Man where do you live! I could use $50, make it $75 and ill do it without using a continue
Actually i could do that too for the $50, since i got pretty good at racking up mad extra lives from kicking the birds in level 2, from last months battletoads competition on here lol.

(BTW see my Sig) this game is tough but once you "learn" it, it aint so bad. And tons of fun!

Also im very surprised all the praise bayou billy and battletoads gets in these "hardest games" threads. Makes me feel good as i just beat both of those this year already, and never had before.

When i set out to beat them, it wasnt because i wanted to "be the man" even tho i am he heh he heh j/k
But because i set on a quest to beat the games i either
A.) Owned as a kid
B.) Had family that owned them and i remember playing them all the time.

It just so happened i owned battletoads when i was little, and had an uncle that had bayou billy. So i had very fond memories of playing both.

For anyone wanting to tackle these games i wrote up some nice walkthroughs on both

Bayou Billy
http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/...

Toads (see my Signature below) This game takes a lot of memorization, but once you got it, you got it. Kinda like riding a bike. (i know Stan is real good at this game too). Its not for everyone, just the hyperactive adrenaline rushed guys Ive always been a hyperactive kinda guy since grade school, fit me perfect to get the game as a kid, and then to later come back to it and beat it lol.

If i had to rate them i would say battletoads is harder and takes longer, however i can beat toads way more consistently then bayou billy. Bayou took less then a week of playing a couple hours every night or so, but man the games mechanics are pretty wack, so it takes mad timing and patience for some things.

Overall 2 of my favorite games for the NES !

I didnt think Star Voyageur was too bad once you got past the initial learning curve. It took some time to figure out how to navigate and do the space battles. Once you figure out the combat each fight is identical though so its just going through the motions.

We should come to consensus on the top 5 or so most difficult NES games, then anyone who beats them (with proof) should get a badge/plaque.

I think glitches that break the game should be disallowed personally.

It's difficult for me to believe that anyone has done it legit without a turbo controller, you just can't dodge the ghosts fast enough without autofire.

Parpunk, thank you for that mini guide! I take some pride (like most of you guys I'm sure) that I've beaten some of the hardest games on the nes.  But Bayou Billy just eludes me...I'm going to give your tips a try and hopefully I'll clear it. I'm loving this topic. ^>^

Snake Rattle n Roll just has an insane difficulty curve.  The first 3 levels are cake.  4 is kinda tough, same as 5.  6 is tricky.  7 is a real bastard of a level, the timing on the waterspouts to advance upward is a real killer.  Level 8 is probably the easiest in the game, but then 9 and 10, yeesh.  I'm not saying it's top 10 (or even 20) material, but it's a legitimately tough game.  The last level is absolute hell as well, having to stick on the boss and wear your thumb out trying to get enough consecutive hits, throwing in the lack of any gravity on the level and the one hit kill meteors rolling around. 

Ah! Just remembered I sold my copy of Bayou. Bummer.

Hey bro i have a dupe of bayou billy, send me a transaction. you pay the shipping and promise to try and beat it and its yours buddy :-)

BTW great game! Just remember to keep constantly moving while fighting the baddies, and at the end jump kick the crap out of gordon and the guards. (if you lose the whip) if you have the whip beat down gordon (easy) and then make a circle motion and bash the guards in a timely method. 

It shows how subjective difficulty can be. If you had asked me a few years ago if Contra was do-able without the Konami code, I would have said maybe, based on how difficult I found it as a teenager. After loading it up last year for the first time in 20 years, and completing the game with only three lives after a few days of practice, I would hardly call the game difficult at all. I only died in the last part of the final level because it was my first time getting that far after playing through the earlier parts many times. I could easily see myself no-deathing it if I tried.

I just noticed that Gyruss is on that electric frankfurter list. How did that happen? It is one of the easiest games I have ever played. I could literally play it forever, as the game doesn't increase in difficulty after you loop it.

I'd love to put together a new "hardest NES games to beat" list. Some thoughts:

1. Any game which doesn't have an actual ending shouldn't be eligible. I know we have a list of what constitutes beating a game for the NES completions thread, but technically those games aren't beatable. So not being able to loop a game shouldn't matter if there's no end.

2. I'd say almost any game with a password/save system wouldn't qualify, since you can beat them with enough time. Time consuming doesn't equal difficulty, or Bases Loaded and other sports games would dominate the list.

3. I'd assume that the player has access to FAQs, maps, and anything else that could help them. Sure, Gauntlet is extremely hard without that, but it's simple to just look up the code for the last world. The gameplay of Gauntlet wouldn't qualify it, whereas there's no way to look up how to beat something like Starship Hector. Also, if you've played a game before, it's hard to put yourselves back in the shoes of someone who's unfamiliar with it.

4. Expanding on point 3, games should be judged on how hard they are once you know what you're doing. Familiarizing yourself with the game shouldn't be part of the difficulty. I know I don't have the patience to learn Koei games, but that has nothing to do with their actual difficulty to beat.

Except game genie, etc?  I like these four things you pointed out.

Another game that gave me trouble was Rampart.  Anyone else play this?  I was able to beat the easiest setting my first try, medium took quite a bit more effort, and after a few days of attempts I gave up trying to beat it on hard mode.  It's been a while though, maybe I'll revisit it soon.

Game Genie would be cheating, so no, that wouldn't count. Glitches are fine, since they're part of the normal game. For example, there's a glitch in Ghoul School which makes you invincible for the entire game. Makes the game a breeze.

Rampart wasn't too bad on easy. Oh yeah, that's another good point. Games with an easy mode wouldn't make the list either, since they make it simple to get to the end (yes, I'm aware that a couple of games don't allow you to truly beat them on easy - Double Dragon 2, Dracula).

I disagree with the password/save system. Alot of games have continues, which is basically the same thing.

And a few of the hardest games I've played have these features, I'm not sure if it matters.

Say for example

Game A. 9 out of 10 levels are easy, but the last is impossible, still makes it a hard game, and not an easy one. No save or password system however.

Game B. 10 out of 10 levels are hard, but it has a save or password feature.

Game B is harder to me.

Contra definitely doesn't deserve to be on the hardest game list. As much as I love it you can beat the game in like 15 minutes if you just keep spread. That gun is so over powered. I think Battletoads is worthy, but only if you go through without warps. Ghosts N Goblins was always a game I found unnecessarily difficult.

I'd be down for contributing. I think there are enough of us on the completion thread that have over 100 NES games under our belts, so we have the resources to get a list going again. There's going to be some subjectivity, for sure, due to the many factors that can cause difficulty - games with a hard or one-shot final level, games with moderate difficulty but very few lives, games with mind-numbing spots but infinite continues to push through, etc.

Regarding Gyruss, I always found the Jupiter boss to be irritating, and I never felt comfortable enough with the final boss to call him a pushover either. Still, I found that a surprising inclusion, too... that, and Castlequest. It's nearly inscrutable, yes, but I made it about 2/3rds of the way through without a guide, partly because there's a suspicious chain of doors early on that require a ton of rare keys, which served as a bottleneck through which an astute player could squeeze, and then get stuck in the rest of the castle waiting to stumble upon the princess room. I think that most anyone who *has* beaten it has probably used Game Genie for infinite keys to map things out, and then gone from there... or else used ASchultz's guide, which was created using said means.

I remember reading that AdamL found Rampart to be brutal on its highest difficulty. I feel like higher difficulty levels should be considered in this, perhaps, but not "second quests" (i.e. modes opened after a first playthrough). We'll have to get a group together to come to a consensus on these things, though.

I've beaten this game without too much trouble. Wouldn't put it in my top 30 list.

Burai Fighter and Isolated Warrior have password systems but these game are both in my top 20 (I can only speak for games I've played myself). 
Ghosts 'N Goblins doesn't have passwords but it does have unlimited continues. It's basically the same thing as long as you don't turn off your NES.

Necropost here, but I beat Ghostbusters today without turbo. Now, I may or may not have triggered the stairwell glitch -- I'm not sure, but I certainly didn't do so deliberately.

The problem is that the glitch is triggered in the course of normal gameplay actions, plus you don't have any direct evidence of whether or not you've triggered it since you have no HUD to tell you when you're on your last hit point (and the hit/damage detection in this game is weird -- it sometimes seems like you regenerate partial ghost damage over time). It's not associated with any one door, but simply with the act of opening a door and getting a ghost when you're on your last bit of health.

So you can't really avoid the glitch without refusing to open doors, which isn't a viable strategy since they have important health items -- though as it turned out, on my winning run I got three ghosts in a row, and stopped opening doors after that.

In any event I put myself in the best possible position to win by grinding until I got the Sound Generator and Anti-Ghost Suit, and with the Sound Generator I was mostly able to avoid the slower-moving ghosts. I took a few hits, but not a ridiculous number.

I'm not sure that anyone's really summed up the optimal strategy for Ghostbusters -- for instance, the fact that the ghosts you stop by driving over them in the map screen are the same ghosts you suck up with the Ghost Vacuum, so you can slow down the increase in the PK meter by targeting them.

 

Unrelated to the Ghostbusters discussion but Arkanoid is often times left off of most challenging lists. It's no joke.

Arkanoid was a top contender back in 2010 when we were play-testing the hardest 30 games on the system. In the end it was excluded from the list since the Vaus controller was required to have a legitimate chance of beating it. Prior to it's rejection, I was going to rank it 2nd hardest on the system after Ikari Warriors.

Are you saying that Arkanoid with the Vaus controller is not in the Top 30 hardest NES games?  Or that it was not included for consideration for your list at all?
 

He's likely talking about the Top 30 Hardest NES games list from 2011 by The Electric Frankfurter, username StanJr here on NintendoAge. The list was supposed to be a community effort on NintendoAge to rate the definite hardest NES game list, but most users backed out because it probably was simply too demanding and time-consuming. You had to play 5 hours of at least 50 games to qualify your list, I think. I think in the end it was only StanJr and possibly another guy who compiled the list. 

Here's a quote from the comment section. 
"Arkanoid got ruled out early because of the Vaus controller (I thought I mentioned that somewhere). You MUST have the Vaus to beat the game and even then it is next to impossible."

I know the thread's still exists back then when they were nominating and rating, but I'm too lazy to find it right now. 

I don't know why the need for a vaus controller has to disqualify it. I agree its impossible without the vaus controller, but its probably a top contender with it too, so why not. 

The list really came out quite well all things considered, even if there are a few games that don't really belong (Star Voyager, Double Dragon III, Overlord) and a few notable absences (Arkanoid, The Last Starfighter, Star Force).

Finding out the continue code in Solomon's Key is legit (included on a poster with the game) also changes things a bit.