Retro Games That Are Still Brutally Hard (and How to Actually Beat Them)

By · October 30, 2026 · 9 min read

Some retro games earned their reputation. They were built in an era of limited lives, no saves and arcade design habits that were meant to swallow coins, and many of them are still genuinely hard today. The good news is that "hard" usually means "a handful of specific traps", and once you know what they are, these games become very beatable. Here are the famous ones, what actually stops people, and how to get past it.

Ninja Gaiden (NES)

Ninja Gaiden is fast, beautiful and cruel. Enemies respawn the moment they scroll back onto the screen, birds swoop in exactly when you're mid-jump, and a single hit can knock Ryu backwards into a pit. The famous twist is at the very end: lose a life during the three final boss fights and the game sends you back to the start of Act 6, not to the boss.

  • Move forward slowly at screen edges. Enemies respawn when their spawn point scrolls back into view, so stepping back and forth creates more trouble. Inch forward, clear the screen, then go.
  • Save your ninja power for the jump-and-slash. The spinning slash power-up shreds everything around you as you jump, and it makes the worst platforming sections far safer.
  • Learn Act 6 in pieces. Practise the last stretch until you can reach the final boss with full health and power, because that's where the run is decided.

Contra (NES)

Contra gives you three lives and kills you in one hit. That's why it made the most famous cheat in gaming history: on the title screen, press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, then Start, and you begin with 30 lives. There's no shame in it; it's how a whole generation saw the ending.

  • Get the Spread gun and protect it. The S weapon fires a fan of bullets and makes every boss easier. You lose it when you die, which is the real reason to play carefully.
  • Play with a friend. Two players share the screen and cover each other's blind spots. Just agree who goes first on the vertical stages.
  • The rest of the codes for it are on the Contra cheats page.

Battletoads (NES)

Rare's Battletoads changes genre every level, and the third level, the Turbo Tunnel, is where most runs end: speeder-bike obstacles come at you faster and faster, and they're pure memorisation. In two-player mode your punches hurt your partner too, which makes co-op harder rather than easier.

  • Memorise, don't react. The Turbo Tunnel's walls always come in the same order. Many players write the pattern down, or say it out loud as they go.
  • Play solo the first time. Learning the levels without friendly fire is far less frustrating.
  • Use a version with a rewind button if you just want to see the game. Several modern collections offer one.

Ghosts 'n Goblins and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

Arthur survives exactly two hits: the first knocks off his armour, the second ends the life. In Ghosts 'n Goblins on the NES, and again in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts on the Super NES, finishing the game for the first time reveals that it was a trick, and you have to play through it all a second time, with a particular weapon, to reach the real ending.

  • Pick your weapon on purpose. Some pickups are much worse than what you're holding (the torch's short arc gets plenty of people killed). Don't grab everything that drops.
  • Jumps are committed. Arthur can't change direction mid-air, so line up every jump before you press the button.
  • Treat the first loop as practice. The second time through, you'll know where everything spawns.

Castlevania (NES)

The original Castlevania is hard because of the knockback. Take a hit near a ledge and Simon flies backwards into the gap. The Medusa heads that float in waves across the screen are the classic run-killer, along with the Grim Reaper boss.

  • Holy water is your best friend. Thrown at a boss's feet, especially with the double or triple-shot upgrade, it can freeze bosses in place long enough to whip them down. It's the standard way to beat Death and Dracula.
  • Wait for Medusa heads. They move in a predictable wave. Let them pass, then go, instead of whipping wildly.
  • Don't walk into stairs during a fight. Climbing locks your movement, which is exactly when you get hit.

Mega Man 2 (NES)

Mega Man 2 is the gentlest game on this list, and still a wall for first-timers. The secret is the weapon order: each Robot Master is weak to another boss's weapon, so the order you play the stages changes everything. The North American release also added a Normal difficulty, the easier of its two settings.

  • Start with Metal Man or Air Man. Metal Man's blade is one of the best weapons in the series and cheap on energy, and it makes several later bosses easy.
  • Use the passwords. The game gives you a password after each boss, so a bad session never costs you your progress.

General tactics that work on all of them

  • Learn one section at a time. These games are built from short, repeatable challenges. Practise the part that kills you, not the whole game.
  • Play on a screen with little lag. Precise jumping games feel unfair on a TV that isn't in game mode. Our guide to making retro games look and feel right on a modern TV explains why.
  • Use the tools you have. Save states, rewind features in official collections, and cheat codes are all fair ways to enjoy a game you'd otherwise give up on. Every game above has a cheats page, and our guide to retro cheat codes explains how to use them on original hardware or in an emulator.

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