I think I asked Tom Votava one time, if there was any NES game that gave him trouble,  I think he said Bayou Billy. 

If you know who Tom is, and how good he is, then, you know that's significant.

Edit...Now that I think more about this, I think it was just an old thread on TG, and not something I asked Tom personally, but I'm sure he mentioned Bayou Billy

Does anyone have a link to where everyone originally voted for the games to be incuded, (before the actual testing)? 

Whatever happened to the list made back in 2010?

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

We had a real good discussion going on in that thread.

With Ikari Warriors (without the cheat code), you're lucky if you can even get out of the first level!

I brought this up in another list. But Kung Fu Heroes single player (Super Chinese/Famicom) is more difficult than a sizable portion of that top 30 list.

It has what I would say the upper tier of difficult games has. (Random spawns, which can instant death)
It also has
-Limited Lives
-Awkward hit detection
-Items you have to collect to finish the game.
-Awkward controls for certain moves.

It was featured in a Game Center CX video

http://en.channel.pandora.tv/chan...

That was the only way that I managed to beat it and it was still a major pain since when you die, you restart at the last checkpoint instead of in the exact same spot. I've never played Ikari Warriors or Silver Surfer so Battletoads gets my vote.

Amen to that! The one thing that saves that game from complete unplayability are the tanks. The levels go by much more smoothly when you get in one, but a single stray explosion is practically enough to kill a run. I say this as an Ikari novice, though, and hopefully I'll be able to knock it out without ABBA some time in the next few months. Hopefully.

I've never seen Kung Fu Heroes nominated for a list like this... now I'm curious. I haven't heard of Tom Votava before, either...

Do you pay for the plane ticket? :-)

Ikari Warriors is very hard , the controls kinda suck so that makes the game a bit harder.

Bayou Billy is also one that's one big pain in the ass

I think there is a difference between a game being hard because the controls / game mechanics / glitches make it hard (ie: Bayou Billy, Deadly Towers) and a game that has levels that are designed to beat your ass (Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads).

Deadly Towers is just a garbage game with horrid controls and terrible level design that make it hard.

Battletoads is custom designed to destroy you. I've never, ever finished the jet-ski level.

Then there is Ghosts 'n Goblins...

I stand by what I said, $50 to any person who can beat it in front of me.  Someone posting a video on youtube of them beating the game on an emulator with warps to skip some of the hardest parts doesn't qualify.

The controls are pretty staight forward in Deadly Towers, not sure what about that makes it hard.   If there are glitches that make it hard, I would love to hear about them. 

I played it on a real nes and skipped a few levels. If i wanted to i could beat those also. (there not hard at all.)
There was a  battletoads contest a few years back on a convention.
If you could beat the game you would win a custom battletoads nes.
Believe me i would walk away with that custom nes.

Bayou billy is hard and nintendo knew it.

In the nintendo tv show Captain N :The Game Master  Captain N (kevin) has 1 game he can not beat and that's bayou billy.

'' That game is my bayou billy "

I can assure you it's beatable, I beat it several times without using any warps or continues about 5 years ago.  I know for a fact if I practiced it again I could sit down and beat it regularly.  Battletoads, if anything is overrated in difficulty.

I find games like Bayou Billy to be much harder, mostly because of shitty game design and implementation.  Battletoads is hard, but it doesn't suffer from ass awful controls and hit detection like some of these other games.

Ok. There seems to be a few claiming battletoads as beatable. But it is irrefutable that Elevator Action is impossible.

^ Elkovsky beat Elevator Action, for the NA thread, so I'd ask him how hard he considers it to be?

At the very least, it's not "Impossible"

Has anyone legitimately beat Ghostbusters without a turbo controller?

I beat it without a turbo controller, but I used the door glitch in the stairwell, so I'm not sure if you'd count it.  I will say that after numerous attempts at it, my thumbs were extremely relieved.

One game that I'd nominate is Star Force. I've gotten about halfway through the game using a turbo controller and that seriously stretched my gaming abilities to the limit. I'd put it above Silver Surfer any day.

My god Bayou Billy and Ikari Warriors take the cake for me (or is it FROM me, lol). At least you're given a chance in Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden through sheer iron will (and memorization). Billy and the Warriors are just cheap to me. (Trust me I like Bayou on paper, but the implementation is...just, wow).

Hell, I even had fits of rage after (finally) beating Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It took at least 30 tries to put Judge Doom to rest (spraying him with the dip hose was my main gripe). That top 30 list was actually quite a nice list. Surprised by a few entries. Notably Star Voyager and Snake Rattle and Roll. ^>^

I think I've heard Star Soldier mentioned as pretty tough, of the two which is tougher, Star Soldier, Star Force? 

Neither made the list.

I remember doing that, I never submitted my list and have since lost it.    Pretty sure I had Ikari Warriors in the top 3 though.  I remember having to buy Conan just so I could give it a playthrough.

Star Voyager definitely deserves it's spot.  I think I beat one mothership, but that was it.  Definitely deserves to be on the list somewhere.  Snake Rattle 'n Roll though, that had no business being there, but it was nominated and didn't get too many objections, so it was in our play pool.  Figured it wouldn't make the cut in the end though.

You got the cash to back that up?  I'll do it no continues even.

In terms of difficulty, Elevator Action is #1 on my personal list, limiting it to games I've beaten (146 "officially," with seven of those "provisionally beaten" and requiring a revisit). The insane lengths of planning I had to take to beat a ten-minute game is ludicrous, and level 5 - the first level after the "loop point" - might as well be a killscreen. There are some arcane details that, when learned, make the game more manageable, and I've got a mostly-finished guide on my computer that I'll get around to submitting to GameFAQs some day, which details a lot of these.

Keep in mind, by the way, that other games on my "beaten" list include Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Battletoads, and the oft-overlooked Q*Bert; for Q*Bert, I had to transcribe the enemy spawn patterns, which are fixed for each level, in order to reliably take out Sam in the later stages. My guide for that game is up on GameFAQs, complete with spawn patterns, for anyone who wishes to have a fighting chance of finishing world 9-4.

It's probably fair to say that the factors that make a game difficult could have a significant effect on how that game's difficulty is perceived. Battletoads requires a lot of precise timing but doesn't have a lot of heavily "random" elements, and is relatively generous on lives compared to, say, Elevator Action. In games like Gradius and Bayou Billy, possession of a certain item/ability/power makes the game go down much smoothly, but losing it is almost as bad as getting a game over. In Bayou Billy, the last three beat-em-up segments are made much easier by obtaining and keeping the whip and the bullet-proof vest, which is why I don't find the game to be quite as rough as some of the other titles mentioned. And, of course, control issues can ratchet up a game's difficulty in a heartbeat, as is *definitely* the case in Ikari Warriors.

There are also those games that are manageable enough except for one freaking level - the last level of 1942, the final level of Back to the Future, the final level of Bad Street Brawler. Those white butt-spinning guys from Bad Street Brawler can go jump off a cliff.

Also, I'm curious as to thoughts on the list linked to below. I love where they place Ikari Warriors.