Practically impossible levels and bosses

[Erik_Twice]

In all fairness, this thread is a little silly...most bosses in video games are meant to be beaten. The ones that "can't" be beaten were clearly not designed to be.

Hey, if you don't find the topic interesting you are free to ignore it! I, for one, find the it so and nowhere as simple as you are implying.

Mr Popo's example of those Cave games is a very good one and pretty much what I was looking for. The game can be beaten, but only by extremely good players who took years practising to beat them. The games can be beaten, are designed to be beaten, but just aren't beaten because they are very hard.

A similar example would be Beatmania IIDX. While even songs with 26 notes per second are cleared on release day by the best players, few of them are as good when it comes to playing with two controllers and one of the songs went unbeaten for six or seven years in that mode.

Quasar (A) Double Play


Interestingly it doesn't look much harder than any other hard song in double.

[isiolia]

The raid boss Pandemonium Warden in Final Fantasy 11. The best guild in the game fought it for 18 hours and did not beat it.

Long since adjusted (as was Absolute Virtue, though that had been downed, just not via the means SE intended it to be).

But, yeah, at the time it was...not baranced >_> May not have been were it not for the bad press SE got from that.

[ZeroAX]

You would...until everyone realized that you spent it all on video games...

Meh. We've spent money on worse stuff. Like Olympic Games. At least with the video kind, you are left with the cartridges

[Gunstar Green]

Take the first boss in Mega Man X, before you take on the MMX Master Robot equivalents. I've never beaten him, but I've heard it is possible, and if you do it then the game lets you skip ahead. Is this true, and what are other games where this is possible?

According to gamefaqs boards, it is impossible in Mega Man X (SNES), but he can be defeated in Maverick Hunter X (PSP).

He actually had a health bar in Maverick Hunter X, which was kind of lame.

But yeah, anyone who says you can beat Vile in the intro stage of the original Mega Man X is a filthy liar.

In all fairness, this thread is a little silly...most bosses in video games are meant to be beaten. The ones that "can't" be beaten were clearly not designed to be.

Hey, if you don't find the topic interesting you are free to ignore it! I, for one, find the it so and nowhere as simple as you are implying.

Mr Popo's example of those Cave games is a very good one and pretty much what I was looking for. The game can be beaten, but only by extremely good players who took years practising to beat them. The games can be beaten, are designed to be beaten, but just aren't beaten because they are very hard.

A similar example would be Beatmania IIDX. While even songs with 26 notes per second are cleared on release day by the best players, few of them are as good when it comes to playing with two controllers and one of the songs went unbeaten for six or seven years in that mode.

Quasar (A) Double Play


Interestingly it doesn't look much harder than any other hard song in double.

The Kurosawa 2 example was a good one as well. Most players will never beat it and just move on and even some of the best Wing Commander players will still lose the mission most of the time.

While the mission is beatable it's very design was put forth to cause the player to lose a mission. It was meant to encourage players to explore the branching paths instead of constantly redoing difficult missions to stay on the winning path. Basically it was meant to frustrate the player into just taking the loss and moving on.

[Sarge]

Does The Joker in NES Batman count?

[ExedExes]

The Kurosawa 2 example was a good one as well. Most players will never beat it and just move on and even some of the best Wing Commander players will still lose the mission most of the time.

While the mission is beatable it's very design was put forth to cause the player to lose a mission. It was meant to encourage players to explore the branching paths instead of constantly redoing difficult missions to stay on the winning path. Basically it was meant to frustrate the player into just taking the loss and moving on.

That's a great example for this thread and also one that fits the original post well. We played it earlier this year in Together Retro, and when I got to that pivotal moment, I saw 2 YouTube videos. One said "Your mission is to EJECT" (to get the medal for doing just that!) and the other one just went through it like any other mission and completed it. But Rostov was a bit annoying too because each level was full of asteroids and other stuff, plus I believe that was a 3 mission area.

[avrame]

The final boss in Super Mario RPG...

All the years I've replayed this game and all the high level characters I've had and with all the combinations; I've only beat him with dumb luck.

Man, ive beaten Smithy so many times, when i was 10-11 years old, i would wake up every morning and watch Garfield and Friends, Sonic the Hedgehog, then beat Smithy.

Was like a ritual, i used Rock Candies and Fire/Ice Bombs, along with the Lazy Shell + Geno's special attacks (forget the name) hes a dead Smithy!

Not sure if he was talking about Smithy or the hidden boss Culex.

Either way, a fun one I tired to power level for was the first encounter against Leon Magnus in Tales of Destiny for PS1. He is supposed to be near-unbeatable, seeing that the game continues after you lose to him, but by either power leveling for awhile (or using a gameshark, pick your poison) you CAN beat him, and unlock a secret 'ending':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwqO1wDUnFc

[Menegrothx]

I think you need to differentiate "bosses that are literally unbeatable" from "bosses who are functionally unbeatable". The first category is for boss fights that are more of a playable scripted event. The second is for the ridiculously hard stuff like the true last boss of the most recent Cave games where there are a single digit number of players who have beat it on one credit.

Can they be beaten with out the use of bombs though? That's what I'd like to know, are the bullet patterns designed so that you can survive the entire encounter with out taking a hit like in many other similiar shmups, or are you forced to use a bomb at some point to avoid taking damage?
Donkey Kong Country Returns is another good example in my opinion, while nowhere near as crazy as cave shooters: having Diddy with you makes any given level of the game significantly easier at times because you can jump longer and hover in the air, but I don't think there is a single challenge in the entire game that you can't beat by just playing as Donkey Kong.
I can't think of any examples, but I think that you can make the argument that games where that isn't possible can be considered "technically unbeatable" (some levels/bosses cannot be beaten with out some power up/item)

[GigaPepsiMan]

Not sure if this only applies to the PAL version of the game but the second to last level of Pandemonium on PS1 is pretty much impossible because at the end of the stage you have this wind that pushes you back and to your death and it seems like the exit is impossible to reach no matter how perfectly you time this run.

[Soldier Blue]

The first major boss in Devil May Cry (giant spider) I just found to be incredibly difficult and just gave up on the game entirely. Maybe I just suck though