The hardest NES game when you were a kid?

[Fox1]

Battletoads for me. I remember my friends and I would always get stuck on the 2nd stage with the bikes and would always lose there. I think we got past it once and we were completely shocked (we died soon after). I still can't beat the game. I think it's quite impossible without cheats/tools.

 

[Heath]

 

[Fuzzytaco]

Fuck Battletoads, I never made it past the second stage. TMNT now that was a hard game worth playing, that underwater level was insane 'till I played it a few dozen times.

 

[theMot]

Was all master system here back then. Didn't know anyone who had a Nes.

 

[bubba966]

Blaster Master. Never could beat the damn game. Still haven't.

 

[ViolentStorm]

Ikari warriors was one tough cookie back in the day and the only way I could get any further was to use the ABBA code.

 

[wonamik]

Solstice
known to me and my brother at that time as "the hat game"

 

[MCF 76]

Ghost n Goblins such a evil prank to buy a kid back in the day. Few controllers and my NES toaster lid were broke during this shit fest.

 

[neojedi]

Golgo 13 was the hardest I remember. Blaster Master was hard up until you learned the pause trick.

 

[Magician]

Ninja Gaiden

I never finished it once.

Hardcore platforming at its best, honestly.

 

[Opethian]

Cheetahmen II

 

[smokehouse]

There's so many maddening NES titles out there...its hard to pick just one. I think some of the best ones have been addressed:

Ninja Gaiden 1-3
Ghosts n Goblins
Blaster Master
Fester's Quest (and on a black and white TV nonetheless...imagine that torture, for those of you that have played it, you will immediately know what I mean)
Mega Man (1...not so much 2&3)
Battletoads (holy shit was that game hard...)
Castlevania 1 and 3

I'm sure there's some more...but that's what I have at the moment.

 

[Naika]

Ninja Gaiden

I never finished it once.

Hardcore platforming at its best, honestly.

Agreed. Loved the hell out of that game and it got to the point where I played a PC port of it where I could save, and that still didn't help. Game is nuts!!!

 

[Neo Ash]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link kicked my ass!

I should give it another try now as an adult.

 

[wataru330]

Bijou Billy. Fuck that game.

 

[smokehouse]

Agreed. Loved the hell out of that game and it got to the point where I played a PC port of it where I could save, and that still didn't help. Game is nuts!!!

Towards the end, that game is vicious. NGIII is just filthy right from the start...

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link kicked my ass!

I should give it another try now as an adult.

That game is also hard at the end..good God it used to kick my ass...

 

[neojedi]

For the Ninja Gaiden series, I'd give NG3 the nod over 1 and 2 because they take away your unlimited continues in that one, can't win it playing sloppy. Some other ones I remember finishing only a few times:
Gauntlet (Tengen)
The Empire Strikes Back
RC Pro Am
Battle of Olympus (difficulty can be mitigated by xp grinding)
Ironsword (not a hard game, but the endboss elementals have the SNK boss sickness)

 

[corebass420]

Double Dragon III

 

[NeoSneth]

Well it's one thing for a game to be difficult, and another for it to be poorly programmed.

Bayou Billy kicked my ass for years. I could be perfect on the driving stages, passable on the gun stages, but the brawler stages just destroyed me.

 

[SonGohan]

I can't remember an NES game that sticks out in my memory has being hard when I was a kid. They all sort of just blur together. When I play some of them now, though, I want to pull my hair out. I had way more patience for them when I was a kid, I guess. I don't think I could ever beat Ninja Gaiden 2 as an adult, but I'm pretty sure I did it as a kid.

 

[Tripredacus]

For me it was any of the Megaman games. I can think back, tho and think I don't know if I even beat any NES game besides SMB. A weird thing is that I was better at those games as a kid than I am now. I think that maybe I played them more often and memorized the patterns, which I've now forgotten. For example, every one says that Legendary Wings is hard but I remember doing fairly well in it when I was a kid. I never beat the final boss tho. Also Abbadox wasn't too hard back then either.

 

[WoodyXP]

Double Dragon III

This gets my vote.

 

[RAZO]

I recall the only games I beat fairly was punch out and super dodgeball. Probably some other easy games. Everything else I either used codes or game genie. I just beat mega man, double dragon 3 and ninja gaiden a few days ago for the first time using game genie codes and even with invincibility I still managed to die a few times by falling to my death.

 

[Normdog]

Ghost n Goblins

 

[Poonman]

I could always beat battletoads, but I was playing the genesis version (is it easier?)

Could also solo Double Dragon 3 up to the final boss and lose every time. When my brother took p2 the same shit happened only we got there way quicker thanks to that double tornado kick.



On topic, the worst unbeatable games I had was Total Recall and a fucking POS called Cybernoid.