We ranked the 100 hardest video-game levels of all time
Not all video-game levels are created easily.Video games are natural predators. In the earliest incarnation of the art — the arcade cabinets scattered across movie-theater lobbies and dentist waiting rooms in the ’70s and ’80s — you’d exchange a quarter for three lives and a dream.
The modern home console-based games industry is almost unrecognizable compared to those early days. Extra lives are no longer stingily meted out between checkpoints, an easy mode is usually only a toggle away, and generally speaking publishers are more interested in immersing us in a story rather than humbling us with our inadequacies. And yet, even now, gamers have a grudging appreciation for a really tough level.
There are so many different ways to create a hard level. This list contains resource-draining RPG grinds, uncompromising tactical grids, mind-melting adventure-game puzzles, and the sort of quicksilver, arcade-y gauntlets that require a speedrunner’s acumen. We only looked at console and/or PC games released in the U.S. — meaning no arcade games and no mobile-first games — and we created a few rules to guide our selections:As game styles evolve, so do level styles.
In general, we attempted to weigh a given level’s difficulty relative to the rest of the game and relative to other games in its genre. Each level’s difficulty was considered in the context of when the game was released —— since subsequent accumulation of knowledge, online resources, simplified rereleases, and better technology have made some of these stages more manageable over time.
Preference was given to levels that are honorable with their difficulty; a good, satisfying hard, rather than “Are we sure this isn’t a bug?” hard. This was tougher to suss out when reflecting on gaming’s Cretaceous period, specifically the death traps that tormented us on the NES. Isgame? That’s a question we could spend another 20,000 words trying to answer. Enjoy the list, and please tread carefully and stay hydrated if you tackle any of these levels yourself.
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