What moments in video games (may they be stages, boss fights, or even just stupid characters or story elements) just really flip your boat?

One of my least favorite things is all of Carnival Night Zone Act 2 from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. This stage just pisses me off so much. The stage takes way too long to finish (about 7-8 minutes as fast as I can, not even joking), the music blows (typical carnival music, GRAH!), and the boss also takes too long to defeat (about a minute, so you're cutting it REAL close by the end). The whole stage is just loathsome. Fortunately, Knuckles has it a bit easier by avoiding a boss fight entirely, but it still just takes way too long to finish.

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The Local Video Gaming Lunatic

Recent stuff I'm into:

Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing

Bolban, underwater, in Bomberman Hero. Utterly ridiculous. That's part of the reason why I don't feel like going back and trying to get to the secret final world in that game.

Rainbow Palace in Bomberman 64 with all those insane bomb jumps and stupid clouds messing up what you've got set up.

The secret final level and boss in Cave Story really messed me up for a long time.

I'm sure there were tons of these moments back when I played the SNES Final Fantasy games, but that's been too long for me to remember.  

Probably more things, but I can't remember at the moment.

MuscleFoot in StarFox Adventures. It's literally impossible to beat him without either using a turbo controller or ramming the A button against an automatic back massager. I'M SERIOUS.

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Epikyur spikes in TSA, took me forever.

Forsaken Fortress in Wind Waker, it's so big and all the rooms look the same.

Probably other games but I can't remember any of them at the moment  

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She's a maniac~

Bomberman..no wait that's when I want the bombs to explode.

I'd say the mr driller drill land gamecube import's special mode is just ridiculous, it's beyond developers difficulty. Only realistic way to beat it is with save states, besides the fact that it doesn't even tell you what you need to accomplish to complete each mode for it. Normally when a game is difficult it's because I selected difficult mode, so I'd be prepared for it and normally not annoyed by it.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

Metal Gear Solid 3 on extreme trying to get no alerts and at the Prison Break part... no camoflague...

Mostly everything before it I passed in a number of minutes but I spent 2 days getting the hell out of that Prison. The first was escaping to the North-West area of Grozi-whatever. The second was figuring out how in the world I am going to get past it? I finally figured it out at 11:00 PM... wow...

First, run over to the tanks in the west, and crawl under the second tank from the bottom. Go to the end of the tank and wait for the two guards to turn away. Get out of the tank, and punch the first guard you come across. He'll turn to you, use cigar gas, and he's out. Then go to the last pair of tanks and sit against the one on the right, but lean more towards the north side of the tank (While still remaining inbetween the two tanks) since there's a guard on the other side and he will see you. Look over to the West and wait for the Guard Dog to go to sleep. Then move north to the next guard, the second of the two guards you waited to turn away earlier, and take him out. Crawl under what should be a jeep beside him, and then move to the other side. You'll see another guard, the one who would see you if you were at the wrong position between the two tanks earlier. Take him out. Move all the way to the East by crawling, then wait against the southern wall. A Guard Dog will come near you and go to sleep, so crawl over to him slowly and use the cigar spray to put him to sleep longer. Then wait for the other guard up north to be a distance away from the exit up north, he'll be heading West. Once he is far away enough, you can run like hell over to the exit and crawl for your life. Then you're almost safe...

It was so obvious! Why didn't I think of it before!?  

(Note the bunched up text helps create the illusion of more work and complications...)

The Tower of Druaga. All of it. The whole damn game.

And yet I wasted a whole morning beating it.  

Yeah, that is one of my least favorite sonic stages ever, despite near all of the rest of the stages being really good. I think they were trying to make a decent clone of casino nights zone from sonic 2, but failed miserably. Too slow, and too annoying. In reality most of the latter sonic levels in all the games annoyed me, keep the slow platforming challenges for a game like mario that's built for it. Sonic's platforming should consist of running mostly forward, jumping in places to avoid traps, and utilizing springs and enemies to get up to interesting places

Speaking of Mario platforming, there is a spinning platforms level in late galaxy 2 that is pretty difficult. Lost a good 20 lives on it, and I'm good at mario.


Luckily that level had the best music track in the game.

Oh god I remember that one... I used to get stuck some place and die when the timer went out!  

Aw crap... now that stupid carnival music is stuck in my head... well I'm not going down alone!  

Click here.

I have now destroyed your mind... >:D

I can't say I ever tried beating MGS3 on Extreme Mode. I'd probably just get way too frustrated at it and would probably have to try it several times before I do it right.


You may be onto something here. Even though I hate all of those "casino/carnival" stages (exception towards Casinopolis from Sonic Adventure, I actually kind of liked that one, although that's mostly because of NiGHTS pinball), Casino Night Zone was probably one of the few stages that actually "did it right." I generally agree with what your idea for what a Sonic game should be like.

Another thing that I absolutely hated was this one particular boss in Final Fantasy 4/2 called the "Evil Wall" or something like that. It was completely ridiculous. The Wall itself can't do anything other then reach a little closer to you each turn it gets. However, once it reaches a certain point, it'll start instant KOing your party members, and the rate it does this is so fast you don't have time to revive your characters. Even though I was using the most damaging strategy; Cecil and Edge attack, Kain jump, Rosa Haste, and Rydia casting powerful spells; it still managed to kill my entire party before it died.

After several tries, I was just about convinced that this was impossible, so I checked GameFAQs to see if there was something I needed to do first. The FAQ writer mentioned that it's much easier to get the Leviathan summon before doing the "Evil Wall" boss so that's what I decided to do. This was also a pain, but it wasn't as ridiculous as the Evil Wall.

After I got Leviathan, I went back to face the Evil Wall once more, determined to kill the beast. I used a similar strategy as before, had Cecil attack, Kain jump, Edge attack, Rosa cast Haste, and Rydia now cast Leviathan. Sure enough, few turns using this strategy, the Wall was defeated. I called BS for being forced to do something that should have been optional, but I think winning the battle was much more important at the time.

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The Local Video Gaming Lunatic

Recent stuff I'm into:

Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing

Oh my god. Yes. That was awful.

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I remember when I was a little kid (Like 6 or 7) I beat that when I had to use the bathroom really badly. It somehow effected my consentration and I won, lol.

Yeah, I wwas one of those guys that got so frustrated I quit playing the game for months. I finally was able to beat him when I took the time to collect gems to get 4 extra hit points.

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Oh wow, lol. That is one strategy!

...Now get a 5.  

first time playing Super Mario Bros. Toad saying "Sorry, The princess is in another castle"

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Better graphics don't make a better game

[Collapse] Doom 3 Cover

heh heh, well that might bother me if I was playing world 8-4.

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Hm, well there are over 1000 things that made me angry but just a few that let my blood boil.

- Terranigma for Snes:
Bloody Marry (aka. Queen of Spain) pisses me off no matter how often I play this game. Actually I have no problems getting this game done after a few days (but because I enjoy that soooo much, I take more time for finishing it) but the biggest challange is killing the Queen of Spain. It took me like 4 days at the first time I was fighting her! Now I know how to fight against her, but the problem is that you barely have a chance attacking her because of the Crystals that are protecting her from all sides. Not only do they damage you so you lose 80 HPs, no matter what Level you have (I killed her with Level 14 which took me 2 or 3 hours nowadays!) she only lose 1 HP. The toughest boss I ever needed to kill to be honest.

- Secret of Mana 3/Seiken Densetsu3 for Snes:
Most of the bosses are getting annoying. The big challange in this game is what teammates you have, which Level and how good your weapons and armors are. If you try to beat a boss that has strong spells you are doomed because your equipment isn't strong enough or because your level isn't high enough. After a while I just realized that you need to get level 18 and evolve your characters as fast as possible before you're going any further in this game. High levels are saving your butt.

- Star Fox Assault for Gamecube:
Defeating the Aparoid Queen in gold medal challange. You really need stamina and reflexes as hell there. Nuff said.

- Secret of Evermore for Snes:
Salabog, the swamp monster. I always hate to fight against it because it's hard to hit sometimes and the Jack-o-Laterns it creates always get on my nerves.

- Bomberman64 for Nintendo64:
I never liked fire levels so you can bet your butts that I hate the vulcano/crater area. Not only the level itself bitten my nerves no, also the Boss alsways gives me hard times. I never managed to get all the Goldcards there.

- Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube:
Abbyssion, the secret Boss inside the Shadowtemple. No matter what mode you play (normal, hard, ultimate) he's tearing you appart.

- NiGHTS ~Journey of Dreams~ for Wii:
Last fight against Wizeman. For some reason I always run out of time and never get close to him so I can hit him. I'm really impatient at this point of the game.

- Okami for Wii:
The snow palace is making it hard for me all the time. I really enjoy it but it's a tough challange getting through it. The frozen forest where you need to make a race against one of the Kamui village can be very nasty if you don't really know how you get through the forest and the fight against the last Boss Yami isn't easy at all. Needed nearly 4 hours to beat him the first time I faced him.

- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii:
The Ancient Cistern and the boss Koloktos. At first it seemed like it's a very easy going thing but I was stressed after I didn't knew what to do to beat the dungeon. After 1 or 2 hours I finally finished this piece of labyrinth and faced the boss. I thought it would be a short fight but after it turned into 6 rounds I needed to sustain I really was exhausted and more than glad I beat that creep.

Yes brutal.


SD3 can be varied like that, with a good party it poses depressive little challenge. With a bad party, it can be anywhere from only moderately easy to hard, depending on how good you are at cherry picking bad. It does pretty much require a tad of grinding in about 3 places, but really that's not to be unexpected for an SNES rpg. Still in my opinion easy fare for what it is. SOM is ages harder (and beyond it's battle mechanics has poor systems throughout to help induce frustration).



Heh, that dungeon confused me a bit because I ignored fi and didn't notice the guard had a key, so I ended up back tracking and looking for a bit for another path, before deciding that there wasn't one and going back. That was my favorite boss fight of the game, though to be fair, I did this dungeon split between several sessions, so I was pretty fresh by the time I was facing him.

To be honest SOM is even easier than SD3 in my opinion. I never had troubles beating it. The only tough challenge is to level up the weapons and elemental ghosts to level 8:99. Maybe it's just me because I played SD2 (SOM) so many times that I don't see it as a challenge anymore. For me, SD3 is very tough not only because of the bosses and such. It was a whole new experience to change the classes of the characters you have in your party, also it's very hard to earn enough money to get the strongest weapons.

I started all over again and have Angela, Duran and Kevin as a team, Angela got the Magus class, Duran the Duelist class and Kevin the Gods Hand class. All of them have nearly level 50 and I still have trouble beating the dark knight. Bah I hate him though I have good weapons, a high level, enough Items and good spells. My impatient side is talking again haha.

The biggest issue I had with SD3 was at first I made the mistake of leveling up the wrong skills before the first class up (I leveled up the skills that helped the magic later on, which were completely pointless to level early on, or for that reason, pretty much ever). That made the hardest boss in the game for me the ghost ship boss. After classing up for the first time, every boss in the game became remarkably easy. That said, I was playing as nightblade (kevin), starlancer (lise), bishop(carlie), which is a powerhouse class selection, buff+debuff+healing. Only way to do better is to properly abuse Kevin. Any team without carlie will prove to be harder, especially if you don't abuse the black market, that said, if you have someone with decent spirit, and money to invest in poto oils. Money issues were nothing that I really had, but I tended to skip a few unnecessary things, I did farm the seeds that give the ultimate weapons though. I may have skipped the penultimate weapons due to that. With a good team and final classes though, no boss, including the final boss should take longer then 3 minutes, even if you have just enough levels to get you the final spell sets. Still a lot less grinding then either SOM or any other SNES RPG (FF or CT for example).

It also helps that last time I played it I played with a second player, for some reason a player will out dps the computer by ridiculous manners, even when just spamming attack.


--edit-- I really wish that there was a action RPG that fell somewhere between SOM and SD3, perhaps a tad improved. Multiplayer, a good battle system (more SD1 meats LOZ, I'd like it to have no undodgable spells, and kill the spam ability and game stopping of the spells (make the spells so you have to go through the menus in real time, and all of them cast in real time). But a good SD3 like universe and class system, similar branching story lines, and so forth, and also, let's get a bit of weapon variation.

Really that is the one thing that made me sad about SD3 and SOM. SOM has a really excellent feel to combat, you can dodge certain things, there's a lot of variation, it has good pacing. SD3 does everything better, except for the combat is dull, you can't really dodge all that much that matters, and basically you just end up standing on top of bosses and spamming the attack button. I still prefer SD3 though, regardless of SOM having the better (non magic) battle system.