Frustrating NES Gaming Moments

The absolute most annoying moments in games for the original NES.

Here is my list of the top five most frustrating gaming moments for the original NES. I am sure there will be people that disagree with this small list, and that's fine. This is just one man's opinion, and is meant to entertain not educate. The only hard and fast rule I had for this list was that a game couldn't make it for being a hard alone. There had to be more to the it than that.

In no particular order...

Ghosts N' Goblins: Beating The Game

Ghosts N' Goblins is arguably one of the hardest video games ever. I have heard it banded up on a few message boards that some poll was put out to the game playing public to vote on the hardest game of all time, and Ghosts N' Goblins won in a landslide. Sounds very plausible to me.

In Ghosts N' Goblins you take the role of Arthur, out to rescue your lady from the evil clutches of Arathor(I believe that is his name). You are provided with a suit of armor and several different weapons along the way to aid you in your noble quest. A single hit from an enemy shatters the armor, forcing Arthur to trek forward in his undies. A second hit reduces Arthur to a pile of bones. That's it. Two hits and it will be lights out for our noble hero. Relying on your continues will do no good as they are limited.

Adding to the already difficult scenario of surveying a full level on just two hits is the fact Arthur jumps in the most awkward of ways. The best way to describe it would be to say he jumps about a foot in either direction, very low to the ground, and arch-wise. Considering a large part of this game is platforming the crappy jump can quickly grow annoying. It's not uncommon to spend all of your lives and continues trying to leap across a single gap.

Ok, so the crappy jump and two-hit deaths is enough to make this game one of the hardest of all time. So what puts Ghosts N' Goblins on this list? Easy deaths and horrible jumping shouldn't be enough to warrant making this list! Too true! In fact despite these rather glaring setbacks there have been a few brave souls skilled enough to complete the nigh impossible task of reaching and defeating the final boss. They should be congratulated, for now they have to start back at the beginning and do it all again in order to truly beat the game and see the ending. Oh, and they have to do it all with the remaining lives and continues left over from the first go around...

R.C. Pro-Am: The Yellow Truck of Doom

Few would argue R.C. Pro-Am is one of the genuine classics for the NES. However, being a bona-fide classic doesn't mean a game is completely devoid of frustrating moments and spurts of pure cheesiness. R.C. Pro-Am is a classic, and also happens to be one of the more frustrating and cheesy games I have EVER played.

In R.C. Pro-Am the computer controlled vehicle speeds would adjust mid-race based on your performance. Take too big of a lead on the track and the opposing cars would speed up. Fall too far behind and they would slow down. Alright, makes sense so far...

Enter the Yellow Truck of Doom.

From time to time while racing, the yellow computer controlled truck (more accurately yellow vehicle - it wasn't always a truck) would get a super steroid shot of speed and suddenly zoom off into the distance! We're talking like 0 to Cheese in 0.4 seconds. Forget light speed, this thing went ludicrous speed! When this happened it meant an automatic 2nd place or worse finish. Even if you drove perfectly for the the rest of the race you still wouldn't catch up. The top speed in the game is 103mph. When the yellow truck went plaid it reached a top speed of 127mph.

I always wondered why this happened, and to this day I still don't have a clue. I've read on Wikipedia that the yellow vehicles would only go into ludicrous mode when you destroyed another vehicle while in the lead. I.E. you lapped them all and as you approached them from the rear and shot one with a missile. I haven't played the game in quite some time now, so I'm not in the best position to confirm or deny this. Whatever the case, R.C. Pro-Am will go down in history as having one of the cheesiest moments in video game history.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out: The Final Fight Against Iron Mike

Tyson is tough enough to knock-out thanks to his superior blocking abilities, lightning fast jabs and thunderous uppercut that is capable of sending you to the canvas if it connects. Fine. I understand that. Some of the fighters on the road to Tyson are difficult to beat, so it would be fitting that the final bout proved to be the most challenging. What sends this final fight over the top from challenging to cheese though is the bright neon green canvas on which you had to fight. Now instead of just needing to possess uncanny finger speed and reflexes to beat Tyson, you also had to try and focus your eyes on a dark foreground object against a light background for an extended period of time. Have you ever tried that? It's a lot more taxing on the eyes than you might think.

Besides constantly pulling your focus away from Tyson, the neon green canvas also has one other effect. Your eyes will start to water while looking at it. You not only worry about Tyson 's speed and power when fighting him, but you have to fight to keep your vision concentrated on him and resist the overwhelming urge to blink every second to relieve your water eyes. Argh!

Why the choice of a neon green background? I contend the programmers knew what they were doing and threw the neon green background in there on purpose. A way to increase the difficulty of the final fight without making Tyson himself impossible to beat. Why do I think this? When the game was re-released as Punch-Out, sans Tyson, the new boss also fights on a neon background - pink! Coincidence? I think not!

Top Gun: Landing The Damn Plane & Refueling The Damn Plane

This damn game. Had this been a list of the hardest NES games of all-time Top Gun could have easily made the list based on its gameplay. You have to fly against what amounts to the equivalent of the entire U.S. Air-Force, armed with a very limited supply of missiles and a weak ass machine gun. Just trying to complete a mission is enough to pop more than one vein in your head. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.

But I digress. This isn't a least about hard games. This is a list about frustrating and/or cheesy moments in games. Top Gun makes this list thanks to what comes after you've already given yourself a migraine completing a mission. You now get to land the plane on the aircraft carrier! Whoopee! This would have been a novel idea if it didn't count against your lives in the game. *Sigh*. But alas, it does. So you're all stressed out from just narrowly completing the current mission, and now you have to worry about lining up the nose of your jet just right with the deck of the aircraft carrier. "A little to the left. Nope. Back a little to the right. Up. Down. A little more to the right. Too far. Left some. Up.." Failure to do so would result in
your plane crashing into the ocean in a ball of flame. Danger Zone indeed.

Top Gun isn't content to rest on just one frustrating piece of gameplay though. Oh no! Sometimes during the flight you might be required to refuel your jet mid-flight by linking up with a fuel plane. "Just a little more to the right." *Boom!* Aw damn, now I have to start the whole game over.

"Gentlemen, Goose is spelled with two o's."

**ck Goose! I'm glad he died!

All Games: Getting Them To Load And Play

The end-all-be-all of hair pulling, controller throwing, red wizard is about to die of gaming experiences. Getting the damn things to work in the first place! There was the standard blow into the bottom of the cartridge fix. If that failed we'd have to resort to trying our own unique methods. Don't say you didn't have one. We all did! Some of us might wiggle the cartridge while in the system, others would opt to blow into only half the exposed cartridge bottom. For me? I would hold the power
button down an extra second to turn the system off, and then hold the button down again for another second when I powered it back on. Did our 'special' methods actually help load the games? I'd say no, but they mentally helped us cope with these all too common frustrating occurrences.

Good times!

I think that will about do it for this article. Fear not I have plenty of more of games that I didn't include due to time constraints. I'll revisit this list and similar others in due time. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane!

-- The Gootch

**Honorable Mention: Rygar. 3 lives and no continues. Good luck! You'll need it

Comments

God that yellow truck from Pro Am used to piss me off. Nice. T.U #42

I AGREE WIT YA MATE!

sweet dude. I hear you on all those games. I have a few frustrating memories as well but even it that damn game was miserable hard we still spent 5 minutes trying to get the cartridge to work anyways.

all you have to do is clean the contacts of the cartridge with alcohol on a cotton swab (aka q-tip) and then swipe the dry end to dry it. A few firm strokes on the cartridge edge should clean the contacts like new unless you've gotten them wet to cause serious corrosion (in which case you are probably SOL). If that doesn't work, open up your Nintendo and clean the pins on the cartridge connector, or buy a $10 replacement online. These games work great if you keep them clean and they are really almost impossible to truly damage.

Nice work. i remember top gun and landing that damn plane too, ohh, i think i just pooped my pants in frustration. i think one of the most used tricks to get a game to work was putting something inside the system on top of the game. generally i used another game

The cartridge bit @ the end was great

Great article but you never mention The Ghostbusters game for NES. That game was almost impossible.

Cmon now...blowing into the cartridges was half the fun! HAHA

Cool article. The most frustrating thing for me was the cartridges also. If you blew in a game that would save progress i.e. Zelda or Baseball Stars, it would totally erase all of your saved information; and you had to start all over.

I'm envious of your 28 votes, as I work hard on my articles and haven't gotten above an 8. But this is a great one, and deserving of the praise. I think video game fans out number everyone else around here!

I would blow into them, then stick them back in, thin unplug and plug the controlers back in. It worked... kinda.

1. Great article, I eagerly await your next article.

2. You love Goose and you know it!

Ninja Gaiden series are all hard, so are the Castlevanias and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 is pretty hard too (not as hard as Ninja Gaiden though). ;-)

I didn't blow into my carts all that much, but I would shove them as far into the slot as I could, wiggle it around, and then stick some kind of plastic object in there to hold it down better. It worked for a while...

The NES carts failed to work correctly over time not necessarily because of dust, but because the connector plate inside of the NES was a piece of junk that warped over time. In fact, I've read a few things online (so take it for what it's worth) that have said that blowing into a cartridge really did absolutely nothing. The wiggle method is the most important in getting old games to work, because you can get the connectors to line up correctly by wiggling the cart around.

Great observation on Punch Out, that game was always impossible, but the fugly green canvas didn't help.

In terms of Top Gun, I'd say that everything about the game was frustrating.

Hehe, I've managed to beat Ghosts 'n Goblins...

You should try playing Astynax without using cheats. Even when you do use the invincibility cheat you still have to defeat every last monster, unless you want to play the game in slow motion as the NES just can't handle that much movement on the screen ;P

Cartridges are a pain in the ass, but how about those dodgy, non registered Nintendo games that needed you to plus a cartridge into a cartridge? That was just asking for trouble.

www.jejinternet.blogspot.com

jej

I used to own top gun. I would play it a couple of times until I got to that first carrier. I only ONCE landed that damn plane, which means it was the only time I didn't toss my controller.

Wow. Nice job. I never played any of these games, but you've convinced me not to.

God, I still can't land that jet on Top Gun! I crash EVERY TIME! My friends could do it when they were 8 but I can't do it when I'm 26... I'm just a little bitter....

I remember that R/C Pro AM truck! I actually have that game and if you think that truck achieves "stupid fast" in regular play, you should see what it does when you use the Game Genie to give yourself infinite continues. Since the game has no "end" the levels start letters and all kinds of weird things as you progress. At that point, the yellow car would generally have already lapped me by the time I got to the first turn.

I would have also mentioned "trying not to drive down the side of the platform to your death after getting Wall2 when you were trying to jump" in Blaster Master, to the frustration list.

All 2 true my friend!! Of all yer correct opinions
('cuz they were all pretty much right on the money), "Ghosts & Goblins" really hit home. I recently had the pleasure 2 conquer the game on the "Capcom Classics" (PS2), of course with unlimited continues. Back in the day of the "NES" I wuz barely able 2 complete the first 3 levels.
An awesum reveiw indeed!!!

Great article and I agree with your choices; however, Rygar gave unlimited continues.

Not so long ago I told myself while I was hopelessly trying to make Super Mario Bros. work ''hey all this blowing is just pushing the dust further! It's not doing any good! why wouldn't I dissassemble my NES and clean it good?'' Which I did. Guess what? There wasn't any dust in it. I still cleaned it but it didn't work more after. I almost started to cry...

I remember blowing into the cartridges to get the dust. We even went as far as to buy a game cleaner and console cleaner, but it was still the same. I've tried G&G and it was hard, even for me. There was another version I was able to at least make it a little farther in the first level.

I've landed on the Carrier and Refueled once on Top Gun. All you have to do is follow the commands it gives you.

There were many glitches in those earlier games and systems. its even worse for atari. i remember the days of battletoads, very anooying. anyone ever tried to play the silver surfer? never been able to get past the first level.

The Top Gun thing was taken from the Angry Nintendo Nerd, wasn't it?

man..I never landed that plane in Top Gun! Impossible! Haven't tried it in years though.

Other than blowing air into the carts (I put them under my shirt to avoid spitting in them! ...oh to be a kid) I also did the alcohol on q-tips trick (cotton swabs). That top loader NES was a god send but it came out so late in the game!

hey Would you like some extra cheese with your article:-p
yep G&G was an Absolute F*** Fest I can remember how loud I screamed when I played that Piece, Now With top gun , i know it can be Frustrating to nail down the Landing/refuel. but If you rhythym? it right, then you'll be in ok in no time at all, Hell I even beat that game ! Now I'm working on TG2 Second mission.

Good article. I played Super Ghosts N Goblins for the GBA SP recently. Kept getting my ass kicked. But the most difficult NES game I have ever played is Friday The 13th. Good luck beating that thing.

Ah, you failed to mention the most annoying and evil thing that the video game companies have ever done to their loyal players, and that's the Jaquio fight on Ninja Gaiden. Anyone famiiar with the game will know what I'm talking about. It's tha final three stages of the game, 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3, a three very difficult stages with leaping zombies, those annoying swooping birds and jet pack wearing ninjas who rain down throwing stars like it's a meteor shower. You finally make it to the last boss, who has three very difficult parts, and if you get killed even once, it, like a cruel jokes, sends you all the way back to stage 6-1! My controller lost its life at that moment.

I loved this article. I know how to fix the load error. Its the pins inside the NES. They're most likely bent and need to be straightened. Carefully bend the pins until they're straight and it should be fine. The pins get bent over time from inserting and removing the carts. Also, you're supposed to use denatured alcohol to clean them. Which is just diluted rubbing alcohol. And yes, Ghost N Goblins pissed me off to the point I just didn't care about beating the game anymore.

Another game I'll add to the list, Mighty Bomb Jack. All you did was jump on your enemies a few times to make them vanish. The same with the boxes that you needed to collect coins. It was just plain stupid and frustrating. Jump wrong and you die. Its among my personal controller flinging games.

excellent article. yes the last one is true. i finally bought a top loader remake of the original (it's purple and cost 20.00 on ebay) since i no longer possess the patience to blow and clean. now, if it frustrates me, it knows i can take it to the yard and blow bullets into it!!!!!!!

I think that for me one of the hardest games of all time has to be Friday the 13th (nes).

HAH! i used to blow and throw it (with a spin) into my couch to get it to werk.

I had a unique method to get a game to work: clean the cartridge with alcohol (which you're not even supposed to do, yet it still works!).

R.C. Pro-Am would give me nightmares. i HAD to get a perfect game or i would just reset and start over...great review! can't wait until the NEXT "Frustrating...".