Nintendo Hard/Beat Em Ups


 * Double Dragon on the original NES. Three lives, no 1-Ups, no continues and no way to recharge your energy during a stage. The best code the Game Genie gave this game was upping the lives to nine. The last stage starts with blocks poking out of the wall and causing major damage. (A Nintendo Power cheat said you can walk by unscathed by waiting for one particular block to punch out twice in a row, but you'll drain the timer doing that!) In the final battle, you must battle two of every foe you faced previously before taking on the TWO Big Bads. Get killed by any of them and you have to face all of them again.
 * Definitely unforgiving of mistakes, but it is possible to get to the end without cheat codes. (BTW, you can tweak the 9-lives code to give you over 100 lives.) Willy is a sucker for hair pull kicks, and even the last boss is more tedious than deadly (you actually stand a greater risk of running out of time than getting killed). The problem was those friggin' sliding blocks. Pure dumb luck getting through there in good shape.
 * If you have the patience to exploit the level-up feature long enough, you can get all your techniques in the first level, making the game noticeably easier...at least until you get to the sliding blocks.
 * The arcade version of the second game. The Elbow Punch has been nerfed so you can't elbow-spam your way through the game like the first. And the enemies are bigger, badder, and attack in greater numbers. And there are no 1-ups this time.
 * We'll see your Double Dragon 1 and 2 and raise you Double Dragon 3 for NES. Take everything mentioned above, add much tougher enemy AI, and cut the lives down to ONE. Yeah, it's hard.
 * God Hand. A modern heir to the title of Nintendo Hard. Yes, you have unlimited continues, but this is because you will need them. Starting with the very first stage, the enemies will hand you your own ass--repeatedly. At least it will hand you your ass honestly--God Hand avoids resorting to cheap Fake Difficulty tactics.
 * To illustrate: you can use up at least 20 continues on one level, and still be rewarded bonus points. This means they expected you to die more.
 * To make matters worse, when you do well, you don't level up. The enemies do. Once they've beaten your ass enough, though, it does go back to being easy (if you can call it that).
 * Mazinger Z: A game based on that Humongous Mecha Anime series was released for the SNES. Long stages. One single life. Very sparse recovery items. No 1-Ups. No continues. No password system. No save system. If you die, you have to start again from the beginning. Get fun.
 * Streets of Rage 3. The American release is merciless, with enemies doing insane damage, like you can get killed by the pussiest mooks if you're not paying much attention, and the bosses have millions of health bars (well not really, but like 7). American mode Normal is Japanese's version of Hard as well, so American Hard is Japanese's Very Hard, which has loads of enemies (easy in Japanese version due to aforementioned weak hits). Anyway, you WILL be spamming those special moves whether it cuts health or not, as if you don't, Your screwed.
 * It wasn't as hard as you think, though. Harder, but not impossible. If you want impossible, play its prequel, using the secret "Mania" difficulty level, where every single boss has five full bars of health, even basic mooks will out-priority your attacks and have 3/4 of a full life bar, with rarer enemies sometimes having 2 1/2 - 3 bars of health. You will need to set your lives to nine (also unlocked by the same code) or you probably won't even make it past the first stage unless you're a Beat-Em-Up god, or doing a Tool-Assisted Speedrun.
 * Nah. SOR 3 has bosses with insane amounts of health on hard. The last boss has 9 on two player. Even the weakest guys can nail you for 70% of a bar. They have insane priority and aggression, the Mania mode never changed the damage. Literally 2 mistakes and you're dead. There's a reason so many people avoided it. It's Hard, So It Sucks
 * Xenophage. Egad! If you're used to beating the computer nine games out of ten on the hardest difficulty in One Must Fall, you're in for a nasty surprise when you try Xenophage. Everything about the computer's behaviour makes it difficult, the special moves are practically useless and the final boss has two forms which you have to beat in one round. On the up side, you do have interesting-looking characters to fight and fight with. Still, don't say you weren't warned when the computer hands you your arse.
 * Tiny Toon Adventures: Scary Dreams/Buster's Bad Dream. You can't recover health, large groups of enemies with lots of health and hard to avoid attacks, long levels AND you have to start the levels all over again from the beginning if you die... there is a reason why you have unlimited continues. Don't even get me started on hard mode (Easy is already hard enough as it is!)...
 * Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-zero: Earth God and Prison Warden/Giant. These guys guard, most likely impossible to defeat due to the awkward control style, especially if you played Mortal Kombat Trilogy first before moving to this game. Even though the key to win them is the Move slide, but the awkward controls makes the two bosses impossible. Playing on Medium or above doesn't even help the condition...
 * Asura's Wrath. On easy, you pretty much can never die. On normal, it's a bit easy still, but there are some challenges. Hard mode is even harder, but it's still possible and merely simply challeging to get A ransk and S ranks. What really sends the game into this territory is equipping the Mortal Gauge. good, God. Even on easy, the bosses are capable of killing you in one hit, and it only gets harder the higher your difficulty is, capable of making every boss in the game That One Boss.
 * Executioners: The game is this trope for a number of reasons. First, you have Goddamned Bats with most of the enemies, and the big, muscular Elite Mooks can qualify as Demonic Spiders. Second, there is a certain degree of Trial and Error Gameplay, especially when you have to position yourself so you don't get hit by the boss's Dynamic Entry at the end of some levels. Third, you have 6 lives, and a limited number of continues, like maybe 10. There is no way to adjust the difficulty. Finally, the game has stiff, clunky, and perhaps somewhat unresponsive controls. But then, this was the first game to be sold by two high-school students named Ethan Petty and Icer Addis, so Nintendo Hard is probably to be expected!
 * The Adventures of Bayou Billy was mentioned on Captain N: The Game Master as the only NES game that Kevin was never able to beat. And boy, does it ever live up to that reputation, as The Spoony One will attest.
 * The two huge stumbling blocks: 1. being too aggressive in the driving stages and losing all your lives (if you lose one life to time in each, that's fantastic) and 2. dying in stage 7, thus losing your whip and bulletproof vest. Let me put it more bluntly: You cannot, CAN. NOT. lose your whip and bulletproof vest in stage 7 you're thinking of winning this thing. Strangely enough, if you do retain them, stage 8 isn't that hard, and the last stage is more tedious than anything. You CAN beat the final bosses without taking any damage if you have a whip (although it'll take forever).