall I found that a bit easier than Centipede).

[Rendclaw]

Haha... that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, I was always better at the console or computer versions of most of those games. I guess the arcade versions were intentionally harder just so they could munch your quarters. But then, it might have been the distraction of other people playing other games next to me, or people standing behind me waiting for their turn, or just watching me, or even commenting on how badly I sucked. :p And of course, the knowledge that I had a limited amount of quarters and had to be on the top of my game might have made me doubly nervous as well. But I'll say that the most difficult ones for me were Pacman (I did a bit better with Ms. Pacman), Sinistar (as cool as it was), Joust, and fighting games like Street Fighter. I also didn't do too well with Punch-out or Dragon's Lair. I found Zaxxon difficult as a Colecovision game... I don't think I ever played the arcade version. I think the only arcade game I wasn't embarrassingly bad at was Millipede (as I recall I found that a bit easier than Centipede).

Sinistar gets panned by almost all classic arcade game players. I wasn't that good at it, but I think I played that game simply for the rush of adrenaline I would get when I heard "BEWARE, I LIVE." "RUN, COWARD!"

10 yard fight: No matter what level you were on, there was a way to get at least down to the 20 every time on the kickoff return. I played it on MAME a few months ago and once I remembered how to do it, I got all the way to the Super team.

Renegade: Yes, this game was extremely hard, but once you learned how you use the back kick it was cheese. This game was almost a direct import from Japan, and even back in the 80s most games coming from Japan directly were going to be insanely hard.

Raiden: As with all games by Seibu Kaihatsu, they started off normal, and then the difficulty curve just got steeper and steeper as it went along. The trick with most Japanese shmups is to not focus on or get distracted by the background movement and pay attention to where the shots of the enemies are going. I might just play a game of Raiden after this post, just to see if I still have it. I was okay at it, but I didn;t really get good at it until the Raiden Project came out for the Playstation in the mid 90s.

Robotron/Defender/Stargate: Yes they were hard, but as others have said, playing the game was rewarding once you knew what you were doing. Although if the operators had the difficulty cranked up insanely high, the games still brought veteran players to their knees.

Punch-Out: You had to learn the timing of your punches and not just mash buttons to get anywhere in that game. Once you won the title and started defending it, the CPU gave most of the fighters an unblockable punch that made your left jab almost useless. Super Punch-Out was a much more fun game.

Dragon's Lair: One of the gaming magazines back in I think 1983 put out a complete walkthrough of it. It just came down to knowing where to go and what to do and when to do it. The Billy Mitchells I hung out with back then figured stuff out really fast and used to put up high scores.

You know what game that used to get my goat? The first Sega Baseball. For that matter, the first vs. Nintendo Baseball can go on this list too. In both games you had to be an absolute master in pitching to even have a chance at winning, because I was convinced both games would cheat in order to suck more quarters out of you. With Nintendo Baseball, the seeming random movement of the fielders on your side, the feast or famine hitting, and the ridiculous hitting of the CPU was frustrating in the extreme. With Sega Baseball, It didn't matter if you were up by one run or twenty, because the game would come back on you. It was as certain as the sun rising the next day, no matter what.

[Emperor Megas]

Raiden: As with all games by Seibu Kaihatsu, they started off normal, and then the difficulty curve just got steeper and steeper as it went along. The trick with most Japanese shmups is to not focus on or get distracted by the background movement and pay attention to where the shots of the enemies are going. I might just play a game of Raiden after this post, just to see if I still have it. I was okay at it, but I didn;t really get good at it until the Raiden Project came out for the Playstation in the mid 90s.The real trick is no NOT fully power up your weapons beyond a certain point. It's usually superfluous to anyway, but when you do the difficulty of the game ramps up drastically to compensate so that you don't completely dominate. You know how when you die in a most Japanese arcade shooters everything gets easier for a little while? How the bullets are slower, and fewer? It's like that through the entire game when you're power level is lower. Bosses and strong enemies are destroyed easier, too. The weaker your weapon looks, the stronger it actually is (to a point, of course).

One of their favorite tricks to do it to add hail Mary type 'death shots' when you're powered up. That is, when you're weapon is powered up to or beyond a certain point, when you destroy lesser enemies, they automatically sent a bullet racing towards you. One of the worst instances of this is Sage's Creation's Insector X for Genesis/Megadrive. When you've powered up more than three times, they do that death bullet shit, which wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a bottle neck on the (I believe) 4th stage where you literally cannot go ANYWHERE but forward through a narrow tube, and as you shoot the enemies that are approaching you, they leave those death shots if you're powered up. You either have to go through half the game gimped, avoiding power-ups, or expect to lose a life on that stage. :grrr:

[Froboz]

Dragon's Lair: One of the gaming magazines back in I think 1983 put out a complete walkthrough of it. It just came down to knowing where to go and what to do and when to do it.


Yeah, I know. I used to watch others play so I would know what to do, so if I had seen the walkthrough I'm sure I wouldn't have found it hard. But I think I also got bored with it too quickly to give it a chance... I got only so far & then gave up. So yeah, that was a bad example of a hard arcade game.

[sneekyweezel]

The U.S. version of Ghosts and Goblins- real hard, and Dragon Breed, two that were hard. Also Karnov ;-P

[jammajup]

A few weeks back i was just going through memories of arcades gone by when i remembered `Space Phantoms` by Zilec,i loved this game which is a clone of Ozma Wars an early B/W snk shooter but the space ship sprites have been changed to give a horror theme.It is so difficult with so many enemy bullets on screen its hard to believe what you are seeing especially for 1979.I have made a video of me playing it with max energy (otherwise it would be game over in less than 1min), it is using Space Invaders sound effects but i believe it did not use the exact S.I hardware.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-cCDEZpycQ

[Neb6]

TRON is a big one for me. Love the game, but I can barely get past level 3! I can't imagine people who manage to get up to 12, especially on tanks!

Defender is another one, love the game but it's just extremely difficult. Enemies are erratic as anything, tons of bullets coming at you, a limited amount of bombs, and your guys quickly getting abducted.

If you have an actual TRON arcade machine:

- open up the coin door
- start a game
- switch to test mode during the countdown
- press the Player 2 button to skip to the level you want to start at
- switch it off of test mode (back to play mode)
- enjoy!

[FFStudios]

Does Paperboy count? Because screw that game, man.

[Neb6]

Does Paperboy count? Because screw that game, man.

Oh yeah, totally.

What a frustrating game. I keep trying to give it another chance and it keeps laying the smack down on me.

[Gandhara]

Moonwar by Stern (1981?)

its a cross between Asteroids and Defender, things come at you from all directions and a couple levels in it gets so hard if not impossible. I liked the game but i dont think it was very popular.

[Rickstilwell1]

I totally second Renegade. I love the NES version but I can't stand the arcade version mainly for the fact you only have one life. I give up on that version and I will stick with NES. Just about any arcade game that has a NES port, the NES version is easier to play and make more progress (unless it's one of those arcade games with unlimited instant continues, like Double Dragon.)

One game I do really like the action of is Act-Fancer Cybernetic Hyper Weapon. You get infinite continues, but only from the start of the level you were last at. Also when you lose a life, you are sent back to the half-way mark if you happen to be on a level where there was one. With these rules in place you really have to rely on memorization and have a lot of skill. If it weren't for such difficulty and strict continuation rules it would have been a great platform shooter.

[Detonator]

Later in the 80's and early 90's the strategy seemed to change with the invent of "Continues". Many collectors and gamers hate the idea, claiming that it ruined classics like Gauntlet (when played at home).


I agree. This ruined a lot of games. Atari used a "milder" system which required you to advance 3 levels before continuing from higher level (Quantum, Tempest, Millipede, Empire Strikes Back) but even that wasn't welcome in my eyes.

Pure, raw arcade games shouldn't have continue. Those games that don't even reset the score and you can literally buy the highest score are ridiculous. In that sense I never understood the popularity of games like Metal Slug.

[Rendclaw]

If the "pure, raw" arcade game didn't have continues then it was cutting off your noise to spite your face in terms of making money. Gauntlet might never have become the classic it was without continues, although the quarter feeding feature kinda makes the point moot. Ikari Warriors was an example of a game that would have never had as much popularity without continues.

There was a shift in video games I think in 1980 or so because continuing was the way to get the player to keep pumping quarters and sitting at it and not feel like one had to start all over at the beginning, especially if the player feels he got screwed by the game. That doesn't bother me at all personally, because I liked being able to have progress. Williams games in the early 80s were so hard that unless you were dedicated (re: obsessive) about mastering the game, you got discouraged.

[Rickstilwell1]

If the "pure, raw" arcade game didn't have continues then it was cutting off your noise to spite your face in terms of making money. Gauntlet might never have become the classic it was without continues, although the quarter feeding feature kinda makes the point moot. Ikari Warriors was an example of a game that would have never had as much popularity without continues.

There was a shift in video games I think in 1980 or so because continuing was the way to get the player to keep pumping quarters and sitting at it and not feel like one had to start all over at the beginning, especially if the player feels he got screwed by the game. That doesn't bother me at all personally, because I liked being able to have progress. Williams games in the early 80s were so hard that unless you were dedicated (re: obsessive) about mastering the game, you got discouraged.

Yeah there's also the point of arcade games starting to have actual endings like console and computer games. It got to where people are more focused on getting farther in the game on less money than how many points they have. Unless you're playing something well designed that doesn't have mountains of impossible to dodge cheap deaths. Puzzle games shined in this aspect during the 90s because they were one of the few genres of games left where the game design just couldn't be wrong.

[Detonator]

If the "pure, raw" arcade game didn't have continues then it was cutting off your noise to spite your face in terms of making money. Gauntlet might never have become the classic it was without continues, although the quarter feeding feature kinda makes the point moot.

Gauntlet had the high score list set to "SCORE PER COIN". That saved at least SOME arcade spirit.

I'm a big fan of the Raiden Fighters series. It's cool to be able to play it through. However your score resets back to zero whenever you decide to continue. But still... after completing the final mission you get rewarded with huge bonus. It kinda makes the high scores meaningless.

I don't know if anyone has completed the whole game without continues. I guess it's possible but very hard.

But then again Xevious was so great because it didn't have a continue. You always wondered what there was left to discover. The third mothership (that threw the exploding bombs) was too much for everyone in the arcade that I frequented (when I was a kid). I completed the game in MAME and I was disappointed that it didn't have any ending or "end boss". I was so close for all those years. Amazing game, either way...

[Rickstilwell1]

Magician Lord seems to be pretty hard too. It's another one of those games where you only get to continue from the beginning of the room you were in, and some of those rooms can be very difficult to get all the way through in one piece.

[Alexander]

Hey Everyone.:)

A few I found a little tough:

Pit Fighter
Tron
Venture
Ms. Pacman

[wizardofwor1975]

Hey Everyone.:)

A few I found a little tough:

Pit Fighter
Tron
Venture
Ms. Pacman

Great picks. Even though Tron and Venture were tough cookies to crack they were extremely addicting. I would also add Tutankham and Frenzy.