The 20 most challenging titles for the Sega Genesis

“Ghouls ‘n Ghosts” is the second game in the “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” series, the first of which is considered one of the hardest games in Nintendo history. The sequel was on a few different platforms, including Sega Genesis. For a new console, the precision required to avoid a swift death in “Ghouls ‘n Ghosts” was difficult.

“Ecco the Dolphin” is a Sega original, and is known as one of the weirdest games as well as one of the toughest games. You play as Ecco, a dolphin who, um, travels through time to fight aliens. You can sing, echolocate, and ram yourself into enemies. Many classify “Ecco the Dolphin” as taking the frustration of underwater levels to a whole new level.

If you poll people who have played “Comix Zone,” the general consensus you’ll land on is something like, “That game is so cool, and I hate it.” Fans of video games will praise it for its visual style cribbed from comic books and for being ensconced in ‘90s culture. Then, they will tell you it is basically impossible to beat. The journey from joy to anger is swift with “Comix Zone.”

Oddly, while “Alien Soldier” was released as a cartridge in Japan and Europe, in North America it was only available through the short-lived Sega Channel, so many of you likely missed this one. While the game got good reviews, even the positive assessments often praised it for how challenging it was. Those less prone to prize “challenging” above all else labeled it too difficult, mostly thanks to a steep learning curve that threw you right into the mix.

The third entrant in this beat-em-up series, “Streets of Rage 3” was a sea change in several ways. Levels got longer, gameplay got faster, and there was actually a real plot and character dialogue and such. All this complexity added to the complexity of playing the game. What was previously a breezy play suddenly became a chaotic onslaught of baddies that ramped up the difficulty tenfold.

Much how the second “Super Mario Bros.” in America was a revamp of an unrelated game called “Doki Doki Panic,” the second Shinobi game is adapted from the arcade game “Shadow Dancer,” hence the title. Notably, “The Secret of Shinobi” has varying difficulty levels, with the highest level of difficulty being considered nigh-impossible.

“The Secret of Shinobi” is a bit more of an off-the-beaten-path title in the series. “The Revenge of Shinobi,” as the first game in the series of the Genesis, and in fact it is one of the first games to come out for the console. That makes it iconic, but throughout the run of the Genesis it remained a common choice as the toughest game of them all. Part of that is, with a new system working the kinks out, the gameplay of “The Revenge of Shinobi” is considered a bit clunky, even counterintuitive. Some call the game “hard because it’s bad,” as opposed to “hard by design.”

“Kid Chameleon” is a fun name for a hard game. As much endurance test as video game, “Kid Chameleon” boasts about having over 100 levels, though many of them can be skipped over in the run of play. Even so, the best players are lucky to beat “Kid Chameleon” in four hours — and that’s four hours straight, for the record. There was no save feature to this game.

“Target Earth” is the inverse of “Kid Chameleon.” It only has eight levels, but basically after the first level you are thrown right into the “hard” level of difficulty. Somewhat intentionally clumsy (you are in a mech suit), even those frustrated by the controls of “Target Earth” are often quick to point out that it is a really good game regardless.

Video game aficionados like to evoke the lore of game producer Ed Annunziata. He’s responsible for, among others, “Ecco the Dolphin” and “Chakan: The Forever Man.” The reputation of Annunziata that lives on is that he disliked the idea of some kid beating one of the games he developed in a weekend, and so was driven to make it a real effort to beat his games. “Chakan” is a favorite among Sega Genesis fans, the kind of game that people find deeply frustrating, but keep playing anyway. Sounds like what Annunziata wanted.

We see the title “RoboCop vs. The Terminator,” and we immediately want to pick up a Genesis controller, like, now. However, once the novelty of playing as RoboCop and shooting up a bunch of Terminators, and also the novelty of the 16-bit gore that is splattered all over the game has subsided, you’ll likely put said controller down. Somehow, this game plays like a chore, largely because enemies take forever to defeat. Even the lowest-level drone baddie can absorb a barrage of bullets before exploding in a geyser of blood.

Yes, this is a port of the original, but no discussion of difficult early-‘90s video games would be complete without “Battletoads.” A riff on/ripoff of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Battletoads” is iconically tough to beat. It could likely be considered the toughest game to beat on the Sega Genesis all in all. However, since it isn’t in the bones of the Sega Genesis culturally speaking, we’ll drop it here as an acknowledgement.

So “The Immortal” is an ironic title, right? You are going to die…and die…and die when you play “The Immortal.” It’s famously easy to die in “The Immortal,” a trial-and-error puzzle game with a penchant for setting you back to the beginning over and over. Near as we can tell, there is nary a person who has played “The Immortal” who doesn’t find its particular flavor of difficulty annoying.

No relation to the woeful “Batman & Robin” movie from a few years later, fortunately. There were actually two different “The Adventures of Batman and Robin” games, one for the Super Nintendo and one for Sega Genesis, but they were developed by different companies. The Sega version is generally considered to be better, but also to be quite difficult. Many hold it up as one of the best Batman video games regardless, though.

“Gaiares” is a side-scrolling space adventure, but it has a few things that set it apart in terms of difficulty. One is the fact enemy placement is randomized for each level, so you can’t replay a level over and over and memorize where the enemies are. Another is the “TOZ System,” which requires you to take weapons from enemies to power up, which often means figuring out how to take a weapon from an enemy so you can, in turn, kill that enemy.

“M.U.S.H.A.” may stand for “Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor,” but it also stands for “difficulty” on the Genesis console. Now, it’s basically an impossible game to find these days. Buying a copy will set you back a pretty penny, but that only provokes more tales of just how hard “M.U.S.H.A.” is as a game. Maybe you’ll never play it, but if you bring it up among fans of ‘90s games, there is a chance somebody will speak fondly of it, and of how hard it was.

“Fatal Labyrinth” sounds like a hard game…and it is. It’s also one of the games that some say “play dirty” when it comes to difficulty. If you don’t eat, you die. If you eat too much, you die. If you pick up too much gold, you die. A save feature? Forget about it! All that, and we haven’t even gotten to the enemies in this dungeon crawler.

This weird game was originally only for the Amiga, but in time it would be ported. When it got ported to North America, apparently things went wrong. From what we’ve heard about other versions of “Shadow of the Beast,” it was always a tough game. However, the port for North America was evidently converted wrong, and thus ran faster than intended. That rendered the game nearly impossible.

Sega’s sequel to “Earthworm Jim” is packed with all the quirk and humor of the original, but overstuffed with just about everything else. It throws a lot at you, perhaps too much. Sure, “Earthworm Jim 2” is clearly not phoned in, but it’s also overwhelming every time you play a level for the first time. Fortunately, you’ll likely have enough fun to be willing to play a level a few times before beating it.

Hey, it’s right there in the title. Any list of the toughest Sega Genesis games will assuredly include “Contra: Hard Corps.” There’s a lot of people who can’t beat “Contra” for NES without the famed Konami Code. Well, that game has nothing on “Hard Corps.” This game is an onslaught from the beginning of the first level. It doesn’t let you breathe. It doesn’t let you relax. You have to be on your toes every second of this game. A lot of people enjoy it, but even they are in it for the immense challenge.