Worst. Armour. EVER

I think it's time I confess something when it comes to me and video gaming. Now, I've been playing games for over two decades now (Hell, I think Mario's only slightly older than me!) and I have several consoles, old and new, at my disposal. But, despite all that...

I haven't completed that many games.

When it comes to games, I buy them when they're cheap (or when I see something I've been eagerly awaiting, like Batman: Arkham City, though I paid for mine in advance) so that when I have more free time, I'll get around to them. My reasoning for that is if I waited until I had a couple nights off work, with no new DVD's to watch, the games I wanted might not be there anymore and I might lose out on some rare treasures in the meantime (like I did with Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I didn't want to dip into my savings to buy it, so I waited until I got paid next and by that time, it had been sold. OK, I got Super Smash Bros. Melee to make up for it but that's not the point. And for anyone who asks, I have played the game several times but that was while I was living at home with my younger brother, who owns that copy of the game).

Speaking of my brother, he's the opposite: he buys tons of games and completes them seemingly instantly. The amount of games he has would be enough to kill a man if you kept piling them on top of him. And he's completed a Hell of a lot of them.
Though, we both have different ideas about completing games. His is mostly “beat the final boss, do all the interesting stuff, done”. Mine is usually just beating the final boss, most likely because I've either gotten the interesting stuff as I've gone along or the game was average and I didn't care for all the collectibles.

But the point of today's blog is (provided no one's taken away my gamer card) to talk about the games of the NES that between me and my brother, we never completed. The games of the NES were among the hardest little bastards in all of gaming (that's why the trope is called “Nintendo Hard” and not “Dreamcast Hard”) and despite our many attempts at these games, we've never completed them (well, my brother might have through an emulator, I'll have to ask him).

Now, in order to make this list, the following applies:

We have to have owned the game or rented it frequently to count, so don't say “Metroid was way harder, your list is stupid!” or “What about Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link?” We never owned those and we only rented Zelda 2 a couple times so we couldn't really get much play out of it (and especially don't ask about Contra, I don't even know if we GOT Contra over here, I do remember a game almost exactly the same called Probotector, which had robots instead of the two guys, but that was a long time ago)
If we could get up to, but couldn't beat, the final boss, it doesn't count because while it's a game uncompleted, I'm focusing on the games so hard we could barely make it halfway. So, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game won't make it because we would constantly make it to Shredder but always be defeated by him and we were so disillusioned that we just played something else and kept trying over and over on other days
I'm focusing solely on the NES because most of our uncompleted games were on that console, we had more games than on most others and by the time the more advanced ones came around, higher focus on schooling and other aspects meant we wouldn't be completing games anyway.
We never had Game Genies or anything like that, so don't ask. Not that we would have used them, most likely.
Even though some games had special conditions for winning, in the mind of me and my brother, if we beat the final boss, that counted (biggest example I can think of is Bubble Bobble)

Now, much like my last blog, this will not be a top ten list and there will not be rankings (though, again, the final entry will be what would essentially be a number one)

So, what games frustrated us the most?

Battletoads
This one's first up since this is one we rented a few times, and every time, we got stuck on the third level (the one with the jetski-things). Now, the first level was tons of fun and hilarious, with some interesting gameplay choices, though the second level was hard. That third level? Forget it, you kept crashing into the walls. From what I hear, the game is unwinnable in two player mode anyway so what the Hell?

Bart V.s The Space Mutants/Bart Vs. The World
Tied because the gameplay was similar, difference being we had to rent the latter. Space Mutants, geez that was hard! The first level is annoying as all Hell with those useless items (what's with the whistle that summons a dog that hurts Bart?), you can't jump on most of the enemies and you have no real weapons to defend yourself. The second level has what I believe was wet cement. That pretty much broke it for me, we never got further than that. I don't even know what the rest of the game looks like!
Bart Vs. The World was a little kinder, and gave you a weapon, but most of the jumps were ridiculous and that ice level... ugh.

Adventure Island 2
While this game had some hilarious death sequences and was generous with the dinosaur buddies who would provide some extra power and provide another “hit point”, they weren't enough in the late stages. I can't remember where we got stuck on but I do remember a snow world and my brother somehow bypassing to one of the later worlds and not getting far. A prime example of how NES games were more difficult than the later consoles, due to most characters being one hit-point wonders.

The Flintstones: The Rescue Of Dino And Hoppy
Yeah, we had our share of licensed games, so what? A Hell of a lot of fun, it's one of those “frustrating but you're still enjoying yourself” kind of games, with a neat soundtrack and good graphics. The first boss is a cakewalk, the second was a little trickier but I put that down to my brother and I just wanted to speed through him and just clobber him with Fred's club, but otherwise he's not too hard. The next boss is a vampire and that's where things fall apart. I remember him being the most tricky part for a while. Sometimes we would conquer him, only to fail miserably on the next level.

The Incredible Crash Dummies
Yeah, we loved that one episode of the Crash Dummies and had some of the toys, so getting the video game was natural. And it too was very fun. Great music, good graphics and an actual attempt at varying the playable characters. That being said, using the white Dummy on the unicycle (can't remember the names, it's been years, people!) could be bothersome and again, we only got a couple levels in and I don't think there were passwords. There were so save states, which is what most games should have had, so that didn't help. In fact, the lack of save states, infinite continues and passwords were often the reasons why these games were so hard.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Surprisingly, we DIDN'T have trouble with the dam level, that was easy (why does everyone think it's so hard? It was annoying, yes, but not hard. Level 3 had several jumps that I call bullcrap on (why is that ledge preventing me from jumping that long distance to the next part of the stage?! I don't want to fall in the water that a turtle can swim in anyway!) and by the time you reached the next level, you had probably lost two of the Turtles anyway. Again, I had no idea what the endgame held, until I saw the Angry Video Game Nerd's video in which he revisited several games that he couldn't get past and we saw the Technodrome. Yeah, it looked impossible.

Ghosts 'N' Goblins
One of the earliest games I can remember playing. As a kid, it kind of freaked me out (mostly the eyes on the zombies and that sound effect but also the intro music). As I got older, it was one of the games that pissed me off the most. Arthur can only sustain two hits. On that second hit, he goes down for the count. And after the first, he loses his armour. What kind of knight loses their armour after something as simple as a zombie touch?! And several of the minions took several hits to kill and some could fly! Also, sometimes you would accidentally pick up a new weapon that replaced your never-ending javelin/spear supply. You had knives, which were pointless since they were basically the same as his regular weapon and fire, which rarely hit its target without major effort. I think we only got up to Level 3 and that's when they added ladders and such to make it harder because you'd take a leap of faith only to end up in the water. One of the absolute hardest for the NES.

The Legend Of Zelda
Unlike the other games listed, this did have a save state. But after Level 5, it was easy to get lost, in the labyrinths or out of them and too easy to get overwhelmed. Really, we just ended up replaying the early dungeons over and over because that's what we were good at.

Now, before we get to the final entry, I must admit this one bends one of the rules slightly, the one about “games that we couldn't get halfway on” but I saved this for last because this will probably cause the most uproar and bring my gamer status into question. Well, here goes...

Super Mario Bros.
Yes, that's right, the original. The two NES sequels, completed. Hell, Super Mario Bros. 3 we completed several times over (even my mother, who has never been much of a gamer, has defeated Bowser a few times!) and even done so on the ports like in Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES. But the original? Nope. I attribute that to the hit point factor again. Something they fixed in the third game and since then was giving Mario an extra hit if he loses his current power like the Fire Flower or the Hammer Suit. He'll go back to Super Mario, no worries. But if you lost the Fire Flower here, tough luck, you go back to regular Mario. And in a game where the Hammer Brothers are actually competent and the Bullet Bills waiting to get you (not to mention only one way to kill off a Buzzy Beetle. Or were they the red winged ones from the third game... damn my aging memory!), you need every bit of power you can get. Now, we did know of the cheats to get to the final Warp Pipes but I'm someone who likes to play through the whole game and get the whole experience. Also, that first level in World 8 is frickin' impossible! A great game but I doubt I'll ever complete it, at least not in the foreseeable future.

So, that was my list of tough NES games my brother and I struggled on. How about the rest of you, what NES games made you pull your hair or throw your controllers against the wall?