Back in the ‘Golden Age’ of gaming – considered the late eighties and early nineties by many -, video games were a difficult endeavor. With no save slots, insta-death, entire campaign resets, and more, completing a game was a huge badge of honor back then, much more than it is these days anyway.
Nowadays it’s all too easy. You can save, glitch, cheat, and more to get the dopamine hit of an end credit screen, but back then, it was difficult. Real difficult. We’re not talking Elden Ring difficulty either. Well, now have a concrete answer for what is the hardest game ever made.
Gaming is Subjective, But This Scoring System Isn’t
New research has revealed what everyone so desperately wanted to know – the hardest and most difficult video games of all time. The top 10 in fact. If you ever take a look at the scoring system on GameFAQs, you’ll notice a trend of games that feature prominently; Soulslikes. From Elden Ring to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s original cult classic Demon Souls, there are a few of them present.
That said, it may be surprising that only one Soulslike actually features in the top ten list below, and that in fact it’s made up of far more archaic and difficult games many of us would long have forgotten.
In the spirit of knowing what gamers are like, if you take a look at the Hardest Games page on GameFAQs, you’ll notice straight away two games at the top not included below. That’s because, like pretty much every Wii game ever, everyone complains about the controls, rather than it being genuinely difficult, so these were excluded. So, discounting the Wii games, the top ten (400+ votes) are as follows:
| RANK | TITLE | AVG. DIFFICULTY (OUT OF 5) |
| 1. | Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins | 4.76 |
| 2. | Battletoads | 4.67 |
| 3. | Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels | 4.64 |
| 4. | Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts | 4.63 |
| 5. | Darkest Dungeon | 4.61 |
| 6. | Super Meat Boy | 4.59 |
| 7. | Ninja Gaiden | 4.56 |
| 8. | Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | 4.50 |
| 9. | Ninja Gaiden III | 4.43 |
| 10. | F-Zero GX | 4.35 |
With Elden Ring being beaten quite considerably (it ranks number 22), and only Sekiro making the top ten, it goes some distance to show how easy us gamers have it nowadays compared to the Golden Age of gaming.
Is Elden Ring and Co. Returning Us to that Sort of Difficulty?
Many gamers these days associate ‘difficulty’ with the Soulslike genre, as already mentioned, and compared to the likes of Battletoads, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, and others, they’re an absolute cakewalk. But if you think back a few years to a time before Elden Ring, Demon Souls, and Dark Souls, the very thought of games being as difficult as they are in this genre would be bonkers. I mean, who wants to play a game that is so hard you get frustrated, angry, annoyed, and more besides?
It turns out, quite a few of us. Each entry in the Soulslike genre is going on leaps and bounds, with each one selling more and more than the last, and that’s before we get the likes of Shadow of the Erdtree or the inevitable Elden Ring 2.
What do you make of the top ten most difficult games of all time? Have you beaten any yourself? Broken a controller or three because of one of them? Let us know in the comments below!
