When Nintendo hopped from 8-bit to 16-bit, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System helped advance the world of gaming to the next level in the early 1990s. This led to a selection of cherished 16-bit-era games including Super Mario World and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past.
Those classic games offered challenges to SNES players, but the system had a plethora of other titles that would truly test the patience of even the most hard-core gamers. From action-adventure games to JRPGs, the most difficult games on the SNES are still tough to beat even after 30 years.
ActRaiser
ActRaiser features two different gameplay styles. One is more akin to Sim City with the player creating the control of cities, guiding humans toward a bright future. However, there are two sidescrolling levels per area that force the player to swap to an action platformer style similar to Castlevania.
The mixing of the two genres was ambitious for its time, but ActRaiser will push players to their limits. Bosses and sidescrolling levels are hard, but managing the civilization can be confusing as well as difficult. This carries over into the game's sequel, ActRaiser II, also on the SNES.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
This game has players running around a cartoonish world fighting zombies in levels that parody and pay tribute to classic zombie films by George A. Romero. At first, Zombies Ate My Neighbors seems like a simple top-overview shooter, but that quickly changes after the first levels. More enemy types are introduced, and rescuing all of the neighbors becomes far from an easy task.
Completionists be warned: If one neighbor is killed by a zombie, it means either restarting the whole game or using a continue code. Certain weapons become essential later on. Otherwise, progress will come to a grinding halt, as some enemies can be defeated only by certain weapons.
Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Before Star Wars embraced a Dark Souls-like gameplay style with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the Super Star Wars trilogy for the SNES was how fans originally pulled hairs from their scalps. All three games are notoriously difficult due to enemies that relentlessly respawn and take the hero's health down easily.
The Empire Strikes Back is considered the most challenging, taking the precision platforming, difficult enemies, and seemingly endless boss fights to the extreme. Whether the player is controlling a Jedi or a Wookiee doesn't really matter because each level will take them out with ease and force the player to fight tooth and nail to win.
Chrono Trigger
Like most JRPGs at the time, Chrono Trigger is far from simple, and that's before the time travel gets involved. There is a famous beginner's trap that can change the outcome of the game's story if the player does simple things in the first act that seem harmless but actually have consequences.
RELATED: 10 Awesome Turn-Based JRPGs For Gamers Who Don't Like High Fantasy
From there, it only gets more mind-bending as the party of characters grows. It takes a lot of experimentation to learn their pros, cons and combo attacks. Traveling to different eras of time to complete tasks, using events in the past to affect events in the present and future. There is so much to take into account that it can be overwhelming.
Earthbound
Now that the internet is available, it's easy to find solutions to the obstacles along the journey to stop Giygas in Earthbound. However, in the early '90s, players struggled to beat this game due to the relentless enemies and overly tedious mission tasks.
The best example is when the player is forced to sit for three real-life minutes behind a waterfall to gain entry to a secret area. Combine that with constantly changing rules, concepts, and RPG gameplay that evolves throughout the playthrough, Earthbound can be a charming but overwhelming experience.
Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts
It may not have been one of the scariest horror games for the NES but the original Ghosts 'n Goblins was already a relentlessly difficult game. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts does what a proper sequel should do and takes what the first game did so well and amps it up. In this case, it was taking the difficult journey of Arthur and making it even harder.
Instead of six levels, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts features eight levels, and that gives a false idea that it might be a short game. However, each level throws so many enemies at the player alongside tricky platforming and very little health. Even by the halfway point, players may find themselves sliding into a rage or throwing a controller.
Earthworm Jim
The appealing animation of the character sprites and the bizarre but funny sense of humor will immediately suck in a player. From there, Earthwork Jim becomes a nightmare on the SNES with fast-paced enemies, confusing level layouts, and boss fights that can be straining.
Earthworm Jim keeps the player from rage-quitting thanks to the cartoonish antics that the titular hero goes through and through anticipation as to what wild visuals will be presented next. This carries over the sequel which amplifies everything from the art style to the variety of gameplay styles Jim takes on.
Super Metroid
Playing a large part in the creation of the gameplay style known as Metroidvania, Super Metroid is still referred to as one of the best games in the Metroid franchise for a reason. From the return of Samus to her having new abilities to the atmospheric and massive map combined with smooth controls.
Like many other Metroidvania games, Super Metroid requires a lot of exploration and memorization since not everything is spelled out to the player. Some puzzles to simply progress forward force the exploration of every nook and cranny, bringing the game to a high level of difficult. That's not even counting the tough enemies and boss fights.
Super Castlevania IV
Even before embracing the Metroidvania style of gameplay and one of the most convoluted video game timelines, classic Castlevania games were always a challenge to get through. Super Castlevania IV took elements of the first three games and created a remake of the first game that dials everything up to eleven.
The constant onslaught of enemies, each having their own attack pattern, is bad enough, but the knockback from taking damage can turn certain levels into nightmares. That health bar means nothing when the knockback causes Simon Belmont to fall to his death instantly.
Final Fantasy VI
It's Final Fantasy, one of the pinnacle JRPG franchises, and Final Fantasy VI is known for being not only one of the most beloved SNES titles but one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Part of that has to do with its difficulty, with each battle forcing the player to think tactically as to how to handle them.
Final Fantasy VI is also just a big game, and trying to find or complete everything is time-consuming. Fortunately, for all the difficulty the game brings, it is usually complemented with surprisingly good storytelling and character development for a SNES title told through text boxes.