Painful Moments in Video Games

[maximo310]

Final boss fights that are an extreme jump in difficulty. You're going along in a game making steady progress, it has its challenging moments but nothing too severe and then when you finally get to the end - it's impossible. Feels like the developer didn't WANT you to finish their game.

I was testing out an arcade game recently  that had that exact thing called Wild West- Cowboys of Moo Mesa by Konami. The majority of the game was really easy on hardest difficulty and I got to the final boss only to lose my 1cc because of his stupid attack patterns in that you can get trapped by ducking his gun shots and then he charges you right after and there's no way to avoid any damage. I tried multiple times to find a way to stick him in a pattern, but no matter what happens, I get slaughtered.

[burningdoom]

What about having no continues? Or having to leave the game on all night because there is no save points? *cough* *cough* Mario 3

Oh man I remember those days. And the NES was so sensitive you were just hoping to God that no one would bump it or stomp to heavily next to it in the middle of the night.

That and hoping your power adapter wouldn't melt because they had a tendency to get hot.

[foxhack]

Sly Cooper 1, last boss.

If you die you have to restart the whole thing. It takes five minutes to reach a point where you can hurt him. I gave up after two hours.

[pacpix]

When I opened Werdna's Lair on the tenth floor of Wizardry and saw the message "The Monster's Surprised You" . I had been taking all of my previous permadeaths, drawing maps,  etc, but that was absolute bullshit and the game finally broke me. I hit reset, tried again and won.  It felt like a hollow victory and I started a new party and level grinded the entire next day and won legitimately.   Now when I play Wizardry I use save states, but my original permadeath run coming to an end at the end thanks to bad luck after months of work was very painful, but was even more satisfying after completing the game.

[betelgeuse]

I always hated the games that gave you unlimited continues, until you arrived at the final boss.
NARC, Ikari Warriors and Final Fight come to mind.