Hardest SNES Games Nobody Could Beat

For no reason at all, I love to punish myself with exceedingly difficult games. I tend to forgo joyful romps and low-cortisol cooking games for brutal, hair-pulling titles that get my heart rate rising. While there are a slew of difficult games available for all types of consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) seems to have a few borderline infamous ones known for ruining gaming experiences and putting 90s kids and adults alike in a very bad mood.

Many older titles’ intense difficulty is due to external factors often involving money. Gaming manufacturers made rentable games extremely tough to stretch their playthrough length. The difficulty prevented players from beating games in the span of a weekend, which meant once their rental had expired, they’d need to rent again, or buy the cartridge for themselves. This method got players hooked on the adrenaline of trying to beat the impossible, inadvertently putting money into game developers’ pockets. Forget Soulslike titles or even Cuphead. These games might just be the worst of the worst. In no specific order, here are some of the hardest SNES games that seemingly nobody could beat.

Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts

No Hand-Holding Here

Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts was released for the SNES back in 1991. As it stands today, the game is one of the hardest around. I’m talking “throwing the controller across the room” frustrating. This Capcom title is a side-scroller centered around Arthur, a brave knight who must rescue Princess Guinevere from the clutches of Emperor Sardius.

Many point to the jump mechanic as frustrating simply because it is impossible to master. Once players jump, they’re locked into an arc and can’t change course, meaning if an enemy suddenly decides to cross Arthur’s path mid-jump, it’ll collide with him no matter what. A double-jump mechanic was introduced, but that didn’t seem to save players any grief.

The health system isn’t easygoing either. Once Arthur is struck, he loses his armor, leaving him in his undies. A second hit kills the brave knight, turning him into a skeleton, causing players to lose a life. This is a way less forgiving system than your standard decremental health bar per hit.

Through grit, determination, and likely lots of tears, once players reach the final boss, Emperor Sardius, the nightmare is not over. Far from it. Getting to this point likely took weeks upon weeks, a monumental victory, but instead of congratulating players on their accomplishments, they are told they must replay the game from the very beginning to obtain a weapon strong enough to defeat Sardius. This is a mandatory step, given that the item needed to successfully kill the Emperor, the Goddess Bracelet, is only available via a second playthrough.

The Lion King

The Monkeys Will Betray You

The Lion King game essentially follows the story of the animated movie, with slight tweaks here and there. Many claim that the hardest part of Westwood Studios’ 1994 game based on the Disney flick was the second level, titled “Can’t Wait to Be King”. The infamous monkey puzzle awaits just beyond what looks like a platform traversal across giraffe heads. It seems simple, but stay with me. Once you jump on the animals’ heads—which you’ll have to time perfectly, by the way—you reach a group of monkeys meant to pass you around on a tree.

Simba must roar at these monkeys hanging from branches on a tree to change their direction so they can throw Simba over one of the taller giraffes. Specific monkeys wouldn’t react to the roar mechanic, while others would. Hit boxes and awkward timing caused this section to drag on and on and on. Many 90s kids rage-quit during this level, learning to accept defeat before it swallowed them whole.

Others pointed to later-game levels that were equally difficult, namely the lava sections plagued with swarms of bats or the “Elephant Graveyard” level featuring annoying hyenas and bone traps that stop players in their tracks.

The co-founder of Westwood Studios, Louis Castle, confirmed in an interview that Disney’s market analytics indicated that players who finished a large portion of the game during a single rental were significantly less likely to purchase the full game after their rental ended. With this in mind, developers were told to alter the game late into production, making portions much harder and others less so. This was done so that Disney could secure sales. 90s kids couldn’t finish the game on a rental schedule, typically 6 to 8 hours, so they begged their parents to buy the full game so they could finally taste victory on their own terms.

Contra 3: The Alien Wars

Brain-Breaking Controls & Impossible Death Penalties

Contra 3: The Alien Wars is one of those games that will destroy players if they aren’t prepared. I went in with an open mind many years ago and was beaten down so badly that I never picked up the controller again. True story. The game’s plot is rather simple, and similar to the other games in the franchise. The run-and-gun action centers around a massive alien invasion in the year 2636 AD. Players must pilot an elite commando tasked with saving mankind from those nasty aliens.

Contra as a series is famously hard, what with its one-hit kill system and the insane enemy waves, but Contra 3: The Alien Wars is a special kind of evil. Levels two and five are especially difficult for me because of the top-down perspective change. Navigating the camera switch while constantly being on the lookout for projectiles while trying to destroy enemy bunkers was insanely hard for younger me, and would likely break my brain as an adult too. During these levels, the character sprite faces forward while players pilot them using the L and R shoulder buttons, which rotate the entire world around you. This mechanic alone was enough to give me a headache.

My least favorite part about this title, and why it was so hard, in my opinion, was the punishing death penalty. Once players eventually (inevitably) die, they will lose all of their equipped artillery in their active slots, including smart bombs. This leaves players wholly unequipped to take on the level again, stripping them bare of all the weapons they might need to progress.

Battletoads In Battlemaniacs

A Whirlwind Ride Without Any Breaks

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is all about trial and error, which is not something most people are looking for in their gaming experiences. The title is multi-genre, which seems to be the crux of all of the problems pointed out. The game is all about being strategic with resources and learning multiple control schemes to master specific situations the game will throw at you willy-nilly.

Think of this toad-themed game like a punishing gauntlet of sorts. The plot is virtually irrelevant to the gameplay, but, in short, the story follows Rash and Pimple, space toads in a virtual world called The Gamescape tasked with saving fellow toad Zitz from the Dark Queen. Why all the toads are named after skin conditions is still a wonder to me.

One minute, players will be in a beat ’em up-style brawl, mashing buttons for their lives, and the next, they’re thrown into a tunnel racing level where they must focus on avoiding obstacles. Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is hard because it forces players to adapt on the fly and disrupts their muscle memory with multiple genres. The game’s difficulty is only amped up when players realize they only have a set number of lives that begin to dwindle rather quickly, especially on those obstacle-avoiding stages where colliding with a wall causes instant death.

The 7th Saga

A Localization Oopsie That Made A Good Game Bad

The 7th Saga is pretty infamous, mainly for its broken difficulty. This turn-based RPG, which was released in 1993, allows players to choose one of seven warriors to play as in search of runes said to contain exceptional power. The other six warriors who players don’t choose immediately become your opposition in search of these runes, helping or hurting you along your journey. Beyond its difficulty, this game is praised for its breathtaking visuals, great soundtrack, and variety of unique playable characters.

The Japanese version of this title, called Elnard, wasn’t labeled as particularly difficult, so why is the North American version so punishing? During localization, the game was mistakenly made drastically harder than the Japanese release. This incident became one of the most striking cases of a balancing mishap in JRPG history.

In the US version, stat growth was reduced for player characters, while rival characters and enemies encountered did not share this reduction. It was a huge mathematical misstep. In short, enemies and rivals ended up being way more powerful than player characters, creating a severe disadvantage. This made the game almost literally unbeatable, no matter how hard players may try.

Hagane: The Final Conflict

Crazy Crowded Controls Make Gameplay Difficult

Hagane: The Final Conflict is an action platformer developed by CAProduction. The game is known for being extremely hard to procure, going for thousands of dollars on resale sites, and extremely difficult to play thanks to its complicated controls and combat. Plot-wise, the futuristic game centers around two beefing ninja clans engaged in an all-out war. The Koma clan attacks the Fuma clan, snagging an all-powerful relic in the process. In the Koma clan’s wake, the Fuma clan is virtually wiped out, save for a wounded warrior named Hagane. Set on getting revenge, Hagane’s broken body and mind are transferred into a ninja robot body.

Revenge plots aside, many feel this game is exceedingly difficult because cyborg Hagane has an extremely complex move set that, for the uninitiated, can be very challenging to master. Thrown into a chaotic, fast-paced platforming world with mini-bosses around every corner, players are expected to fight off enemies with an array of weapons that require swapping through while performing moves like wall jumps or directional air-dashes.

Weapons like kunai or grenades feature directional limitations that must be thrown just right, and aerial moves require precision to pull off. It’s a lot to put on anyone’s plate, especially first-timers. Players often feel like they’re overwhelmed with it all, mashing buttons at random to clear a stage. Hagane: The Final Conflict offers little to no direction for said controls, given there is no in-game tutorial that teaches players how to navigate every move set. In short, the title has a lot going on, with little instruction.

Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Hoth Is An Icy Hellscape

There are three games in the Super Star Wars series, and all of them are pretty hard. However, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back seems to be a standout amongst players as the most difficult. This 1993 side-scrolling title is based on the events of the 1980 film of the same name, with tweaks made to make the story more run-and-gun friendly. Essentially, the title consists of massive waves of enemies in familiar locations like Hoth and Dagobah that players are tasked with fighting off. Players can choose to play as either Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, or Chewbacca.

This game makes you work hard for progress, with waves of enemies coming at you non-stop. Hoth is especially difficult and serves as the setting for most of the early game. The icy wasteland is extremely slippery, and players can go sliding into holes and enemies at random. This, coupled with arbitrary off-screen traps that can and will deal hefty damage, even on easy mode, is a nightmare. All its faults aside, this game does have some great music and a beautiful atmosphere that is a major upgrade on the other two games in the trilogy.

Once players manage to work their way through this painful romp to the end, they’re faced with an exceptionally difficult Darth Vader fight plagued by tight corners and strict resource management. In general, bosses in Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back are all quite difficult, largely due to their seemingly infinite health. Many players warned that the only way to beat this game without ripping hair out was with cheats, which seemed to ease the difficulty a bit.