Hardest games ever made.

"Hardest" is kinda a subjective thing, isn't it? Personally I'd say "any competitive multiplayer game". With single player games you'll win eventually with enough practice, but in multiplayer you can be matched against anyone else playing it. So technically you'd "win" only when you're the best player in the world which only a handful of people will be able to claim at any given time. So, yeah, I guess the hardest games are stuff like, for example, Starcraft's Multiplayer and Dota 2. (Accidentally those are also some of the games I happen to despise the most for what they do to people. :/ )

I Wanna Be The Guy

A lot of people keep saying that NES games are the hardest, but I really believe Atari games are harder. Atari cartridges were made from a much more rigid plastic. Definitely harder than that grey stuff Nintendo used for the NES.

Goes back a long while and given I was probably only 7 or 8 when it came out, I would say Gyromite for the NES along with original TMNT. Gyromite because of the weird puzzlish way of the game and not being able to figure out R.O.B. entirely, and TMNT just because of that one level on the surface with the tank things.

I'm sure there's much more exponentially difficult releases but can't recall any that have given me more grief than the ones I listed.

Ghostrunner kicked my but like no other game in a long time.

I would go with Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden Black, King's Field 4, Gothic, Baldur's Gate

Atari's E.T.

Summer Games C64, because it was so hard to get a new joystic every 14 days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP8dSw5XZXQ

This game was great, not very well known, and difficult as hell. One of the first things written on the wikipedia page about it is how damn hard it was to play...

Gunvalkyrie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunvalkyrie
https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox/gunvalkyrie

Edit: What was hard wasn't overpowered bosses or the like, it was the way the character was controlled and while this difficulty made the game what it was, it was a huge turnoff to both critics and consumers. Here's a snippet from wikipedia that details what made it hard...

"Players control Kelly or Saburouta with both analog sticks, the left controlling forward/backward movement and turning, while the right aims their weapons, and when clicked, allows quick turns. Clicking in the left stick while pointing in a direction causes the character to boost. The left trigger is a boost/jump, and when combined with the left analog boost, can be strung together into combos to keep the player off the ground entirely, which is a necessity for some levels."

first game that came to mind is 'i wanna be the guy'. it's basically a 'difficult for difficult's sake' kinda game. platformer and you get a pistol to shoot things. i never got too far in it. there's another game i played before i learned about iwbtg that was, i think, some kind of clone game maybe.. also very difficult.. but i can't think of the name even remotely. i just have a memory of something very similar to it, then i found out about iwbtg.

i found 'sekiro' to be like, stupid hard. i've beaten all the dark souls games, bloodborne, nioh 1 & 2 without much difficulty (besides fucking anor londo in ds1).. but something about sekiro was just way too difficult for me. i finally caved and used cheats just so i could at least somewhat enjoy it.

'la-mulana' is another frustratingly hard game that comes to mind. not the entire game itself, but i clearly remembering my blood boiling during some boss fights. really good metroidvania though.. i totally recommend it if you're into those.

oh, and 'ikaruga' is a notoriously difficult bullet hell shoot 'em up originally on gamecube, but thankfully made it's way to steam. i never owned a gamecube and always wanted to try it, so i got it on steam. i barely put a dent in it.

I Wanna Be The Guy, I Wanna Be The Boshy and basically all the other extremely hard fan games that these two spawned (also very good: I Wanna Kill The Kamilia)

A taste for people who don't know these games: https://youtu.be/ZnJktp_x-_I?t=4097

The hardest game is probably one of the mainy rage platformers. Just for novelty I will name a less known game (although it is not "the hardest"):

• Sword & Serpents for the NES

It starts with you having to make a balance group of four characters out of three classes. Then you have to explore dungeons of a 16 x 16 (?) grid with a dungeon depth of 16 maps. Random fights every 4 squares, managing equipment, just having a temple (for revives and "loading" the game) every five dungeons, having riddles to solve, random warp gates teleporting you to higher levels and back to lower levels in areas not accessible before, finding the seven Ruby items, finding magic in the labyrinth and per dungeon map one hint that you are even able to find the final boss on the lowest level.

NOW there exist only maps but I had to draw every fricking map by hand and write down everything and this does include fun dungeon levels with invisible walls and endless looping. I bought the game as kid and only managed to beat it after 10+ years. Try beating that one without a guide will keep you busy.

Hitman Absolution on the highest difficulty (full stealth, only kill targets) was pretty challenging in a lot of parts. I swear they made it so that you needed to exploit the metagame to advance, there were a ton of areas where the patroling guards wouldn't leave openings so you had to abuse the vision mechanics while distracting 2-3 guards.

On a similar note, I think a lot of immersive sims are really difficult when you try stealth only runs, specially with extra conditions like "no upgrades" or "starting gear only".

Rick Dangerous I & II... are one of them...

Started playing Titan Souls recently. Best way I can describe it is hard but fair.

For me, modern games, it was Dark Souls

Shadow of the Beast II on the Amiga

Maybe the Bloody Trapland games?

Penn & Teller's Desert Bus

i am only going on games i have played, but legacy of the wizard, not necessarily difficult as a game, but there is literally no indication of where you are supposed to go, and there is some pretty bullcrap parts of the dungeon as well, where if you fall, that's it you may a s well start over

Any game with terrible controls and shitty camera, that mostly includes all games of ps1 era...

Hm. I guess a hard game doesn't always mean a bad or broken game, in some case.

So, in the "hardest but still challenging", I still remember SoulStar on Mega CD.
This rail shooter needed a lot of training & retries, and I guess nowadays, it'll be pretty difficult to achieve in the same way as before.