8 Video Games That Kill You On The First Screen!

If we're being honest, despite the sheer lusciousness of its visuals, the Dragon's Lair arcade experience was a thoroughly cheap one. Actually, scratch that, it was a very expensive one because a single wrong move would end in your death and another piece of shrapnel being fed into the cabinet. This title was an absolute hoover attachment for your wallet, and thanks to the vague try-and-see gameplay you'd likely die without even knowing how to proceed properly.

For some reason, this incredulous difficulty was something the NES port of the game doubled down on, as the opening screen was an utter hellscape! As a rather poorly rendered Dirk, you had to cross a bridge to enter the castle, however, thanks to bats, falling planks, and a goofy-looking dragon such a simple task is made almost impossible!

What makes this so infuriating is that Dirk has input delay as well as one of the weirdest jumps in gaming, both leaping too high into enemy fire and also not very far at all meaning it was very likely to drop to your death or get roasted alive.

Plus special shout-out to that final bat that spawns in just as you're about to enter the gate which could kill you just when you thought you were on the upswing. Absolute bastard.