Classic Video Games That Are WAY More Difficult Than You Remember

A short disclaimer here. All of the statements in the following article are made with the steadfast assumption that anybody who claims to posess the skill to complete the discussed games is either lying or delusional.

Ghosts and Goblins

The image above is of Ghosts and Goblins- one of the most frightening games ever made.
Oh, sorry. Maybe you thought that the game's atmosphere and dialogue was frightening. Not at all. The game is so difficult that I can get, at most, two minutes into it. Two minutes, because that is the timer that dictates how long you will have to live if the zombies, birds(?), giant venus flytraps(?), and Satan himself don't kill you first.
One of the myriad problems with the game is shown above. I'm not a programming wizard...as evidenced by the visual quality of this website. But the game is so buggy that your character periodically is fractured into bits of his former self, there are scrolling issues, and the pulse-pounding music is in a constant struggle with the sound effects for use of the few available sound channels.
I mentioned some of the enemies you'll fight in this "game". I know that this isn't an article about the actual gameplay, but there is something wrong with this universe.

I don't know if I've ever gotten past the first level in this game. The action is fast paced. The music is classic and is oft covered by several video-game based bands (I highly suggest the version from the band Year 200X) I smash a vase, I throw a lance. All of a sudden I am naked, and I'm laid low by Satan himself, where he is able to fly and swoop at unbelievable speeds, and I am armed with what appears to be raspberries.

I don't know who thought it was a good idea to build a game with no apparent skill requirement, rather, to design a game that is simply emotional abuse from the first screen until the final leap into oblivion.

In case you were wondering, the raspberries didn't work.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out

Unlike most of the games here, Mike Tyson's Punch Out is not entirely impossible. In fact, the majority of the game is extremely enjoyable. It's the last fight that makes you forget an entire portion of your life. The whole game is a series of bouts against comical yet somewhat challenging pattern-based boxers. Who doesn't remember a great fight between Little Mac and King Hippo? I can't be the only one who knew of Glass Joe before he knew what a glass jaw was.

Then he entered my life.

Iron Mike is waiting...to beat your face to a pulp.

I don't know if you remember those days, but Mike Tyson was well known as a man who would climb into a ring and embarrass people. People would rise to the highest levels of physical contest and leave the ring humiliated by this man. And he is now waiting for you. YOU! The statement is ominous at best. Let's look at the tale of the tape, as it were.

So at the time the game was made, the initial starting stats for the man was 31 wins with 27 KOs, and Little Mac is starting out with nothing. I'm assuming that by the time you get to Mike, you've got a decent number of knockouts, TKOs, and you've probably already made a fool out of yourself in front of your friends.
So now it's fight night. You've said your prayers, you've walked out and taken off the stupid shiny robe and you've been running behind your coach by the waterfront for six months preparing for the fight. You've even flown out your grandmother, who is in an iron lung, and seated her in the crowd so she could see the big night. And wait, look! Drew Carey is there! This is surely to be the best fight of your life! And then this happens.

And it's over. One swift blow and our once starry eyed hero is crumpled like yesterday's news. He loses all color in his skin, his eyes are rolled into the back of his head. He is trampled under the press that rushed the ring as the fight is called before you get the basic courtesy of a ten-count.
Mike throws hands in your face so fast that you can hardly understand his pattern- or if he has one at all. He turns your body into a shattered mess with embarrassing efficiency. I remember so much of this game. All of the colorful boxers, the unforgettable music, and the challenge of learning the patterns and exploiting them. But I don't think I remember any of the final bout because the total number of seconds I have spent fighting Mike Tyson have totaled under sixty in my life.
I have watched YouTube videos of people beating Mike Tyson, but I think the videos are hoaxes. Not only do I not think I will ever be able to beat Mike Tyson, I don't think *anybody* will ever be able to beat Mike Tyson. Ever.

Do yourself a favor and take this advice.

Time to throw in the towel.

Contra

Oh, Contra! The classic side-scrolling shooter that has permeated the childhoods of so many of my contemporaries. With a single button press, your character can unleash an endless stream of volleyball-sized bullets, a shotgun with the spread of a football field, or a ring of fire that defies all known laws of physics. All out of the same gun!

The problem is that the game is impossible. Without the legendary 'Konami Code', the three lives your alter ego is granted is enough to get to about the end of the first level and two screens into the second. As God as my witness- I have never seen the last level of this game in a legitimate manner. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen the end of the second level without a bold-faced cheat. I've seen screenshots of later portions of the game, with gigantic aliens and terrible machinery, but to this day I hold the opinion that those screenshots were heavily doctored counterfeits.
Flying sushi? One thing that this game did was contribute heavily to game lore. It is unknown why the turrets on this building lob gigantic salmon roe at you- possibly because of the Japanese influence on popular culture during the 80s, but they are apparently quite sturdy and can knock a man down. Oh, and kill him. One hit and you are dead, something that even the torturous Metal Gear could not pull off. Even Ghosts and Goblins didn't have the audacity to put a man down after one hit!
In Contra, two hits will lead you to one place and one place only.

Me hitting you, and you hitting the controller against the coffee table.

Better go get that code.

Metal Gear

So the first thing that happens in this game is that you're screwed. Welcome to Metal Gear. You'll NEVER know where the hell you are. That should really have been the opening title.
Metal Gear. A game that has a classic status that truly, truly escapes me. I really don't know how the hell this became the classic on which a series of truly excellent games were based. The game is mysterious, the game is exciting. Well, the two screens I've seen are. The game doesn't even really seem that difficult. Once you get past the dogs, the sentries, and then got lost in a maze of cargo trucks, endless corridors, and searchlight dashes, that is.

But the game has a fantastic context. A survivor. A lone wolf. An emergency radio, some apparently useless cigarettes, and a radio. If you are lucky, you can find some rations. Maybe a pistol, which you can't fire because if you do, 9,000 foot soldiers will come screaming from off screen. There is no order whatsoever to the layout of the base. A sprawling metropolis encased in hurricane fencing. Blacked out fields being searched fervently by spotlights are right next to a perfectly illuminated warehouse. Explosives and no place to use them...that I've ever seen.

Thanks, Big Boss. If that made a difference, I'd be sure to answer the radio every single time it rang for you to give me the same message.
This game isn't really that hard. It is just monotonous. It is boring. You are constantly lost and there is no way to find where you're going. No real context of where you are. You walk around dodging bullets and running from one forest screen to the next with no purpose for going there other than the fact that it's not the screen you're currently on. See some trucks? Delightful! Jump in the back and maybe there is a pistol or, bless my lucky stars, A MAP.

Finally.

Double Dragon

This game is an absolutely unforgettable beat-em-up about a guy whose girlfriend gets socked in the face and carried off. Through the city, forest, and some other places, he hunts down the SOBs who did it and punches each of them in the face until they die from it.
This game is outstanding. I think. I have never gotten past the forest, which is level two. Wait, I think I beat the forest level once, which I think mysteriously leads to a high-rise level, and instead of going inside and using the stairs or elevator you climb floating platforms and fire escapes, and have numerous kick-fights on lofty precipice after lofty precipice until you have killed everybody in sight.

That is, if you can get away from enemies who hide JUST OFF SCREEN with whips.

It is worth mentioning the fact that many enemies in the game wait for you just offscreen (which happens to be the place where most movie zombies hide) because you cannot advance the game without walking right up against the edge of the screen, and the enemies will be flailing weapons and throwing sticks of dynamite at you before you can see them. Evil? Maybe not. But it is definitely not fair.
Now, in this game, I'm sure that *somebody* has gotten farther, but I have never met that man, or anybody who knows him. You kick a guy. You get kicked, and then you start flashing and die. One of the only games in this lineup that features a 'life bar', which is a novelty in this game, because after a combination, baseball ball to the stomach, or wooden shipping crate to the face, you can hardly cross the street without exhausting the rest of your energy. And then there are the times when you punch an enemy at the same time. It may be a glitch, but when you punch an enemy as he punches you, you stare at each other for three full seconds, mouths agape, and it is somewhat random as to who is allowed to punch next. Jump kick at the wrong time and you get a chain wrapped around your neck. Hit the 'down' arrow at the wrong time and you are pitched into oblivion.
He who screams loudest...

I get the general premise. Your girlfriend gets nabbed and you have to go around punching people until they give her back. The standard gangland fare, right? Guys with dreadlocks doing sweep kicks, thugs in sick denim vests throwing knives and sticks of dynamite, burly gals swinging whips, and big black dudes throwing shipping crates at you. We've all seen those archetypal bad guys. But then all of a sudden, you walk into a warehouse, and this walks out with its eyes fixed right on your soft pink hide.

The door has swung open, and this gigantic bulbous sausage of a man lumbers out. He's not slow either. One good sumo-slap from this monster and you are down for the count.
There are several parts of the game where you have to climb a fence to get around a pit of some sort. Well, when you are not on the same plane as an enemy, he will not move. So then starts a delicate ballet of inching closer and closer to the pit, climbing the fence, and getting hit in the face with an aluminum baseball bat as you attempt to goad the enemy onto the fence.
What gets me is how the game dismisses you when you die. Let's say you are walking next to a cliff. All of a sudden, the mountain shakes, and two gaping maws open up in the sheer rock face. What emerges? More of those gigantic walking blisters. How does it generally end?
This is how it ends.
Not even a game over 'screen'. You get the words game over on the bottom of wherever you died. The roadside memorial of endgame screens.

That's it for now. I hope you've enjoyed me spilling my heart out for you, and terrorizing myself by playing these games again for your entertainment. Perhaps I'll do a genesis version later, though, I don't know how I'll be able to handle playing Target: Earth again.