[SunGodPortal]

Does anyone believe that someone can beat Simon's Quest without doing ANY research at all? Makes me wonder how long it would've taken people to figure out how to progress through the game without Nintendo dropping hints. Makes me curious.

It's possible, though not realistic. I never beat it until I looked up a guide later in life. The in-game hints are totally useless and the false hints just make everything worse. If anyone tells me they beat the English version of that game without a guide I'd either call them a liar or ask how long it took them to exhaust every reasonable possibility and then exhaust every unreasonable possibility because I don't see any other way to beat that game without guidance. I would give a bunch of examples of why this game is bullshit, but in this case AVGN pretty much says most of what needs to be said about this game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4we8iFk-fY

[Bregalad]

If anyone tells me they beat the English version of that game without a guide I'd either call them a liar or [...]

There's no need for a guide, just someone to tell you about kneeing at specific points with a crystal equipped, which is the only part of the game that cannot be discovered by one's self.

[SleepyFist]

Even I managed to beat the NES Contra without the 30 lives code, and I am not particularly good with action games. Super C on the other hand.... is much harder (and for the most part, much better).

I was referring to the series as a whole, since I was under the impression they were all over the top, but the ones I actually played were indeed Super C and Hard Corps, I still boot up HC sometimes just to watch stuff explode, never get very far though.

[SunGodPortal]

There's no need for a guide, just someone to tell you about...

You just described "the answer cannot be found in the game" using different words than I did.

...kneeing at specific points with a crystal equipped, which is the only part of the game that cannot be discovered by one's self.

Which is something that must be done to complete the game. I win.

[Bregalad]

Which is something that must be done to complete the game. I win.

No. You said "without a guide". There is 100 ways to learn about it other than a guide.

[M-Tee]

The Curse of Issyos. It isn't exceptionally hard, I just can't quite get past a certain point. Love the game though (and will beat it one day when I actually have time to play it more).

[Bobolicious81]

No. You said "without a guide". There is 100 ways to learn about it other than a guide.

Well if a friend tells you what to do, aren't they in fact giving you guidance? 

There's only one way to do it without being guided, and that's to just run around and do anything you can possibly think of, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, and hope to get lucky.

[Chronosplit]

In Doom wads I pretty much need to play in lower difficulty settings, though not for lack of experience.  I'm not terrible in it's FFA though; there's something about how it goes with Super Shotguns that just feels right.  It's also about the only FPS I commonly play.  I dust off Unreal Tournament and play stuff like Ziggurat every now and then, but Doom's about the only one that clicked.

Also ToME 4 and Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.  But can one truly master those?

[Bahamut ZERO]

In Doom wads I pretty much need to play in lower difficulty settings, though not for lack of experience.

That's what I have to do when playing wads while using the Project Brutality mod, since the number of monster is jacked up, as well as fairly randomized. Not to mention I like to play using a 360 controller + Joy2key, which is a double-edged sword of "more accesible controls" and "little extra boost of difficulty".

Generally I'll play everything on the difficulty that's a little easier than normal (which is still way more intense than vanilla Doom's normal difficulty). I remember getting a good ways through the Plutonia level set by just the skin o' my teeth, having to use the sliding kick maneuver to launch myself behind various things as cover while literal armies of randomly generated enemy types where raining hell on me.  It was easily the most amazing FPS experience I've ever had. 

Off topic: Speaking of Doom, there's now a Brutal Doom 64 mod that is a from-the-ground-up remake of the N64 game with the Brutal Doom engine. Christmas just came early for me! 

[LivingfortheNight]

in old school Doom i can survive and beat levels on Hurt Me Plenty (normal) I could prolly do Ultraviolence, but pain in the ass. Nightmare is just for speed runs, there's no fun in that otherwise.

[magictrufflez]

I'm pretty proud of my track record with RPG's---I have yet to find one that I simply can't solve

But there is 1 non-rpg game I always wanted to beat legit, but just never seemed to be able to (and this may sound ridiculous): Star Tropics.

I can always make it to Chapter 3 (or whichever one has ~3-4 dungeons in a row that you have to basically complete in one shot), but I can never quite get all the way through that one.  The farthest I made it was to the boss in the water room with the tile jumping--and I came very close to beating it once, but never got that close again.  There's just something about that whole chapter I can't do for some reason.

[Isao Kronos]

I'm garbage tier at fighting games. The previous sentence speaks for itself.

[Jorpho]

I can always make it to Chapter 3 (or whichever one has ~3-4 dungeons in a row that you have to basically complete in one shot), but I can never quite get all the way through that one.  The farthest I made it was to the boss in the water room with the tile jumping--and I came very close to beating it once, but never got that close again.  There's just something about that whole chapter I can't do for some reason.

To hell with the Ghost Tunnel.

[SleepyFist]

Also ToME 4 and Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.  But can one truly master those?

I second Stone Soup, On a good run I might make it 20  floors down before getting blindsided.

Also wanna throw in La-Mulana, which iirc has the stated goal of putting the fear of death back into gamers.

[Disch]

Also wanna throw in La-Mulana, which iirc has the stated goal of putting the fear of death back into gamers.

+1 to La-Mulana.  What a great concept for a game.  Does pretty well in execution, too... but it's is just so damn easy to get stuck.

[LivingfortheNight]

I'm garbage tier at fighting games.

me too! Ive just never been able to get the hang of constant button combos. wish i could, but i just cannot

[AlanJacobs]

sim city @.@

no matter how much I play the game never ends... I must really suck

Haha true, it never really ends, however the furthest I ever progressed in the SNES version is 250,000 people. I thought it was impossible to reach 500,000. I didn't know to stack your city in 3x3 blocks until much later.

I'm garbage tier at fighting games. The previous sentence speaks for itself.

I haven't played that many fighting games, but I've beaten Streets of Rage for Sega Genesis but not its sequels. I love watching people play mortal combat even though I'm unable to play it myself.

Hear me out on this one:
I'm able to beat Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark. However, to challenge myself, I've beaten Goldeneye 64 all the way through 00 Agent with crosshairs off and without dying or failing a mission. This has happened once and came very close a few other times. There's NO WAY I could do that with Perfect Dark. Tried it.