unbeatable handicaps?

[Witchfynde]

No, I'm not talking about games that get impossible when you hit the difficulty switch to A--but you can gripe about those too, if you want --but I'm talking about something that made a game really hard just by itself, without flipping that switch.

 

Cases in point: it's really weird how two games I traded for recently have the exact same handicap: no extra lives!! M. A. D. is like Missile Command, or rather, more like Atlantis, where you have to save the cities, but you don't get any bonus points at the end of a wave for any cities left, and they don't get resurrected from the dead at 10,000 or anything! Needless to say, I can't even get 20,000 on that game.

 

Ditto goes for Oink!, although maybe the programmer felt he HAD to stay with the storyline: three pigs only! (Seems to me some cousins of the three pigs could count as extra lives or something...)

 

Anyway, just wanted to know what your nominations were, and why.

[D.Yancey]

Yeah, Oink is pretty tough. I plan on maxing it out one day, but for now my high score is just under 200,000. Having no way to earn bonus lives does make for an exceptional challenge. Has anyone else beaten Oink except for Todd Rogers?

[D.Yancey]

And another rotten surprise about Oink: each time you clear a level of bricks the point value increases by 4 points(4,8,12,16....) I was trying to do a math formula to figure out exactly how many bricks I would need to clear to get 999,999. However, the instruction manual does not tell you that there is a point cap on the bricks' value. Once you've cleared 99 levels, the points max out at 400 per brick. That surely slows progress in my quest for 999,999!!!

[Witchfynde]

Q*Bert not accepting diagional control is a bit weird, but not impossible, as I could still get through a lot of it's screens.

[Witchfynde]

Oh man: Space Attack. The first time I played it I beat it. It's a fun shoot 'em up, but I can't believe there's only two waves of attackers, and that's it.

 

Then try it on difficulty A. Holy crap!! Not only do they dodge a lot more, but they fire really quickly too, you have to constantly be on the move. It took two sessions of a few hours each time, spread over the period of two days, to beat the game on A. TOTALLY different game there, on A!

[ubersaurus]

Try flipping the other switch on Space Attack now the cylons or whatever mattel changed their names to will continue moving and fighting your ships even when you're in a fight already. Now beating it on double As...that is hard!