Nintendo Hard/Rhythm Games


 * The most common recurring complaint people had with Guitar Hero 3 was that it was far more difficult than the preceding games. While the difficulty needed to be steeper than Guitar Hero 2 in order to provide some challenge to the players that had mastered that game, a lot of the songs were just plain unreasonable, with note structures that didn't serve any purpose except to make your life hell. And even if you could handle most of the game, the last set ('Raining Blood', 'Cliffs of Dover', 'Number of the Beast' and 'One', followed by going head to head with the Devil in 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia') went beyond insane. 'Raining Blood' is widely regarded as the hardest (compulsory) song in the series- at least 'Through the Fire & the Flames' is only a bonus track...
 * Outside of the legendarily difficult final tier, seventh-tier song Before I Forget by Slipknot is infamous for its bridge chord progression that, on Expert, goes (GY)(RB)(GY)(RB)(YO)(RB)(GY)(RB) at an eighth note rhythm, then adds in some (RB)(YO)(RB) changes at sixteenth-note rhythm for good measure. For the uninitiated, that basically means your fretting hand would sooner liberate itself from the corresponding arm and desert your body than be subjected to that kind of torture.
 * Even before the bridge, the song is just loaded with "why not?"-style 2- and 3-button chords.
 * Interestingly, Guitar Hero 3 was the first in the Guitar Hero franchise not to be made by the original developers Harmonix, and instead being handed off to Activision's replacement team after Harmonix left to partner with EA. It is possible that in their relative inexperience, they resorted to a certain amount of Fake Difficulty.
 * However, this is somewhat countered by a more generous timing window than the Harmonix games. In the faster sections, the challenge comes in being able to hit (or pull-off to) frets in the correct sequence at that speed, without having to worry so much about the rhythm of it. Good news for masochists though; there's a precision mode which makes the timing window even tighter than the old games!
 * You guys complain about GH3? You should see Guitar Hero Smash Hit's final tier. It's made entirely of Series That One Boss. That means "Freebird", "Raining Blood", "Play With Me", "Psychobilly Freakout", and "Bark At the Moon" are the final tier. Ending in TTFAF. At least GH3 had "Cliffs of Dover" and GH2 had "The Beast and The Harlot".
 * Come to think of it Expert in general is harder than most of the first Mega Man game. Believe T Barb Drills, he's gotten to the Yellow Devil on that game but still can only beat like three easy songs on Expert . To say nothing of any That One Song, which he could barely clear on Hard and are merciless on Expert. TTFAF, Raining Blood, Jordan, TDWDTG, Constant Motion, and Freebird all come to mind.
 * Many guitar players find that several songs (especially power chord heavy and solo-free punk songs by bands like The Ramones) are actually far easier to play on a real guitar than on Guitar Hero/Rock Band on any difficulty above Medium.
 * And should you master that, play TTFAF on Rock Band 3 with the Mustang or (god help you) Squier pro guitars. Shit just got real.
 * The Bit.Trip series of rhythm action games for Wii Ware. Here's the first one, where you control a tiny pong paddle and have to hit hundreds of beats with it. This is the sequel, where you are a + sign in the middle of the screen and you again have to hit hundreds of beats that are flying all around you and switching directions. They are fun, but they WILL make you weep.
 * The third game, despite supposedly being a Breather Game, is also incredibly difficult, being a Bullet Hell game where you have to both hit and dodge bullets at the same time.
 * The fourth game, Runner, a rhythm platformer, is quite possibly harder than all the other games put together. You have to dodge tons of fast obstacles, press buttons crazy fast, and if you get hit once, you go back to the start of the level, even if you are an inch from the finish line. And it will happen over, and over, and over.
 * The sixth game, Flux, is like the first game, only much harder.
 * Dance Dance Revolution features an Oni (or Challenge) mode in which you need to clear several songs in a row, usually accompanied with frantic step charts. Any judgment of "Good" (apparently not good enough) or worse takes away a life. Lose 4 lives and you're dead. There's no temporary invincibility so losing the rhythm for a split second can take you from 4 lives to dead. Most games will give you a single extra life after each level if you're not maxed out (newer US home versions will generously top you off each time). In the arcade versions the reward is that Oni courses are usually longer (and if you have the technical skill they're not quite as bad as they seem).
 * In the Groove 's courses didn't have a life system like Oni, but the courses in that game had tons of modifiers that ensured the incoming arrows did everything but appear normally, flying around in every direction but straight. ITG2 also had a survival mode which provided the player with limited time that constantly wound down, only rewarding extra time for hitting steps with the best possible accuracy (fantastic), and docked more precious time for anything below "Excellent." It's quite easy to hit every single arrow quite accurately and still lose. Since the time is always winding down, one can easily put themselves into an unwinnable situation by not leaving enough time to possibly finish the song even if they do perfectly.
 * The Beatmania IIDX series is known amongst many fans of music-based games for having off-the-scale challenge. Any song that is higher than level 1 will most likely kill a new player. These videos show just how hard this game gets.
 * On top of how hard Beatmania IIDX already is, Bemani decided to add in yet another difficulty level since the game was apparently too easy. Look at Mendes on Black Another to see the a major example of these new stupid hard songs. And Americans think Through the Fire and Flames is tough...
 * Just to put it in perspective, ever hear of Solid State Squad? Fan ranking site with some truly amazing, awesome, incredibly dedicated players. The kind that can AA Nageki No Ki Another without breaking a sweat. Thus far, ONE has cleared Mendes Another, and the highest grade anyone has gotten is B.
 * There are two kinds of fan-made song files for DDR type games: those that aim to simulate DDR, and the rest that are Nintendo hard. Fans who make the latter are the ones devoted enough to the game to be able to play at that level of difficulty. Worse, a lot of DDR song file authors forget that they aren't playing Beatmania; you are totally screwed if you try to use your feet and a dance mat for their songs.
 * DJMAX Portable Black Squares Club Tour mode has some of the most bullshit missions in a Rhythm Game around. At Area 4, which is about halfway through, you get missions that require you to full-combo songs as well as missions where you need 100% accuracy', only one of which is on a level-1 song. Later on, you get missions where you need absurd amounts of points while chaining as many as seven or even eight Guitar Hero-style Limit Breaks, missions that demand very high combos (which are only achievable if you use the aforementioned Limit Break to artifically raise your combo), more missions in which you are a One-Hit-Point Wonder (or, at the very least, "miss less than a single-digit number of notes" missions) on very difficult charts, and missions that combine two of these objectives (all while giving you One Of Those Bosses as the song to do these missions on). So why endure all of this crap? Well, to get into certain clubs and areas so you can unlock songs, you need to increase your rank, and the only way to do so is through these missions!
 * All three of iNis' games in the Ouendan series (1, 2, and Elite Beat Agents) are notable for having extremely hard final songs, even on the easy mode. The sky-rocketing difficulty puts some of the penultimate stages pretty close as well, most notably "Canned Heat" in EBA.
 * It's not the beatmaps themselves that are hard. Compared to other rhythm games, they're actually pretty simple. No, what makes the game Nintendo Hard is the absolutely unforgiving life meter, which penalizes you greatly for missed notes, such that it only takes a few missed notes before you fail out, and even if you manage to survive at first, not only is it really hard to build your meter back up, but you can still fail out later because the meter is always decreasing when you're not hitting notes. Which, by the way, makes it possible to fail even if you are hitting all the notes, unless you're hitting most of them perfectly. Oh, and the final stages? They like to throw a lot of spinners at you, and then have you hit tricky note sequences after the spinners, which tend to make your hand a little shaky for some time afterwards...
 * Pop'n Music is why you DO NOT judge a game's challenge by how mature it looks.
 * You can thank the 9 buttons for that. The reason it has that many buttons was that it was originally meant to be played by two or even three players at once, in particular, a boyfriend and girlfriend on a date. Later, after IIDX really took off (bringing musical danmaku into the mainstream), Konami realized that lots of buttons also made it possible to create truly insane notecharts. Don't worry about it too much; this is just the EX level (which was made specifically for players who wanted a massive challenge). Uhh... there are Hyper charts with difficulty on par with EX charts (some songs don't even have EX charts to begin with).
 * The last Pump It Up with a reasonable difficulty progression was Premiere 3. Now, unless you're in great physical condition and have put in a lot of hours with the game, at least 75% of the Hard stepcharts will absolutely tear your legs off. Please do not get me started on Nightmare.
 * At first, the Rhythm Heaven series looks like it would be relatively simple and in fact seems almost geared towards the kids. Trust us when we say this is one most of the young 'uns should not be playing.