A key feature of most arcade games back in the day was that the harder the game was the more money they would be able to make from it. Which is why we have this article – games got very challenging. Some of the hardest arcade games, ever, were Sinistar, Berzerk, Zaxxon, Gauntlet, Smash TV, Space Ace, Paperboy, Gravitar, X-Men: The Arcade, Dragon’s Lair, Donkey Kong, Gunbird 2, Ghosts N’ Goblins, Haunted Castle, Dance Dance Revolution Franchise, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Tetris: The Grand Master 3 Terror Instinct.
Below are 18 of the hardest arcade games ever:
- Berzerk: In Berzerk, the player controls a green stick man and attempt to navigate them through a robot filled maze who are trying to kill you. If you’re shot at by the robots, hit by an exploding robot, run into a robot, or get hit by the maze’s electrified walls you die. You also have to fight Evil Otto, a bouncing smiley face, but there is no way to kill him. Not only that but Otto can travel through walls and match the player’s speed. Basically, the game was made to make it almost impossible to score any high score that could actually be deemed a high score.
- Sinistar: Sinistar is set in space where you’re set with the task of mining asteroids. While mining the asteroids you have to avoid being killed by angry spaceships. Not only that but you also have to avoid all the enemies flying around whose aim it is to simply kill you. You have to do all this whle also seeing the Sinistar (a skull shaped spaceship) being built directly in your face on the screen. The reason the game is so difficult to beat is that everything on the screen is designed to kill you. As a testament to how difficult this game is it has been said that upon originally testing the game the highest playtime was about 3 minutes.
- Zaxxon: The gameplay for Zaxxon is pretty straightforward as well as the objective of the game. You score points in Zaxxon by blowing things up, preserving your life, or using all of your fuel. If you use all you fuel in Zaxxon you could die, interesting right? However, to replenish your fuel all you have to do is blow up fuel canisters. You can also die in the game by being hit by missiles, turrets, or various other things you find in the game. Some players found the design of the game to be a bit confusing, which added to the difficulty of the game.
- Gauntlet: Gauntlet is a 4 player game where players were required to choose among 4 different player types, an Elf, a Mage, a Valkryie, and a Warrior. The purpose of the game is to upgrade your player by collecting items. You fight enemies in the game by destroying enemies that spawn out of monster generators. Not only that but you have to worry about your non-stop draining health bar. Side from the ever-generating monsters you also have to worry about the fact that after certain time periods go by your are no longer able to find food and power ups as readily (this was only after the Rom was released that allowed this).
- Smash TV: The difficulty of this game is that most people don’t see the ending of the game. You have to fight a number of evil, death machine enemies, and if you don’t have the right power-ups when you fight these enemies the odds of you getting past them are very low.
- Q-Bert: Some give Q*bert a difficulty rating of 10/10 for reasons explained below. There are a few objectives of Q*Bert that gets gradually more difficult as the game goes on. For example, the main objective is to flip tiles and doing so becomes more of a challenge as it’s played. As each level starts the player gets a demonstration of how colors can change when tiles are hopped on. Each level can have three different colors for the tiles, with each color varying for aesthetics. As the game starts one only needs to hop on each tile once to change its color. As the game progresses (level 2) one has to jump on every tile 2x. On level 3 one only has to deal with 2 colors (A and B) but it is more of a puzzle. As the game goes on it just gets more and more puzzling (eg. A to B, B to C, and C to B).
- Space Ace: The reason this game is so challenging is that the rules to the game are very dynamic. There are no ways to know when certain things are going to happen unless you die a few times. An example of this is when there is no way to know when you have to perform the Space Beta scene in the game where you have to jump between platforms and there is almost no way to know when you are actually supposed to perform the jump. You will also have to be very specific about the way you perform the joystick moves and button clicks when you’re flying – it’s just very challenging.
- Paperboy: While the name of the game may not sound very challenging the fact of the matter is that it really is. The point of the game is to deliver papers, essentially to houses on the block while avoiding a number of obstacles. The challenge of this game is that you only get so much time to move away from obstacles and that if you get knocked off your bicycle by them.
- Gravitar: The reason Gravitar is so much of a challenge is that there are zones you have to pass that are designed to be challenging. Not only that but it’s also very challenging to pick up the fuel you need to get past the game.
- X-Men: The Arcade: There are a few reasons why this game is considered “difficult”. First of which is because there is no such thing as hit stun in this game (Hit stun (known as DamageFly internally) is a period of time after being hit by an attack that a character is unable to act outside of directional influence or teching.) and the enemy’s attacks are all haymakers. Aside from that there is a tradeoff between using your power and your health; if you use your power, you lose some of your health. Not only that but the enemies of this game come in droves – meaning they are constantly filling up the screen.
- Dragon’s Lair: Dragon’s Lair is considered a game that is unfair, requires a great deal of memorization, and to be frank is brutal. Dragon’s Lair is a series of quick-time events ( In video games, a quick time event (QTE) is a method of context-sensitive gameplay in which the player performs actions on the control device shortly after the appearance of an on-screen instruction/prompt.) with no prompts. The timing required to be successful in this game can be sharp (very little time) and you aren’t really given any indication of how you are supposed to react to any obstacle faced during gameplay.
- Donkey Kong: Before I say anything else, it took a year and a half for an individual player to reach the kill screen. Donkey Kong is known as a game that is very difficult to master with most people requiring 24 periods of cycling through the four stages to see the kill screen. Each time you go through the stages the enemies get faster.
- Gunbird 2: Gunbird is what individuals call “bullet hell shooters”. Even though the creators of this game equipped the players with more than enough tools they could use to beat it, it is still considered a brutal game. Just so you’re aware, the individuals who usually play games such as this (bullet hell shooter enthusiasts), even say this game is difficult.
- Ghosts N’ Goblins: As with most games Ghosts n’ Goblins is a game that gets progressively more difficult as it goes on. Once a player beats this game once, they have to beat it again, only this time with the game being more difficult the second time around. Ghosts n’ Goblins is the type of game that requires a degree of mastery, a degree that makes this game feel unfair to those playing it.
- Haunted Castle: This game is (and if you have read the title of this article) another game with a high difficulty level. Once started each player gets 3 lives (not that that’s really enough). This game requires repeated playthroughs to really gain mastery. Players need to learn the tricks to beat the bosses and memorize the layout of the stage. Lol.
- Dance Dance Revolution Franchise: Unlike the other games mentioned in this article, the Dance Dance Revolution Franchise not only requires memorization, and pattern recognition but also requires dexterity and physical endurance. This means that to beat the game at the hardest level you need to essentially train your body and memorize moves.
- Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3: This game actually made me laugh once I realized why it was so difficult. The AI used to run the enemies actually chooses the best possible counter to your move a single frame after you use your move.
- Tetris: The Grand Master 3 Terror Instinct: The difficulty of Tetris: The Grand Master 3 Terror Instinct doesn’t come from having to finish the game with top honors (with a grand master ranking). To do so, one has to play the game at a blinding speed while also gaining multiple Tetrises. And to make matters worse, you have to memorize how the blocks are placed since they become invisible once they are placed (if you would like to get a grand master ranking).
And and and you have to do this several times on the same account to get a Grand Master ranking.
Conclusion
Here is a list of incredibly challenging games – each of which comes with own type of “challenge”.
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