So I wrote an article once for a friend’s website detailing the most horrifyingly impossible video games in creation (mostly consisting of those for the old NES system, and if you grew up in the 80s, DUH. You already knew that). As luck would have it, he changed the software for the main index, fully intending to re-add that piece and others at a later time. Then his computer shit the bed and he lost the database – hoo! Yeah, I know you’re reading this you fucking dickhead, I should have kept them out of your clumsy, knobby hands; it’s not bad enough that you tricked me into downloading bananaphone.mp3 at least 5 times by disguising it as other songs you said I might like, but then on top of it you had to just haul back and wipe your virtual Florida monkeybutt with my painstakingly crafted masterworks.  ASSHOLE!

Regardless, I’ll just compose myself the best I can and offer up a new version of that article, since it’s impossible to forget the games that were in the original list. Oh fuck yes it is, believe me, I’ve tried. Some of them may be, even still, mocking me from their dusty places of rest under the bed back at the house where I grew up. For clarity, these are not listed in any particular order of annoyance, nor how cruel the Japanese game developers were feeling during the production of the title(s) in long overdue, sadistic response to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by turning American kids into irritable console zombies for 2 decades.

There’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen these screens…

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

Ok, like the antagonist of the game in question, this one’s a no-brainer. If you played this game as a kid, you wanted to kill someone. If you didn’t want to kill someone, then I leave you to science because I have no fucking idea what’s wrong with you. Maybe your parents came home from work every day and beat the living shit out of you and you started to like it, and this went on for years – that’s how bad it would have been to have fully enjoyed this game, happily losing to Mike Tyson time and time again, if you even managed to make it to the champ at all. While Mike was busy training to pummel the 14 bazillionth Nintendo geek into pseudo-sentient tuna casserole, Nintendo would blissfully throw fighters like Mr. Sandman (who, for some odd reason, looked like a vampire when stunned) and Super Machoman in your face, and despite the fact that they would effortlessly play with Little Mac’s skull between their fists like two Chinese guys would play with a helpless little white ball in the Ping-Pong World Title match, they were still far easier to beat than “Iron Mike”.

Tyson’s NES arms were TNT-strapped jackhammers from Hell fueled by lightning that would obliterate anything they came across, including your youthful sanity. However, at least until the last fight, the game had a consistent learning curve: straight uphill. When you got to Tyson, the hill just fucking fell on you.