Ghosts N Goblins

Christopher Columbus: The Golden Dawn (a JRPG based off Columbus discovering The New World...and Atlantis). No joke but I couldn't get past the first random encounters without reading a guide. Once you get past the obscenely hard battles and level up enough to fight enemies without much hassle you gain access to your ship.
Then you get to sale across a massive map of The Old World filled with typhoons, storms and pirates..I never actually got to America, though according to a walkthrough I read its pretty disappointing.

I'm not sure about the hardest game I've ever played, ever (I've played so many), but definitely the hardest I've played recently was Megaman and Bass... Holy cow, even exploiting the quicksave/quickload, it was almost impossible for me... I might try it again, but holy moly Broly.

Oh, and I also remember having the most difficult time playing Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat for the PS1. It's an RTS game based on the Warhammer universe. It was just difficult, and the the tutorials weren't great. I really didn't even know what I was trying to do, even though the instruction booklet that comes with it is, like, 30 pages. Really frustrating.

It's really hard for me to choose the "Hardest Game" I've ever played. I've played a lot of hard games -

But the hardest game I've played through in it's entirely lately on Vizzed Is "Snakes Revenge" For the NES. The direct sequel to "Metal Gear" for the NES.

Snakes revenge is brutally hard to beat without using a guide and minimal to no save states.

If you are up for a huge challenge, I highly recommend you give it a try. Let me know how it goes ;-) lol

https://www.vizzed.com/play/snakes-revenge-nes-online-nintendo-nes-685-game

The hardiest game Ive played would have to be sonic unleashed for xbox 360

I recently completed The Evil Within on Survival difficulty. No doubt the hardest game I've ever played, but also one of the best.

I'm gonna say Dark Souls. That game was just unforgivingly hard. Never beaten it, and never will. I'm fed up with that game, ehehe...

The hardest game that I have ever played...

A lot comes to my mind, but I would probably land on XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Impossible Iron man mode. I mean, just look at the literal name of that mode. The game saves whenever you do anything automatically, meaning you can not undo any mistakes. The game features a permanent death system on top of this, meaning mistakes are never small. Beating the first mission on impossible Iron man mode is so difficult, you might not ever be able to do it without intense study, patience, and strategy. Not to mention that the game features a RNG damage system, meaning you must gamble with percentages. A lot of times, it comes down to you being extra lucky to win a single encounter, or being unbelievably unfortunate and losing all soldiers on a 99% success rate roll (That's XCOM, baby).

The game was even harder at launch, so hard that they actually had to make easy mode easier, because people complained the game was too difficult. Still not buying into the difficulty? XCOM 2, the sequel coming early next year, is set in a world where the XCOM project of XCOM: Enemy Unknown failed. The game developers said this was canon, because almost everybody lost their first campaign. I'm not kidding, you can Google that.

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you lose too much support (A.K.A. you lose too many missions), the game is over and you start completely over. Another insane thing is that XCOM 2 is apparently going to be even harder than XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It'll have random maps, meaning you can't memorize good spots - forcing new strategies on every map and encounter.

I've played some hard games. Dark Souls, Blood Borne, FTL (Yeah, FTL. It's hard, don't judge me) - but XCOM: Enemy Unknown on impossible Iron man is the most unforgiving, unfair, yet somehow fun experience I have ever had. I've dumped 900 hours into the game, and I still have not beaten it on impossible Iron man. As a matter of fact, I haven't even made it half way. It's probably because I refuse to read guides on it, but one day I will beat it. One day.

I have been playing Velocibox a bit lately and now ill have to argue that this is the hardest game, and no its not possible to win. In the entire time I have played the game before, not now I never made it past level 9 yet there's about 30 levels and just getting past level 1 is hard enough without dying a dozen times because you need a ton of hand eye coordination and you need to be so quick and that makes it even harder.