10 Most Brutally Difficult NES Games EVER

8. Castlevania

Contra NES
Konami

Replaying Castlevania after years of contemporary gaming is like resitting your GCSEs at 50. Doomed for failure, and a cruel reminder you'll never be as good a gamer as you were in your childhood. The Castlevania franchise is a long-running series of games that has popped up on all sorts of different platforms, but it all started back in 1986.

Developed by Konami back when they were a respectable company, the game was ported to the NES following a successful launch on the Famicom Disk System (A Floppy Disk Console!). The result was a financial and critical success, spawning the series that we all know and love today.

But let's take off those rose-tinted specs for a moment because Castlevania was fundamentally difficult, and features some of the most skin-crawlingly annoying enemies to be committed to pixels. Medusa Heads. God Damn Medusa Heads, and their wavy motion causing you to miss jumps, fall off platforms, and curse at the TV.

Then there's Dracula, the big bad boss who makes you feel like you're fighting God with a stick.

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Avid writer of nonsense. Can often be seen in his natural habitat watching far too many films and not enough TV. Occasionally plays on the Xbox and Megadrive whilst chastising himself for not writing more.