10 Video Game Levels That Confused Everyone As Kids

8. Carnival Night Zone, Act 2 - Sonic The Hedgehog 3

To those reared on the checkpoint-heavy games of today, the earlier Sonic games must seem positively barbaric, with their more no-holds barred approach to Game Overs, requiring players to start the entire game all over again once they run out of lives.

But the most baffling level in any Sonic game is surely Carnival Night Zone's Act 2 in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where players are faced with a red barrel obstacle and no clear indication of how to pass it. Though players can move the barrel downwards by jumping on it, it's not enough to actually move past it.

Better known these days as the "Barrel of Doom," it's a "puzzle" which left thousands if not millions of players clueless and was a major point of discussion in gaming magazines of the era.

Worse still, the solution is simple enough that players had to restrain themselves from breaking their controller over their knee once they found out.

When stood on the barrel, players can move it up or down by pressing the corresponding D-pad button, creating enough separation that Sonic and Tails can squeeze through the gap.

Given that there is no visual indication that players could do this, most only found out through accidental experimentation or by reading the answer in a gaming mag.

As such, this one really isn't a case of kids being kids: the devs screwed up, and Sonic 3's lead programmer Yuji Naka even eventually apologised for creating such a headache.