10 Hardest SNES Games

Ogre Battle was directed by Yasumi Matsuno and designed by Matsuno with Akihiko Yoshida. It mixes movement elements of a real-time tactics game with the character development and combat of a role-playing game. You lead a band of rebels against an empire, moving units across the map to free its towns. Once a fight starts, you do not directly control your unit. You pick a tactic for it to follow and hope it goes after the right enemy.

The hardest fight is with your own army. A mix of high- and low-alignment fighters makes the strongest force, but the best ending needs the two kept in separate units, with only the high-alignment ones freeing towns. There are four hidden stages on top of that. Players who finished it call it one of the toughest RPGs they ever played.

The 7th Saga is the localized version of the Super Famicom game Elnard. Long ago a divine being named Saro defeated an evil entity named Gorsia with the power of seven runes, and the runes have been scattered across the globe since. You play one of the apprentices who go looking for them. A bounty hunter named Pison has been hired by one of the apprentices to eliminate the rest, and the traitor is randomized with each new game.

Its reputation comes from the trip to America. It is infamous for its high difficulty, while the Japanese version is much easier, because of balance changes made in its localization. One reviewer said the enemies are tactically too similar to each other, and they show up constantly, so combat becomes a chore. Players who want a hard SNES RPG point to this one and call it tough as nails.

Super Mario World is the first Mario game for the SNES, and it was designed to make the most of the console's technical features. Takashi Tezuka directed it, with Shigeru Miyamoto as producer. It added a save system and a less linear world map. It also introduced Yoshi, a dinosaur Mario can ride who can eat most enemies. It sold more than twenty million copies, making it the best-selling SNES game.

So why is it here? The road to Bowser is fair, and the save takes most of the sting out. The trouble is off to the side, in the secret routes and the extra levels you only find by looking. Players who grew up with it say it was harder than they expected, from small kids who found the whole thing too difficult to people who did a full clear and hit a wall on the Star Road bonus levels.

Super Star Wars follows the first film. You fight your way through the wastelands of Tatooine to the hostile streets of Mos Eisley and beyond, with brief cutscenes between levels telling an abbreviated version of the film's story. Luke starts it, and later stages allow the player to control Han Solo or Chewbacca. You also pilot two vehicles in high-speed, first-person, 3-D sequences. The music is the film score, converted onto the Super NES's 8-channel sound chip.

It was followed by Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in 1993 and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in 1994. Players say all three are punishing run and guns, the kind of game that tells anyone who finds modern action games hard to come and try this. It looks like the movie and plays like an arcade machine that wants your quarters.

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is part of the Battletoads series. Tradewest released it in North America in June 1993, around the same time as Battletoads/Double Dragon, another installment in the series. It was left out of the Rare Replay collection for the Xbox One, and its first official re-release only came on the Nintendo Classics service on February 21, 2024. For most of its life, playing it meant owning the cartridge.

Critics praised its varied gameplay and music, and criticized its lack of originality and high difficulty. That difficulty is the reason people still bring it up. Players name it when the talk turns to the hardest games they ever played, and two players at once does not make it easier. One player summed it up: "Even with modern emulator features, grinding out a win against it isn't worth the time involved."

Rare, a British studio founded by Tim and Chris Stamper, bought Silicon Graphics workstations to render 3D models, and 12 developers worked on Donkey Kong Country over 18 months. It was one of the first home console games to feature pre-rendered graphics. It was released in November 1994 to acclaim, and with 9.3 million copies sold worldwide it is the third-bestselling SNES game.

Almost every level has collectibles, shortcuts and hidden bonus areas, and none of that matters if you cannot get to the end. Players who go back to it are surprised by how hard it is, and they describe it as trial and error, with some comparing its deaths to Dark Souls. It is the kind of game you learn by dying in it, one level at a time.

Disney's Aladdin was made by Capcom and designed by Shinji Mikami. It was released in November 1993, the same month that another game with the same title came out from Virgin Games for the Sega Genesis. In the Capcom game, Aladdin has no scimitar. He defeats foes by jumping on them or throwing apples. Mikami later said that if he had not made the SNES game, he "would probably buy" the Genesis game because it has a sword. It sold approximately 1.75 million copies, the best-selling licensed game of the system.

Nintendo Power's reviewers said it was "not as challenging as you would expect from Capcom". Plenty of kids disagreed. In the escape from the Cave of Wonders you ride the Magic Carpet through a self-scrolling stage while outrunning waves of lava. Players who had it as kids say it was far too hard for them, and the lava escape is the level they remember.

Contra III was the first Contra directed by Nobuya Nakazato, who designed it with more comical elements and tighter stage design than its predecessors. It came out in North America on March 26, 1992. In Europe it became Super Probotector: Alien Rebels, and the heroes were changed to look like robots. It is considered one of the greatest video games of all time.

The American version is the harder one. The Japanese version is easier thanks to having unlimited continues and the final boss appearing on normal difficulty. Players who go back to it as adults find it as hard as they remember, and tougher than the NES games, and the missiles are where a lot of their runs end.

Westwood Studios made The Lion King for the Super NES and Sega Genesis, and Virgin Interactive published it. The sprites and backgrounds were drawn by Disney animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and two levels, Hakuna Matata and Be Prepared, were adapted from scenes cut from the final movie. Roughly 4.5 million copies of The Lion King were sold in total.

The difficulty was a business decision. In 2014, director Louis Castle revealed that the game was made difficult, especially level 2, due to pressure from Disney so that people would not be able to complete it during the rental period. The monkey puzzle in the Can't Wait to be King level was expanded to do it. Next Generation said the game is much harder than Aladdin but never unfair or frustrating. Players who had it as kids disagree, and plenty of them never got past that second level.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is the third installment in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series and the first not to be released for arcades. Knight Arthur sets out again to save the princess from Emperor Sardius, who has cast a spell that has revived the Ghoul Realm. Chests can hold deadly traps, and a magician called the Conjurer turns Arthur into a weaker form for a while: a baby, a girl, a seal or a wasp.

Capcom knew what it had made. The European version removed certain enemies and obstacles to reduce the difficulty and potential slowdown. Players use it as the measuring stick for hard SNES platformers, asking whether another game is harder than this one, and those who pick it up again for nostalgia find it as hard as they remember. Players put it at the top of this list.