QFT

 Me and my brother beat it with only 3 lives and no continues. I can beat it with 3 lives with a couple continues. The only thing that made that game hard was when someone moved to fast and killed their teamate. In fact, I can probably still beat it with only 3 lives and a continue or two.

1. Zelda II: The Adventures of Link - Could get to the last palace, but then someone would turn off the nintendo without hitting reset. The only way i ever beat the game was to use a gamegenie to get to the boss before shadow link and then stop using the codes.

2. TMNT II: Played it for years and i never really got that far as i kept on getting run over by the tank in the overworld, or whatever.

3. Castelvania 1 & 2: Never could figure out what to do, the game itself wasn't too hard though.

4 . Adventuers of Lolo 1,2&3 - Incredibly hard puzzle games. I can beat most of them, but the final 10 or so levels are way to hard.

5. Maniac Mansion - Imposible to figure out what they really want you to do with the items. I always ran out of time.

Other than that I think i've beat every game i've played, and a handful of them are even on some of your lists.

Nothing I've been able to defeat, except one game which was too irritating, Stuntman on the PS2. That game was just too hard IMO.

Contra 3 or contra 4

I'm currently working on the sniper part of "The Silo" in Call of Duty 2.... Vetran difficulty...

There have been games I have been unable to beat, but I will only include the ones that I owned. It is just too hard to have the time and enough tries to beat some games at friends houses.

Batman Returns (SNES, Side Scroller beat em up) - Man this game was hard. You could pretty much learn how to beat the flunkies almost flawlessly, but some bosses were just so freaking hard. If I remember you get to bosses where they just keep spawning flunkies, so you have no choice but to take the boss down with 2 other guys beating you up. Plus you have about the same amount of lives you would expect from an arcade game.

Super Gouls n Ghosts (SNES, Side Scroller) - This game was not exactly super hard when you are powered up. You can choose the sweet powers as you get chests and get pretty bad ass. The problem is when you make one damn mistake you lose your armor and have to survive with crap attack power for ages. Its doable at the early stages but when you are too far in its just so hard.

Viewtiful Joe (GC, Side Scroller) - I am hesitant to include this, as I probably would have finished it if I hadn't moved to Japan and sold my GC. I managed to beat the fire lion boss on the hard difficulty level, but got stuck on the next level. I needed a key or something and just couldn't find it. Still given how hard the previous boss was I'm not sure if I would have prevailed. I'll probably buy this and try again at some stage.

I'm interested in giving the SNES games another shot. I was pretty young back then. Maybe I am smart enough to beat them, but reflexes have probably gone down.

I must say I do miss games that are really hard. Not just games that have a nightmare mode where the bad guys shoot you more and have way more health, but games that are actually designed that way. I love the satisfaction of really playing away at something and finally beating it. Now that I am so experienced with games it is rare that something offers much challenge. Hopefully games continue to be made that offer this.

Oh and I forgot one.

R-Type (GameBoy, Side Scroller shoot em up) - My god this game was hard. I tried SO MANY TIMES. It suffers like many shoot em ups from the get hit and become super weak problem in super hard levels. Infact even more so than most games, as you get a very useful shield when you get your first weapon upgrade which is crucial to surviving in later levels. There is also the additional speed issue. You can get speed powerups, but there was as far as I could tell no limit on how fast you could get. This might sound good, but you become way to fast to control 1 and 2 you become so fast that you tap up once and you move a third of the way up the screen and generally become too fast for your brain to control. So you get a few and avoid them, but then you get into situations where you don't have much room and are forced to get more. Was annoying :)

am I the only one who could not beat the Grim Reaper in Castlevania.
Altho I was like 10 or so at the time.

I beat every game I play. The game that made me stuck the longest was Equinox (SNES). Puzzle/adventure, not so hard to beat bosses, but to find everything on a level was a pain in the *** (and you NEEDED to find everything).

Ikaruga is the lastest very hard game I still play. The only game to beat R-type in the "hardest shooter" department.

For me most any shooter or fighting game- I love'em but have never been fanatical enough to try to "Finish him!" The most difficult games I enjoyed trying to beat would be:
1. R-Type- dying has seldom been that much fun
2. Gradius- Arrgh!
3. Castelvania- still have the game, still trying
4. Super Contra (SNES version)- i can get to the 3rd level, aftet that...
5. Herzog Zwei (Genesis)- has any ever finished this game?
6. Ghosts and Goblins/Super Ghouls and Ghosts- sometimes I get to the end of the 1st level- sometimes...
7. Punch Out- I'm coming for you Mr. Sandman!
8. Any Civilization game on any level other than default- it's hard to beat a tank with a spearman...
9. Ninja Gaiden (any version)- I like it because it's hard- and can't beat it for the same reason...
10. Eternal Champions (including Sega CD version)- made to the final boss once

On the flip side, the most difficult game I did beat w/o the help of walkthrus, strategy guide, cheat code, etc.- Deadly Towers for the NES. Talk about figuring things out as you go along!