I have recently been playing through an old game that i used to love when i was younger and that game is non other than the original Rayman.

Playing through this game again reminded me how challenging it was and how BEAST we were back then because you actually had to be good. Not only was it challenging but EVERY life counted when playing. They didn't just give you infinite lives.

Another challenging game was the original Crash Bandicoot.

This was another hard game, but to be fair, i didn't like the save system in this game and the controls weren't as good as they were in Crash 2 and 3.

Whatever happened to challenging platformers like these? Are there any platformers today that are challenging like these? What is the most recent platformer you've played that provided that challenge factor? 

Also, has any of you beat the original Rayman or Crash Bandicoot? I have to give credit to the people that have actually beat these games without any cheats.

While the game itself was rather normal/easy, I'd say the Chest and Final Stage sequences in Rayman: Origins were absolutely superb.

Also, Super Meat Boy was very good in terms of challenging platformer, although a bit unforgiving at times.

Have you played Super Meat Boy or 1001 spikes? :)

You should play Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze then!

And btw Crash 2 and 3 where incredibly easy. The only difficult one was the first one, and that was because the save system sucked.

most challenging platformers these days are challenging but will give you almost infinite lives or they have randomly generated levels in some way. If you want something like that I'd suggest Super Meat Boy for the former and Cloudberry Kingdom for the latter.

Have you played the recent DKC games? some of the levels are just brutal!

Yep those are not easy games when playing solo, you can add super luigi U to that lists as well.

Platformers used to be hard because we used to suck.

Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze are really hard.
You should try them out!

Recommend these.... some of the best 2D platformers around. Indies have some hard platformers such as Cloudberry Kingdom :)