I actually beat Dragon's Lair. Two things got me through it.
1) Cash that my old man gave me whilst his "friend" was visiting
2) A magazine that had published every move for each of the (was it 20?) rooms

Great thread. The "qwop" video is brilliant

Definitely I Wanne be the Guy. Think it took me hours before I was even able to pass the first screen.

What's the toughest strategy game?

Yeah. Remembering that game brought back the mindset and feelings of running out of quarters AGAIN! Ah, ain't I glad I survived and grew up into such an even-keeled adult type person!
I hate you and want to hurt your face, you stupid penguin.

Solomon's Key.

Let's see: You have the ability to create and destroy blocks, which you must use to solve puzzles. These puzzles consist of a room, where you have to first get a key, and then get to a door to get to the next level.
Sounds easy? Well, there's of course also a time limit. Still doable though. But did I mention the hordes of enemies, that one-hit kill you? And the only way to defend yourself against them is to use a fireball, which you have to pick up in every level, but when you use it, it's gone? And you can only carry three of them at a time?
Well, it doesn't matter, because all the enemies respawn, yo it's not like you really gain anything by killing them.
To recap: You have to solve a puzzle in a time limit (I think it's 99 seconds, can't remember) while being chased by almost unkillable monsters, who kill you when you touch them. Of course, you only have a limited amount of continues, and if you lose all of them, it's back to the start.

Now, even if you should somehow manage to beat it, you still haven't actually beat the game. Because to get 100%, you have to find a ton of hidden stuff in the rooms, that'll take you to bonus levels.


Now the sequel Solomon's Key 2 (Fire 'n ice) is much more forgiving. It focuses entirely on the puzzle element, and there's no action or platforming. The puzzles have a nice difficulty curve, and while it starts very easy, the later levels can be real brainteasers. Except for the boss levels there are no time limits and you can retry every level as often as you want.

It also features probably the first level editor I ever saw in a game. Sadly you can't save those levels, but it's still fun messing around with it and letting friends play your creations.

Definitely an underrated gem, that sadly not even the biggest NES buffs seem to know about.

If it's any consolation - I had a huge crowd of adoring fans surrounding me at the time. However, I was disappointed that I didn't have a street parade.

*Takes a bow*

Dark Souls/Demon Souls aren't that hard at all. People just went bonkers over them because they're more challenging than your usual hard-mode run with 0 deaths these days.

They're pretty average difficulty games.

I don't normally play adventure games...

I probably should have mentioned that I loved the puzzles in La Mulana, what I didn't like was the hard combat, you could die at any moment and the bosses, I couldn't beat any of the bosses so just to see if I could make any progress I cheated through the first two then I just gave up after I came to some dark room where I had to do some insane trial & error to find the way out.

I think my problem is inherent low-self esteem and objective view of my progress. I don't take pride in accomplisments much, very seldomly as I always see an excuse like "it was luck" or "I just used common sense with a bit of patience" but at the same time I don't take losing that much hard either unless of course it's frustrating because I want to make progress in the game in a fairly linear fashion. Now that I think about it optional challenges like achievements in games that I create myself is my favourite kind because then it's my own score I want to beat, not the game because I want to make progress. One of the reasons I played the hell out of Mark of the Ninja. As opposed to La Mulana, the saves were far in the between and the controls were intentionally broken or different to make it harder, I rarely enjoy such ploys.

Speaking of dying in games a lot I just found this pic while looking for something else. It adds nothing to the forum but it made me laugh.

Touhou series of games. They're the type where you look at your little sprite from above while shooting enemy sprites flying ahead and dodging insane amounts of bullets. They're extremely difficult to pass (the hardest difficulty setting is "lunatic" which is actually very accurate), but still manage to be great fun. If you decide to give it a try (and you should), start with no. 6 in the series (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil), that's when they got really good.

I came very close to beating it. Of the two other games in the same "series", Deja Vu was relatively easy while Uninvited is probably the hardest game I've played. I hardly got anywhere, and not due to lack of trying...

E.T. on the Atarai 2600. About five to ten minutes in you realized it took a masochist to keep playing....