Reminds me of how, in Ys 3 SNES, I was trying to take advantage of the fact that most enemies despawn when you save and reload. Unfortunately, I happened to save at the wrong spot when at low health, and when I reloaded, an enemy would spawn on top of me and kill me before I could do anything. Well, I was able to open the menu before I got killed, and could then equip the Shield Ring, which reduced the damage enough for me to not die, so I did manage to save it.

On the other hand, I've seen this sort of thing happen in Final Fantasy Adventure (which also has the problem of puzzles resetting, which, in at least one spot, can get you softlocked).

In Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa 1), I saved after placing the objects on the status, but before fighting the boss, and was not able to defeat the boss. As a result, I had to start over. (The fact that the game only offers 1 save slot did not help here. Also, note that getting lucky is not something that could happen, as the game's RNG is bad and gives the same sequence of random numbers on every load.)

(By the way, Ys: Oath in Felghana avoids this issue by ditching save anywhere; you can only save in specific spots, which also act as healing spots and don't have enemies that will attack you the instant you respawn.)

I remember being kicked out of my friend's house by their parents because of the swearing I was yelling while trying to beat the Iron Clad boss at the Missile Base in FFVIII. Since the internet was harder to access back then it took me a little while before I came across the idea that I had way overlevelled by that point.

Desperados was a pain to beat, lol, I love the game and I have started playing it several times, but I have completed it only once. :)

I probably got stuck many, many times on adventure games for failing to see something that was too easy. But the first one I remember, was playing Maniac Mansion on my C64. There was a grate and a garage door that I could open on some playthroughs and not in others, I couldn't figure out why until a couple of decades later when I was looking at a walkthrough for the different endings and I learned that you needed to use a weight lifting machine to become strong enough to open those things. I never associated one thing with the other, so, back in the 80's, only in the playthroughs where I used the machine (which I thought was useless), I was able to complete the game, lol. :)

When I was 19 or 20 I was not able to play Leisure Suit Larry because I didn't answer correctly enough of the questions that I would prove I was over 18. Questions were probably aimed at American "frat boys" anyway.

For a while I thought that you had to buy the soundtrack to hear the soundtrack in-game.

Well, back in the days of ripped games, there could be some truth in that...

My greatest shame would be embarassing if I was alone, but it was made so much worse because I had an audience.

Back in early 2000s I was with several friends in one friend's house and we were playing SNES's Street Fighter. I think my friend only had one controller available that day because, different from our usual gatherings (where we would 2-play beat the hell out of each other), this time we were playing Story mode. We would each fight one enemy, two or three rounds, and whether win or lose we'd pass the controller to the next player.

It fell to me to take on Balrog (the boxer), which is most of the time a pretty easy adversary. Like expected I wiped the floor with him in the first round: I got a Perfect (zero damage to me, for those who don't know SF2 terminology ). Then the owner of the console pushed a new rule: whoever gets two perfects won't pass the controller.

I start round 2 imagining I will massacre Balrog. And I almost do, but he somewow got a hit on me in the middle of the round. Ok, I push him to the edge, then simply stop attacking. I let him win imagining I can get a perfect in the 3rd round instead.

I have trouble describing what followed. The 3rd round was a totally different fight. He came over to me, attacking nonstop, and easily avoided everything I threw at him. In just a few seconds I wasn't hoping for a second Perfect anymore, it wasn't even possible because I was already at 30% HP. I just wanted to get out of there alive. And even that was denied to me. I was utterly massacred by the most pathetic enemy in the game after letting victory escape me in the 2nd round by choice.

Huh. I never thought Desperados was that hard... ok, there was one section I thought that. There's one mission in a Canyon where you have an extremely tiny window of opportunity to run and kill one enemy after another enemy turns away, and at the same time snipe a third enemy. But other than two or three cases like those it's perfectly manageable, you just have to keep slowly taking them out one at a time.