^ooh so that's how you land lol....poorly made games don't count I guess :P

Games haven't necessarily gotten easier so much as they've simply changed.

Most games are no longer designed with the intent of being played in a single sitting. 

Few games use the endless levels + high score pattern now so the game is over when you finish and not when it gets too fast for you.

A lot of older game mechanics have simply been phased out.

Yeah I think it's partly due to today's huge stories and huge cutscenes.  When developers dump tons of money into a half hour movie at the end, they want people to see it.  And when you pay writers to come up with zany plot twists you want people to find out what happens.  Now nobody can get away with a screen that says "A winner is you!" anymore, or just tell you in text that you learned the secret of love and friendship.

And especially cliffhanger endings for for forced trilogies or "episodes."  It used to be that beating a game was near impossible, but now they actually want everybody to beat the game since the ending is an advertisement for the sequel.

But from a technological standpoint, I mainly blame the jump from 2D to 3D.  When you're controlling movement and aiming in 3 axes at once, the level of precision 2D games require is impossible.  I'm just glad the spirit of Smash TV lives on in games like Geometry Wars and hopefully that new Zombie Apocalypse game.

Zelda II needs to be higher on the list.

I don't think they're talking about games being hard due to bad design.

I might've landed once in Top Gun, but that might've been a dream.

"Landing is the hardest part of the game. Even Skip Rogers misses a landing every now and then."

I definitely believe Fire Emblem should be there.

It is, by far, Nintendo's hardest series - Zelda 2 doesn't compare (and yes, I've played it (never bothered to finish it though).

tetris is not a tought game. god of war1 is pretty tought, but god of war 2 not at all. the devil may cry series is not that tought.

shinobi should be in top 5 and ninga gaiden 15-20 place.

don´t you have the ps3 or the psp? ever played sprectrum 48K?

yeah, sega should be back in the console business

@Wickedshyn


Zelda 2? I finished that game in 3 days of straight play back in the day. No guides, no help. Zelda 1 is actually harder but not worthy of being in a list of hard games.

 Who are you, Lucas from The Wizard? The Power Glove is so bad!

Anyway. I don't care for extremely tough games. As soon as I read that the game is very difficult in a review, that's one person who isn't buying that game. That's why I like games that have diffculty select. I don't need  to get pissed off playing a game. To hell with that. I do like a challenging game but not one that I have to play the same part over and over again. I don't have time for that. What am I going to do, quit my job?

As for the games on the list, everybody will have a different opinion on what's tough. I always hear people say that Contra is one of the hardest games ever but I had no problem beating it numerous times while just being an average gamer. Super Mario Brothers for the NES is considered fairly easy by most but yet I've never beaten it and eventually just gave up on it.