What were some of the games that you played that caused you to repeatedly launch your controller across the room, and likewise scream in terror because the game was just way too hard to beat.  Using cheats or unlockables does not count.  Using in game continues such as with Viewtiful Joe is O.K.

 Any console or platform; sky is the limit here so long as it was an "unbeatable game"

Some of the ones I played and could not beat:

Battletoads NES

X-men Arcades Revenge SNES

Batman Returns SNES

Blaster Master (I could only beat this game using the bomb/repeated pause cheat to defeat certain boses)

Super Smash Bros Melee, No damage clear in very easy... Once I got to the last stage in adventure and got hit once... I¡ve never gotten that near again hehe
that prevented me from getting the last trophy

lately i've been playing shinobi 3 and shinobi legions, and they are frustrating as hell. Trying to get platinum metals on blast corp was probably the hardest thing ever for me.

Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Ikaruga for gamecube was tough, I could only beat it by playing long enough to unlock more continues. That game is impossible hard!

F-zero GX for gamecube was near impossible to beat

Great idea! I love these kind of lists. I predict this list to be NES heavy, with a good concentration of SNES/GENESIS, but very little in the way of recent games.

1. Battle of Olympus (NES): One of my alltime favorite games. BUT . . . Some bosses were REALLY tough. Some stages were filled with ridiculously annoying monsters and/or instant death pits (Crete, Phygiria, I'm looking at YOU). It was an RPG/Adventure game, except the game told you absolutely NOTHING useful about where you should go, or what you should do. Generally, you just wandered around until you [hopefully] killed something, or ran into somebody and got a treasure. What's more, the really GOOD stuff you had to buy in dangerous, remote locations. But you lost like 1/2 your money if you died! [Also, if you continued, you started with 0 money!] It was impossible to save up and hike out to these areas [because you'd fall in a pit and die, or get hit by 15 flying monkey snakes and die] and it was equally impossible to camp out at one of them and earn the money there [see above]. To top it all off, instead of a battery save, you got this asinine password that was 60 characters long (seriously), full of 1's I, 8's B's, 6's G's, etc, etc. [You can guess how many of THOSE were miscopied!]

2. Castlevania I (NES): Pretty much unbeatable, I mean really.

3. Ghosts & Goblins (NES): This WAS unbeatable, therefore, it didn't see as much play.

4. AD&D Dragonlance: This game was unbeatable because it was unplayable. You could freely switch between 8 different heroes (Ranger, Mage, Fighter, etc), which was nice because you could watch them ALL fall into that pit, about 60 seconds into the game, and DIE 8 different times.

5. ANY Gradius/Lifeforce game, period.

6. Destination Earthstar (NES): This game was freakin' SWEET! It was like a sci-fi spaceship simulator/dogfighter AND shooter, all on the NES! (The dogfighting and flight sim was esp cool, with various cool weapons and the ability to orbit/refeul/capture planets.) Too bad the shooter levels just got TOO difficult for you to progress through the much more rewarding flight levels.

7. Top Gun (NES): One of the only cool liscensed games, ever, but tough as hell in the later levels, not to mention that you could often get yourself killed just LANDING your plane after a mission!

8. Wizards & Warriors II (NES): What were you supposed to do in this game? Oh yeah, fall ALL THE WAY down a cliff face/giant tree and die.

9. Gauntlet (NES): This might have been Gauntlet II, I can't remember exactly, but boy, 99 levels, no save system [that I remember], ever increasing hordes of monsters, ever DECREASING lifebar, why, that should be EASY, right?

10. Castlevania II (NES): Ok, I DID beat this game, BUT it took me YEARS. This was before the era of internet faqs, or even, for the most part, strategy guides. It was always one of my favorite games, but I could never find the damned EYEBALL!!! [Until I found the "secret" in one of those old paperback "Hint Books" that used to be as thick as the yellowpages and have like 2 paragraphs each for X,000 games]. The frustration alone makes it listworthy, but it wasn't a HARD game.

Hmmm, maybe I'm dating myself with my NES prediction, but seriously, you young whippersnappers have NO IDEA how hard those games were! [GAME X] on Gamecube? Pfah! Why, in my day, we had to use BOTH controllers to beat some games! [Yes, we did.]

hum I would have to say geometry war on XBLA but is there really an end to that game ???

I'd say street fighter on XBLA but it's because the gameplay is crazy

other than that I pretty much always beat the game or didn't bother diong it because I didn't like the game.....

great list!  I have fond memories of beating Castlevania (the original on NES) and Ghost and Goblins (original on NES, both were hard beyond imagination, took much practice, trial and error, and a bit of luck!

Top gun was ridiculously studpid and hard; yet somehow kept compelling you to come back for more.  I hated that frick'n landing your plane level; ARRGGGGGHHHH!!!!

I never passed the first level of Wizards and Warriors II.  No clue what to do in that game.

I had a friend who almost beat Gaunlet, got to the very last level only to fall into a pit with the first step he took (which if I remember right warped him backwards quite a bit)

I never beat Battle of Olympus or Crysallis, I played Crysallis without a guide, and would get so far and there would be so much backtracking that I would have no idea what I was supposed to do next.

Thinking about all these NES games reminds me of another one that I could never beat, R.C. Pro Am.  Fun game, needs to come out on V.C., but never could beat it.