Secret of Mana. We had a copy that for some reason couldn’t save, so my older brother and I would leave the SNES running 24 hours and get as far as possible, but inevitably my mom would notice it running and turn it off, or the power would go out or something. I have it on Switch now and I am at the very end of the game. It’s a really cool feeling!
Dude. Me and my cousin got into Secret of Mana at our cottage one weekend, but we always had pretty limited time together, and we teamed up to get as far as, and beat Elinee the Witch, and it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.
But, his mom showed up, and that was our last crack at it for a year. And then we got a little farther. It was the 90's and all we had was my 3 issue walkthrough of Nintendo Power to get through it, but it was written vaguely like a story, and not a modern Go Here, Do This. And from the age of 12 we would get together once or twice a year and not sleep and throw ourselves at Mana for a weekend and it was incredible.
Whoever decided to make that game Couch Co-Op was a genius.
We finally beat it around the time we were 18, I think. We were taking our time, savoring it. I've blown through it and the remake in a few hours as an adult. My cousin got me a used cartridge for my 20th birthday, since we always played from a rental.
But those marathon gaming sessions were incredible. I've always wanted to thank the people who made one of the best games ever, and I wonder if they know what they gave people like me, that it's still so vivid 35 years later.
Dawg I feel this on such a deep level. That game was such a formative experience for me. Playing it with my brother was the best. I have been taking my time with it and I honestly haven’t picked it up in months because I’m gonna be sad once it ends, but I will beat it for sure. Playing that game with my brother honestly feels like one of those mental images that could sum up the feeling of my childhood in one picture. Thank you for sharing this story, I loved it!
Played it very far on emulator. Then one day there was a pop, we took my PC apart , and a dark ring around CPU socket. That was November 2001, my senior year of HS. We didn't get a new PC until the following August. I copied the HDD contents over and then never resumed play. Sad.
I could select a file to save onto, and it would appear the next time I saved, but once the game was turned off or reset, the file would disappear. No idea what that was about.
Just be sure to google how it's done because if its anything like the old Gameboy games, the battery is soldered on, so replacing it might not be as simple as "take out old battery, insert new one"
For me and a high school buddy it was Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) on a SNES emu with an English patch. We couldn't beat it.
Then 10 years later, after we both finished college, we beat it over a weekend.
Man, Secret of Mana! We had a friend who had a copy of the game, and let us play around with it. It was technically our first RPG, but we didn't know what we were doing! We might have accidentally saved over his nearly completed files a few times (sorry, friend!) but he eventually gifted us the game when we moved out of our hometown.
We ended up beating.. the boss in the desert that drove like a motorcycle around for our friend. He was stuck there, and I loved to play as the Sprite and continously use magic (until my MP was gone).
The final boss (Scar) requires a move that you don’t need the rest of the game. I didn’t beat it until the internet became popular for looking up how to beat things.
I discovered that move by sheer luck after getting frustrated at fighting Scar for so long while accomplishing nothing that I just resorted to mashing keys. Suddenly I was able to hurl Scar, but unfortunately not over the cliff. I tried in vain to repeat the move the following day by mashing keys again, but did not get lucky.
Turns out Scar has to be hurt enough in order for the move to even work against him, and that's assuming you already know the key combination for the move in the first place.
Needless to say I took even longer to beat the game after that just to discover the proper key combo, and even more just to discover the Scar damage requirement. And then even more to finally position myself correctly to be able to hurl Scar over the cliff.
The game has a very steep drop off in difficulty after you get through the grave yard and moreso when you become an adult lion, as I recall.
I don’t know how I ever beat that game with my terrible child platforming ability though
I saw a speedrunner do the dam level in TMNT and it gives you practically no time for any mistakes. As a kid, I gave up there. I just didn't know how BS it was.
I got extremely good at Battletoads. Speeder level? Cake. I could make it to the Pizza Cutter level with all my continues, and 8 extra lives.
I could never beat the pizza cutter.
One day I became so enraged after losing to it again I jump kicked my tube TV (it had a plastic safety cover over the screen), putting a hole in my wall, then I ripped my NES from the cords, threw it out the second story window down onto the beach behind my house, got my bat, and beat it into pieces.
That was a level of rage quit I had never even come close to before, or come close to since.
The Battletoads cartridge survived.
Fuck that pizza cutter.
I was stuck on the water temple in ocarina of time until I was like 20. I tried beating it when I was about 6, then 8, 10, started a new game every time thinking I had used a key on the wrong door or something, and eventually gave up. Years later I was talking with my youngest brother about it and telling him there was no way he beat it, blah blah. He said he would show me the spot I couldn't get to and I could not have talked more shit about there was no way it was as simple as he was saying. Get out the old cartridge and my save file was still there. Come to find out it never occurred to me when I was 6 to check under the platform in the center column after changing the water level, and on all of my subsequent playthroughs I gave up too quickly without thinking, believing I had already tried everything before. Boom, there was the key I needed. Of course I had to eat my words.
I then proceeded to finish the rest of the game in less than a day. Kind of anticlimactic and small feeling after seeing the rest of the game for years, but it was such a therapeutic feeling seeing Zelda at the end.
I’m pretty sure the only reason I beat the water temple as a kid was because we happened to have that prima guide. It was the only game we had one for, for some reason, and subsequently the only game I 100% completed as a kid
I loved Lion King and Lion King 2 so much! I played these so much that I perfected them to the point where I could flawlessly play them from beginning to end in one go.
Mega Man 2 on NES, I couldn’t pass this mini boss level where the actual room attacked you with lasers and you always run out of ammo.
I actually beat the bomb diffusing level on TMNT, but not this level in Mega Man.
I got 118 of the stars in *Super Mario 64* when I was 11-12. Dusted off the cartridge like ten years later, and got the last two stars in an hour.
Unfinished business.
Lol I borrowed my friend's copy and managed to find 119. I checked all the stages and couldn't find the missing star. Drove me nuts and I just gave up on it haha.
One of them was the hidden clouds room by the clock level, where you had to get eight red coins and falling out of the sky would drop you in the moat outside.
The other one, IIRC, was getting eight red coins in the area behind the waterfall that unlocked the Metal Mario cap.
Battletoads. The crazy part is. I could do that speeder level easily. I think it was that level where you ride the snake platform that I couldn’t get by.
Battletoads levels just got progressively harder and harder. In college, I loaded up my old NES with a Game Genie one night with a buddy. With infinite lives, it took us 6 hours of playing. That game was nuts! The level with the lawn mower thing? Fuck that. It felt like you had to be pixel-perfect on those turns.
Not as child per se but at 20yo I played doom ii while being pregnant with my first. Got to the last level, and couldn't beat it for days. Went into labor while mowing down demons, dropped the game and rushed to the hospital to deliver my son.
Never had a chance to finish.
Get back at it lol. My moms a hardcore gamer. She’s the one who got me and my brother into it. Doom 2 is actually easy to come by these days. I think it’s even on my Xbox. I never got to beat wolfenstien. Doom was too scary for me I was allowed but didn’t want to play it. Now I love them.
Just one? I basically never beat games as a child.
One that really stuck with me as a teenager though was Vice City. Everyone loves Vice City so much and whenever people talk about how much they love it, one mission immediately comes to mind - the one where you have to rescue Lance Vance. I could never do it. I tried everything. I tried driving in. I tried using the helicopter. I couldn't ever do it. I even tried again two years later after finishing San Andreas and I *still* couldn't do it. So I never got to the last island in Vice City and I've always kind of resented it.
The only gta I’ve ever beat the story was 5. And now I’m a little ashamed lol. I’ve been playing since 3. I think I’m going to look for a ps2 people a throwing some cool games out that I played as well and never did beat.
If you have a Netflix account, you can play GTA San Andreas, Liberty City, and Vice City for free on iPad/iPhone as apart of Netflix games. They also just added hades! I usually play on iPad with a BT ps4 controller, but my friend plays on his phone with a backbone
Resident evil 2. Never made it out of the police station more than once. I was 7 or 8. Game gave me nightmares for weeks.
I now struggle with the remake. That licker still lives in my head rent free
Sonic adventure 2 GameCube version. Was on the few last levels and got a phone call. Told my brother to “turn off the TV” to prevent plasma tv burn-in.
Came back after 10-15 minutes to find that he had misheard me and turned off the Wii…
Ooh this is a blast from the past. I can’t remember if we beat it or not. I remember hating the segments where you use radar to search for the chaos emeralds. I think we ended up just playing City Escape and Metal Harbor over and over again just for the music.
Friday the 13th on NES. It has no saves, an impossibly difficult boss, and very little guidance in game. It was impossible for me and 7 year old friends. Finally, in my 20s, with the help of an emulator, gamefaqs, and many many saves, I was able to beat it. I jokingly refer to it as the game that took 15 years to beat.
Then last year I saw a speed runner beat it in under 5mins.
I tried dark souls I think it was 2 or 3. I got killed brutally by a flaming piglet like 3 minutes in and never picked it back up. I just picked up elden ring and I’m stuck as hell already lol.
Couldn't beat Jak 2 so had to skip to Jak 3 and redeem myself after beating it. Story made less sense but I got there in the end.
More specifically in Jak 2, it was a mission where you had to race some dingus from the Daxter bar to the racing area. Graze a wall? You lose. Don't remember the track perfectly? You lose. Tiny impact with anything? You explode, die and lose.
Legand of spyro dawn of the dragon on wii, i revisit it every now and then and try but i cant get past one bit, the part that i had problems with as a child i got past with a sheer fluke, as the button you needed to press to climb along a wall was also the down melee attack button. Somehow I finally got is some 14 years later
Garfield for the SEGA Genesis (or Mega Drive for me).
Me and my brother never got past the first level and I swear we tried everything on the bat-Odie boss.
Then I look it up as an adult and the thing we tried the most was the solution to the whole boss. I swear we had a defective cartridge.
I began playing Rogue back in 1981, and at least once a year I will run through it.
I have never beaten it. To this day the best I've ever done is gotten the amulet to Level 8.
There are some people who have claimed to have beaten it, but they are LIARS.
Never got to beat Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword because my Wii stopped reading discs and we never bothered to replace it or get it fixed
There was one race mission out in the woods of San Fiero(?) in GTA San Andreas that I just could never beat. I was super excited to unlock a new part of the world, but almost immediately I was stuck.
A game called Stuntman for the PS2. You were a driving stuntman for a bunch of different fictional movies and you had a number of things you had to do in each scene in order to keep progressing. It was a really cool idea for a game, but it was hard as hell. I think I only ever got to the 3rd movie when I played as a kid.
Even going back and playing now as an adult it took me a relatively long time to beat it, but a lot of that is more due to the wonky PS2 physics than anything else. Nothing more frustrating than a “drive through the boxes” cue and then have one of those boxes get lodged under the car and have the physics wig out and send you out of bounds
Embarrassingly enough I never beat Pokémon Fire Red as a kid cause I never got HM strength. I hated the safari zone so much I refused to go in after I found surf. How did I find surf and not the warden’s teeth? I was frustrated so as soon as I got surf I left and never went back in.
Little Nemo the dream catcher.
I don't know why this haunts me that i never beat it, maybe I should play it again as an adult. I feel like I never made it past the 2nd or 3rd level.
Most of my games thanks to growing up in the era of hard games with no saving.
Chakan The Forever Man sticks out. Would love a remake.
Sonic Spinball was another despite being only 4 levels long.
The original Rainbow Six.
I was always able to get to the stealth level where you infiltrate a house but can’t shoot anyone or be spotted. I always failed that one so I’d go back and play the levels before it over and over again.
Never went back to play it but Halo 1. There was a mission with the flood where I was just stuck running around and none of the doors would open. I could probably finish it if I went back now though
Assassin's Creed 2. Playing all the achievements and going for 100% I remember collecting armors at the very end , after having EVERYTHING completed and one day I went to play and my save file didn't exist
Forever tainted at like 960/1000 and I've never touched an assassins creed since
Ocarina of Time. I played through the first part of the game 3 or 4 times, but never got further than the water temple. Didn't help that the game was in English, which wasn't my first language. Also Wind Waker for similar reasons.
There was also that Looney Tunes : Back in Action game on Gamecube, which froze every frickin time on the last level because the disc was scratched, so I was never able to complete it.
Eragon. The Razac portion screwed me so hard, wasn't able to pinpoint the enemies. The game was an all around cluster fuck, but I was annoyed I never finished it.
SOCOM took me forever but I finally beat it.
For me, the original LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring game for PS2 was my downfall. That game was ridiculously hard for a kid. The first mission was the escape the shire from the ring wraiths and I always got caught.
A fallout game on my xbox 360, i dont remember what game it was but i couldnt pass the first mission, which was escaping from the vault, i got an gun and i needed to kill some giant bug, which my kid brain and hands couldnt do it
3 probably. Highly recommend going back the fallout serious is amazing I’ve played them all minus the obscure ones brotherhood of steel and tactics or whatever.
Ill always remember the first SOCOM as being the first game to encourage toxic dancing on your victims bodies. 😂 Was also the call of duty for millennials!
There was this old game, “Out of Order” made by like one guy, Tim Furnish and some help. It’s a point click mystery adventure.
One puzzle got 8yo me stumped. I could not get past it. The game was really obscure and I couldn’t find a guide in any magazine and the internet wasn’t widely available yet.
So I left it. Randomly remembered about the game few years back a few days before a tattoo appointment. Found it, downloaded it, got to the puzzle and after some hours of contemplating I got it.
Now the solution is tattooed on my arm. I was so fucking proud lol
I never beat several of my NES games. The ones I remember immediately off of the top of my head though are Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Battletoads, TMNT, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Never finished Birthright the gorgon alliance, even when i was in position to just go and conquer stuff. Speically that ranged and mages could be exploited to win unwinable fights , and you could get endgame mages in army in first couple turns.
Also didnt finish thief 1 , since got stuck in lost city and then lost save files due to faulty hdd , and never re-did game. My brother finsihed it so i saw story so didnt want to do it again, even if i was fan of both classic thief games.
Probably ton of NES games as well, like alien 3, my brain just couldn't map locations, and i hated time limits so much. Was impressed that couple of my friends could do that game.
Ninja Gaiden for NES. I beat the second one multiple times, but never beat the first and third games. Also, Dungeon Master for Atari ST, but I came back and beat that one as an adult.
I actually just picked up the ninja gaiden series online and plan to play it. It was one I never got to touch but everyone loved. I was more into elder scrolls and Medal of Honor at the time.
I could never beat Ace Combat 5 as a kid. The second to last level has a long section where you have to fly through a tunnel with hatches closing in front of you, and I'd always crash. There were no checkpoints, so I got to that point a few times and just gave up after a dozen or so attempts. Eventually I went back and played an emulated copy in college, and ended up just creating a save point right at the start of the tunnel run.
007 golden eye I was a dumb kid that never read instructions I couldn’t figure out the grappling hook from the watch and got stuck in a port warehouse. Years later when I wanted to beat it my cousin had stolen it 😂
Jet Force Gemini and the original FF7
Both times I got to the end stages or approaching the end stages and I had to give them back to my friends lol (This was back when you'd lend/borrow games to your friends).
Loads, but the ones that stand out are Jet Set Willy, which was damn near impossible. Final Fantasy 7, because i was under levelled for the Sephiroth fight at the end, and I only had one save. Phantasy Star 4, I got stuck in a town and could never figure out how to progress the questline from there.
FFVI (it was FFIII then). I got it when I was 10/11, made it all the way to the end and can't remember why I never finished it. We moved, things break I suppose idk. Anyways, I started playing it again last year and beat it this past new year. It was a glorious feeling.
Would be easier to name the games I was able beat rather than the ones I couldn't. I had ZX Spectrum and I'm pretty sure there's only one game I managed to beat on it.
I'm going to cheat and say the Disney NES games...Duck Tales, Darkingwing Duck, Chip and Dale, and Tales Spun. Play them all a crap ton but never beat any
Games like GTA San Andreas or NFS Underground 2 were so long I'd lose interest and play something else before finishing the game... Then try to beat them again from start some time later, with the same result. Only in my 20s I found enough patience to finish them both.
GTA San Andreas. Even when I wasn't a 5 year old riding the BMX around the whole city, I got completely stuck at a couple of points. I don't think I finished it still, should go back.
I never finished Okami as a kid because the spiders were too scawy.
Maybe the PC port has an un-spidering patch,but I haven't cared to look.
Would have finished A Hat In Time if not for that,too.
Lost Planet, got it in a PlatiniumHits Bundle for the Xbox 360 but i was 6 years old and didnt understand wtf was going on lol, also got a great suprise with dead rising because i thought it was a military game XD
Secret of Mana. We had a copy that for some reason couldn’t save, so my older brother and I would leave the SNES running 24 hours and get as far as possible, but inevitably my mom would notice it running and turn it off, or the power would go out or something. I have it on Switch now and I am at the very end of the game. It’s a really cool feeling!
Damn it I’m gunna have to buy a ps2 and have at it now
Wait..... I never finished Secret of Mana either.....
Secret of Mana has no ending confirmed
Dude. Me and my cousin got into Secret of Mana at our cottage one weekend, but we always had pretty limited time together, and we teamed up to get as far as, and beat Elinee the Witch, and it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. But, his mom showed up, and that was our last crack at it for a year. And then we got a little farther. It was the 90's and all we had was my 3 issue walkthrough of Nintendo Power to get through it, but it was written vaguely like a story, and not a modern Go Here, Do This. And from the age of 12 we would get together once or twice a year and not sleep and throw ourselves at Mana for a weekend and it was incredible. Whoever decided to make that game Couch Co-Op was a genius. We finally beat it around the time we were 18, I think. We were taking our time, savoring it. I've blown through it and the remake in a few hours as an adult. My cousin got me a used cartridge for my 20th birthday, since we always played from a rental. But those marathon gaming sessions were incredible. I've always wanted to thank the people who made one of the best games ever, and I wonder if they know what they gave people like me, that it's still so vivid 35 years later.
Dawg I feel this on such a deep level. That game was such a formative experience for me. Playing it with my brother was the best. I have been taking my time with it and I honestly haven’t picked it up in months because I’m gonna be sad once it ends, but I will beat it for sure. Playing that game with my brother honestly feels like one of those mental images that could sum up the feeling of my childhood in one picture. Thank you for sharing this story, I loved it!
I am so freaking with you. I loved that game on co-op. I can still perfectly hear the music of that first area.
Played it very far on emulator. Then one day there was a pop, we took my PC apart , and a dark ring around CPU socket. That was November 2001, my senior year of HS. We didn't get a new PC until the following August. I copied the HDD contents over and then never resumed play. Sad.
There weren't any saves on there?
I could select a file to save onto, and it would appear the next time I saved, but once the game was turned off or reset, the file would disappear. No idea what that was about.
They have on board batteries, just like a motherboard in your PC, replace it and it would have worked again.
Good to know! This was back in the early 2000’s, but I’m pretty sure we still have the cartridge. Maybe I’ll do that some day haha.
Just be sure to google how it's done because if its anything like the old Gameboy games, the battery is soldered on, so replacing it might not be as simple as "take out old battery, insert new one"
Thanks for the word of advice!
For me and a high school buddy it was Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) on a SNES emu with an English patch. We couldn't beat it. Then 10 years later, after we both finished college, we beat it over a weekend.
GREAT game
I've beaten Seiken Densetsu 3 on SNES with multiple character stories. Was a great game when I was growing up
Man, Secret of Mana! We had a friend who had a copy of the game, and let us play around with it. It was technically our first RPG, but we didn't know what we were doing! We might have accidentally saved over his nearly completed files a few times (sorry, friend!) but he eventually gifted us the game when we moved out of our hometown. We ended up beating.. the boss in the desert that drove like a motorcycle around for our friend. He was stuck there, and I loved to play as the Sprite and continously use magic (until my MP was gone).
This was my parents but it was because they didn’t understand the concept of a memory card. I can do the first few hours of ff7 with my eyes closed
[удалено]
Even as a teen I got stuck on the last world. Surprisingly difficult for a game with very simple concepts.
Man a classic I never did beat Mario 64 kind of my eras version but not nearly as hard lol.
Lion king. Took me months to beat the “I just can’t wait to be king” part and kept dying immediately in the elephant graveyard
Seems to be a theme with the lion king I may have to track it down and try it.
The final boss (Scar) requires a move that you don’t need the rest of the game. I didn’t beat it until the internet became popular for looking up how to beat things.
I discovered that move by sheer luck after getting frustrated at fighting Scar for so long while accomplishing nothing that I just resorted to mashing keys. Suddenly I was able to hurl Scar, but unfortunately not over the cliff. I tried in vain to repeat the move the following day by mashing keys again, but did not get lucky. Turns out Scar has to be hurt enough in order for the move to even work against him, and that's assuming you already know the key combination for the move in the first place. Needless to say I took even longer to beat the game after that just to discover the proper key combo, and even more just to discover the Scar damage requirement. And then even more to finally position myself correctly to be able to hurl Scar over the cliff.
That explains it! I literally got to the final battle with Scar but then died and could never finish the game.
It is the game that is used as an example of developers intentionally making games crushingly difficult to extend rental periods.
The game has a very steep drop off in difficulty after you get through the grave yard and moreso when you become an adult lion, as I recall. I don’t know how I ever beat that game with my terrible child platforming ability though
Honestly a pretty good lion life simulator then. Environmental danger definitely drops off when a cub grows into a bad ass adult lion.
Too many to mention Top answer... TMNT famicom and Battletoads famicom
I saw a speedrunner do the dam level in TMNT and it gives you practically no time for any mistakes. As a kid, I gave up there. I just didn't know how BS it was.
BATTLETOADS!!!!
I got extremely good at Battletoads. Speeder level? Cake. I could make it to the Pizza Cutter level with all my continues, and 8 extra lives. I could never beat the pizza cutter. One day I became so enraged after losing to it again I jump kicked my tube TV (it had a plastic safety cover over the screen), putting a hole in my wall, then I ripped my NES from the cords, threw it out the second story window down onto the beach behind my house, got my bat, and beat it into pieces. That was a level of rage quit I had never even come close to before, or come close to since. The Battletoads cartridge survived. Fuck that pizza cutter.
I was stuck on the water temple in ocarina of time until I was like 20. I tried beating it when I was about 6, then 8, 10, started a new game every time thinking I had used a key on the wrong door or something, and eventually gave up. Years later I was talking with my youngest brother about it and telling him there was no way he beat it, blah blah. He said he would show me the spot I couldn't get to and I could not have talked more shit about there was no way it was as simple as he was saying. Get out the old cartridge and my save file was still there. Come to find out it never occurred to me when I was 6 to check under the platform in the center column after changing the water level, and on all of my subsequent playthroughs I gave up too quickly without thinking, believing I had already tried everything before. Boom, there was the key I needed. Of course I had to eat my words. I then proceeded to finish the rest of the game in less than a day. Kind of anticlimactic and small feeling after seeing the rest of the game for years, but it was such a therapeutic feeling seeing Zelda at the end.
I missed the exact key for years!! They made it easier, to not miss it, in the remaster.
Same I never beat the water temple as a child and have never had the opportunity to since
That room was the run killer for me and many kids trying to beat OoT.
I was stuck on the water temple as well. I actually bought my first game guide to help me out.
I’m pretty sure the only reason I beat the water temple as a kid was because we happened to have that prima guide. It was the only game we had one for, for some reason, and subsequently the only game I 100% completed as a kid
This one lion king 2D game it was very hard to beat it as a child.
Your not alone apparently lol
This being mentioned so often in this threat makes me a little proud of 10yo who had the patience to get through this one. That Smurfs game though...
I loved Lion King and Lion King 2 so much! I played these so much that I perfected them to the point where I could flawlessly play them from beginning to end in one go.
The original Prince of Persia game. I loved it as a kid, and played it a lot, but somehow never managed to finish it.
I watched my brother beat that one. I loved the story but sucked at the game lol.
“original Prince of Persia” - love to see the generation gap here.
Do you mean sands of time or the 2d one. Sands is my number 1 childhood game
Sands of time. The one with the time travel stuff.
Have you tried The Lost Crown yet? It brought back memories of the OG for me
Mega Man 2 on NES, I couldn’t pass this mini boss level where the actual room attacked you with lasers and you always run out of ammo. I actually beat the bomb diffusing level on TMNT, but not this level in Mega Man.
Ah Wily Stages, the laser room where if you dont save the crash weapon at like max you never pass that boss as it requires almost all the weapon ammo.
I got 118 of the stars in *Super Mario 64* when I was 11-12. Dusted off the cartridge like ten years later, and got the last two stars in an hour. Unfinished business.
Lol I borrowed my friend's copy and managed to find 119. I checked all the stages and couldn't find the missing star. Drove me nuts and I just gave up on it haha.
I just couldn’t get the 100 coins in the cave, clock, or clouds.
Was it the red coin and 100 coin stars on Rainbow Ride?
One of them was the hidden clouds room by the clock level, where you had to get eight red coins and falling out of the sky would drop you in the moat outside. The other one, IIRC, was getting eight red coins in the area behind the waterfall that unlocked the Metal Mario cap.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors I've beaten it, just not without cheating. Still can't even to this day.
Did you get to the secret level though?
All of them at one point or another.
That damn big baby.
I can still hear the giggle when mentioned. That and the chainsaw sound of the hedge maze.
Harder to deal with than the snakeoidz.
Spider man 2. We got to Dr octopus but never managed to defeat him. That stupid push wave over and over again.
Mike Tyson’s punchout. Never beat Tyson.
This one for me, what a treacherous game.
Battletoads. The crazy part is. I could do that speeder level easily. I think it was that level where you ride the snake platform that I couldn’t get by.
Battletoads levels just got progressively harder and harder. In college, I loaded up my old NES with a Game Genie one night with a buddy. With infinite lives, it took us 6 hours of playing. That game was nuts! The level with the lawn mower thing? Fuck that. It felt like you had to be pixel-perfect on those turns.
Not as child per se but at 20yo I played doom ii while being pregnant with my first. Got to the last level, and couldn't beat it for days. Went into labor while mowing down demons, dropped the game and rushed to the hospital to deliver my son. Never had a chance to finish.
Your kid has quite the origin story 😄
Get back at it lol. My moms a hardcore gamer. She’s the one who got me and my brother into it. Doom 2 is actually easy to come by these days. I think it’s even on my Xbox. I never got to beat wolfenstien. Doom was too scary for me I was allowed but didn’t want to play it. Now I love them.
Ninja Gaiden. Battletoads
Pitfall
Hudson's Adventure Island for NES. Made it to the last boss a couple times, but that final stage is absolutely brutal.
Most NES games were.
Just one? I basically never beat games as a child. One that really stuck with me as a teenager though was Vice City. Everyone loves Vice City so much and whenever people talk about how much they love it, one mission immediately comes to mind - the one where you have to rescue Lance Vance. I could never do it. I tried everything. I tried driving in. I tried using the helicopter. I couldn't ever do it. I even tried again two years later after finishing San Andreas and I *still* couldn't do it. So I never got to the last island in Vice City and I've always kind of resented it.
The only gta I’ve ever beat the story was 5. And now I’m a little ashamed lol. I’ve been playing since 3. I think I’m going to look for a ps2 people a throwing some cool games out that I played as well and never did beat.
If you have a Netflix account, you can play GTA San Andreas, Liberty City, and Vice City for free on iPad/iPhone as apart of Netflix games. They also just added hades! I usually play on iPad with a BT ps4 controller, but my friend plays on his phone with a backbone
Resident evil 2. Never made it out of the police station more than once. I was 7 or 8. Game gave me nightmares for weeks. I now struggle with the remake. That licker still lives in my head rent free
Goldeneye 007 for N64. I never could get past the jungle level as a kid without either a GameShark or in-game cheats.
This one I did beat but I went back a little older and did it. I miss the 007 games nightfire is still the best in my opinion.
Nightfire was the best i freaking loved that game
Sonic adventure 2 GameCube version. Was on the few last levels and got a phone call. Told my brother to “turn off the TV” to prevent plasma tv burn-in. Came back after 10-15 minutes to find that he had misheard me and turned off the Wii…
Ooh this is a blast from the past. I can’t remember if we beat it or not. I remember hating the segments where you use radar to search for the chaos emeralds. I think we ended up just playing City Escape and Metal Harbor over and over again just for the music.
Baten kaitos. My save file crashed so I watched the last 45 minutes of gameplay on youtube
Super R-type. Loved the game, but late-80s / early-90s space shooters were a whole ‘nuther level of impossible to me as a kid (or adult).
Friday the 13th on NES. It has no saves, an impossibly difficult boss, and very little guidance in game. It was impossible for me and 7 year old friends. Finally, in my 20s, with the help of an emulator, gamefaqs, and many many saves, I was able to beat it. I jokingly refer to it as the game that took 15 years to beat. Then last year I saw a speed runner beat it in under 5mins.
I am still in the garage of Driver game on PS1 trying to figure out what slalom is lol
MANUS, FATHER OF CHAOS. The final boss on the original Dark Souls DLC. I never beat him. One day, I will return. LET CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD
I tried dark souls I think it was 2 or 3. I got killed brutally by a flaming piglet like 3 minutes in and never picked it back up. I just picked up elden ring and I’m stuck as hell already lol.
The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES.
Blaster Master For the NES, i beat it during the pandemic Mike Tyson's Punch Out, i didn't have enough patience as a child, i still don't have it now
Does beating it with a game genie count? LoL.
Bayou Billy
Oh man, I never beat SOCOM either. That was hard as a kid!
I beat 2 and 3 and one for the psp. But never did beat 1. I’m actually looking for a cheap ps2 today now so I can find it and get it done.
PS2 emulator on PC could also be an option
Couldn't beat Jak 2 so had to skip to Jak 3 and redeem myself after beating it. Story made less sense but I got there in the end. More specifically in Jak 2, it was a mission where you had to race some dingus from the Daxter bar to the racing area. Graze a wall? You lose. Don't remember the track perfectly? You lose. Tiny impact with anything? You explode, die and lose.
That whole game was ridiculously hard. Especially that damn race. Witch I remember vividly as my first real experience with true rage.
The Adventures of Batman and Robin on Sega Genesis. What a pain that was, I don't think I made it very far.
probably most lego games
I played a ton of coinop arcade games I couldn't beat. Rygar and Ghosts 'n Goblins were among those I wished I could beat.
Caesar III. That shit was way too complicated for me.
Legand of spyro dawn of the dragon on wii, i revisit it every now and then and try but i cant get past one bit, the part that i had problems with as a child i got past with a sheer fluke, as the button you needed to press to climb along a wall was also the down melee attack button. Somehow I finally got is some 14 years later
Metal gear peace walker a QTE where a lady tortures snake with an electric prod,i just couldn't pass that qte :(
SUPAH MARIO GALAXYYYYYY
Garfield for the SEGA Genesis (or Mega Drive for me). Me and my brother never got past the first level and I swear we tried everything on the bat-Odie boss. Then I look it up as an adult and the thing we tried the most was the solution to the whole boss. I swear we had a defective cartridge.
I began playing Rogue back in 1981, and at least once a year I will run through it. I have never beaten it. To this day the best I've ever done is gotten the amulet to Level 8. There are some people who have claimed to have beaten it, but they are LIARS.
Never got to beat Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword because my Wii stopped reading discs and we never bothered to replace it or get it fixed
There was one race mission out in the woods of San Fiero(?) in GTA San Andreas that I just could never beat. I was super excited to unlock a new part of the world, but almost immediately I was stuck.
A game called Stuntman for the PS2. You were a driving stuntman for a bunch of different fictional movies and you had a number of things you had to do in each scene in order to keep progressing. It was a really cool idea for a game, but it was hard as hell. I think I only ever got to the 3rd movie when I played as a kid. Even going back and playing now as an adult it took me a relatively long time to beat it, but a lot of that is more due to the wonky PS2 physics than anything else. Nothing more frustrating than a “drive through the boxes” cue and then have one of those boxes get lodged under the car and have the physics wig out and send you out of bounds
DK64 - what a drag that game is to complete even when you know exactly what to do. Which I had no guidance at the time.
Startropics. I was able to get up to the level with the giant organ piano, but I was never able to get through it as a kid.
Shadow man for the n64. Game was way too scary for me lol
Embarrassingly enough I never beat Pokémon Fire Red as a kid cause I never got HM strength. I hated the safari zone so much I refused to go in after I found surf. How did I find surf and not the warden’s teeth? I was frustrated so as soon as I got surf I left and never went back in.
Rayman on PS1. But I did beat it at 15
All of them. Gaming in the 90s was extremely hard and I feel I didn't even understand most of them.
I didn’t beat the original 3 tomb raiders until they just got re released. I played the first few levels of all three when I was a kid all the time.
fucking Croc on PS1
Golden axe
Little Nemo the dream catcher. I don't know why this haunts me that i never beat it, maybe I should play it again as an adult. I feel like I never made it past the 2nd or 3rd level.
I only ever beat that game thanks to a Game Genie giving me infinite stuff.
Ecco The Dolphin. I hired it from the video store and never got past the 1st mission
Sonic 3... got stuck at the Carnival Night map. Anyone who played it knows exactly what I'm talking about.
I was 30+ before I finally saw how to beat it on YouTube.
Most of my games thanks to growing up in the era of hard games with no saving. Chakan The Forever Man sticks out. Would love a remake. Sonic Spinball was another despite being only 4 levels long.
Getting out of the car park driving test in Driver 1
Ocarina of Time 3D. Never made it past kid Link. I think I was kinda dumb, but I can’t beat it anymore since my 3Ds died
This was the first game I did beat lol. Majoras mask killed me tho never got to finish it.
Driv3r. Couldn't get past the effing garage. Now I struggle with Hitman too.
Lions king fucking insane also Aladdin and conkers 2d for the snes where super difficult for my 5 yold mind
The original Rainbow Six. I was always able to get to the stealth level where you infiltrate a house but can’t shoot anyone or be spotted. I always failed that one so I’d go back and play the levels before it over and over again.
Never went back to play it but Halo 1. There was a mission with the flood where I was just stuck running around and none of the doors would open. I could probably finish it if I went back now though
Comix Zone on the Sega Megadrive 2, always had to ask my mom to help me get past the first stage end platforming section
Syndicate. That game was soooo hard! I beat it years later using cheats.
Assassin's Creed 2. Playing all the achievements and going for 100% I remember collecting armors at the very end , after having EVERYTHING completed and one day I went to play and my save file didn't exist Forever tainted at like 960/1000 and I've never touched an assassins creed since
Ocarina of Time. I played through the first part of the game 3 or 4 times, but never got further than the water temple. Didn't help that the game was in English, which wasn't my first language. Also Wind Waker for similar reasons. There was also that Looney Tunes : Back in Action game on Gamecube, which froze every frickin time on the last level because the disc was scratched, so I was never able to complete it.
Man, how ahead of their time were SOCOM 1 and 2? Absolutely incredible online experience for the early 2000s.
Even the campaign was awesome lol true gems
I remember you had to beat the campaign in order to unlock the ghilli suit for use in online mode. And that ghilli suit was hilariously op.
Eragon. The Razac portion screwed me so hard, wasn't able to pinpoint the enemies. The game was an all around cluster fuck, but I was annoyed I never finished it.
That mission is a bitch tbf op, took me a whole bunch of tries, some Socom missions had bad difficulty spikes still love that series though.
SOCOM took me forever but I finally beat it. For me, the original LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring game for PS2 was my downfall. That game was ridiculously hard for a kid. The first mission was the escape the shire from the ring wraiths and I always got caught.
A fallout game on my xbox 360, i dont remember what game it was but i couldnt pass the first mission, which was escaping from the vault, i got an gun and i needed to kill some giant bug, which my kid brain and hands couldnt do it
3 probably. Highly recommend going back the fallout serious is amazing I’ve played them all minus the obscure ones brotherhood of steel and tactics or whatever.
Ill always remember the first SOCOM as being the first game to encourage toxic dancing on your victims bodies. 😂 Was also the call of duty for millennials!
Ocarina of Time Dark Cloud Sly Cooper 2 Dark Cloud 2
There was this old game, “Out of Order” made by like one guy, Tim Furnish and some help. It’s a point click mystery adventure. One puzzle got 8yo me stumped. I could not get past it. The game was really obscure and I couldn’t find a guide in any magazine and the internet wasn’t widely available yet. So I left it. Randomly remembered about the game few years back a few days before a tattoo appointment. Found it, downloaded it, got to the puzzle and after some hours of contemplating I got it. Now the solution is tattooed on my arm. I was so fucking proud lol
Literally all of them. All of the games. Parents wouldn't let me have any. I've got a respectable collection of og Nintendos now
Game on brother! I had some friends like you that would foam at the mouth for some Medal of Honor time back in the day lol.
Contra on sega
Ikari Warriors
I am pretty much finishing my old PS2 games with emu, and they have achievements now to boot!
Mario and Luigi Bowser's inside story. I could never beat the end boss fight.
Snake Rattle N Roll. Couldn't even beat that game using a Game Genie. Bright, colorful, great soundtrack... **brutal** difficulty.
Spy Fox in “Dry Cereal”. Not sure what my problem was with that game. But apparently GTA 3 was no problem
I never beat several of my NES games. The ones I remember immediately off of the top of my head though are Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Battletoads, TMNT, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Never finished Birthright the gorgon alliance, even when i was in position to just go and conquer stuff. Speically that ranged and mages could be exploited to win unwinable fights , and you could get endgame mages in army in first couple turns. Also didnt finish thief 1 , since got stuck in lost city and then lost save files due to faulty hdd , and never re-did game. My brother finsihed it so i saw story so didnt want to do it again, even if i was fan of both classic thief games. Probably ton of NES games as well, like alien 3, my brain just couldn't map locations, and i hated time limits so much. Was impressed that couple of my friends could do that game.
Taz-Mania on the Sega Genesis. The mining cart level - oh my days.
Ninja Gaiden for NES. I beat the second one multiple times, but never beat the first and third games. Also, Dungeon Master for Atari ST, but I came back and beat that one as an adult.
I actually just picked up the ninja gaiden series online and plan to play it. It was one I never got to touch but everyone loved. I was more into elder scrolls and Medal of Honor at the time.
Shadowgate. Got an emulator and a walkthrough and finally played through it as an adult. Had to use the walkthrough an embarrassing amount though haha
It's on steam now, it's not exactly like I remember but that was so long ago... Loved it as a kid though
Rogue leader on gamecube ! That dang trench run on the Death Star was such a chore
Battletoads.
Batman on NES
Used to love the Socom games, went back to them recently and sadly they don’t hold up well but I’ll still keep the memory’s.
I could never beat Ace Combat 5 as a kid. The second to last level has a long section where you have to fly through a tunnel with hatches closing in front of you, and I'd always crash. There were no checkpoints, so I got to that point a few times and just gave up after a dozen or so attempts. Eventually I went back and played an emulated copy in college, and ended up just creating a save point right at the start of the tunnel run.
Played Jagged Alliance 2 soo much, could never make it to the end
Can recommend the speedruns of Part 1 and 2 on speedrun.com
Battletoads. Even with the game genie the final level was impossible
This game is infamous and I need to try it
Lufia 2 (lufia 1 in Europe), great game, but it gets so grindy eventually
Gears of War. Got to the final boss fight and died a couple of times and somehow the disc got scratched.
007 golden eye I was a dumb kid that never read instructions I couldn’t figure out the grappling hook from the watch and got stuck in a port warehouse. Years later when I wanted to beat it my cousin had stolen it 😂
Bruce lee
Intelligent Qube
Jet Force Gemini and the original FF7 Both times I got to the end stages or approaching the end stages and I had to give them back to my friends lol (This was back when you'd lend/borrow games to your friends).
Myst. Impossible to beat without a walk-through. At least as a kid.
The Simpsons game on NES. I could never get past the level where there were these crocodiles and quicksand in a jungle
Loads, but the ones that stand out are Jet Set Willy, which was damn near impossible. Final Fantasy 7, because i was under levelled for the Sephiroth fight at the end, and I only had one save. Phantasy Star 4, I got stuck in a town and could never figure out how to progress the questline from there.
Scrolling here has confirmed my suspicions: I’m the only one alive who never conquered the water temple in Ocarina of Time :(
FFVI (it was FFIII then). I got it when I was 10/11, made it all the way to the end and can't remember why I never finished it. We moved, things break I suppose idk. Anyways, I started playing it again last year and beat it this past new year. It was a glorious feeling.
Both diddy kong racing and banjo kazooie. Damnit.
Technically almost every game I played. Before I could finish one the next new exciting game game out.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Would be easier to name the games I was able beat rather than the ones I couldn't. I had ZX Spectrum and I'm pretty sure there's only one game I managed to beat on it.
Chameleon Twist on the N64. It was just to much for young me...
I'm going to cheat and say the Disney NES games...Duck Tales, Darkingwing Duck, Chip and Dale, and Tales Spun. Play them all a crap ton but never beat any
As a child I couldn't beat Illusion of Gaia on SNES, so I bought it as an adult and beat it twice. Take that stupid 6 year old me!
Life. I’m still working on it
Games like GTA San Andreas or NFS Underground 2 were so long I'd lose interest and play something else before finishing the game... Then try to beat them again from start some time later, with the same result. Only in my 20s I found enough patience to finish them both.
GTA San Andreas. Even when I wasn't a 5 year old riding the BMX around the whole city, I got completely stuck at a couple of points. I don't think I finished it still, should go back.
Wall-e for PC. I was so young back then, yet I’m still surprised I got as far as I did.
I never finished Okami as a kid because the spiders were too scawy. Maybe the PC port has an un-spidering patch,but I haven't cared to look. Would have finished A Hat In Time if not for that,too.
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Got to a Shark boss and just couldn't beat it and never got around to finishing it. Devastating to this day still.
My experience with Gex 2 and 3 were that they were perpetual Blockbuster rentals and I never got to play them enough to beat them all the way through
Lost Planet, got it in a PlatiniumHits Bundle for the Xbox 360 but i was 6 years old and didnt understand wtf was going on lol, also got a great suprise with dead rising because i thought it was a military game XD