I tested the cracked version a while back for the outro and the castle section is really pants ;) Thanks again for the longplay laffer :great :D

Jim power is everything but easy... No chance to beat it without cheats at least for me.
Hagar the Horrible not as hard as Jim but realy challenging.

Finished Mr. Nutz without cheats when I was a kid :D Took a long time, though!

i never beat any jump'n run/platformer without cheats
most i die in 2nd scene

i fail hard on:
crazy sue 2, first level
crazy sue 1, one time i came to 2. level, yeahh
the plague, turri, narc, turri2..and so on

..but this is good...because at sidescrollers/shooters i die at first few enemys

I think Leander and Gods are beatable, but they also had the reputation of being real hard cases. If you absolutely don't want to use cheat you can use a semi-cheat (save state in WinUAE). Recorded Amiga Games has some videos on Youtube, at least for Gods.

Jim Power has no AI, only previsible patterns. So you can finish it with one hand tied in your back :)

From the "Virtually impossible" list I've beaten (without cheats, in difficulty order):
Lethal Weapon
Beyond the Ice Palace
Ruff n Tumble

I would never agree on that concerning Jim Power, dlfrsilver - I am CONVINCED it is too hard xD But you certainly made me think about trying this one again, hmmm...

Gods at least has passwords (yeah!) - and of course you have to use a legit, uncracked version. It is rumoured that the difficulty is steeper on some bad cracks (not sure, though).

Beyond the Ice Palace,... now there's a game I dont see often mentioned :) Quite a decent ghosts 'n goblins style game. I never found it particularly difficult though.

Slight sidebar, but Amstrad cpc version looked very similar to amiga/st versions. So much so that Ive always wondered if the graphics where actually made for the cpc and ever so slightly modified for 16bit versions.

edit: just checked it out on youtube and it doesnt look as close as Id always thought. Seems C+VG used 16bit version screenshots for the amstrad cpc review,..... heh, and all these years I was thinking it was a great looking cpc game :)

Hehe :D But it does look quite similar indeed...

From that first list, I also beat:

- Parasol stars
- Rainbow Islands
- Jim Power

All tough as they progress but with a lot of practice and back then many more hours to waste they could eventually be conquered.

Think determination was part of it too.

Gods and Leander were beatable (had originals of both) but felt they had so many levels - spent hours learning them and trying to get through them both in one go. Leander probably the longer of the two.

Beating Gods is still something that impresses me. This is definitely a game where some people are just patient enough and others simply get frustrated too early. Usually I am not that easy to frustrate even with games on other saystems (beating Rogue Leader which has quite a bad mission design really, Contra Shattered Soldier on A or Vagrant Story with EASE afte some time - still you can't possible say those are easy games. They have flaws (except Contra and Vagrant Story that is) but are also designed to be a challenge just like in the Amiga days). Still - the patience required to finish Gods is truly something that should earn you a rank amongst Gods.

Gods definitely was a challenge, both enjoyable and frustrating at times.

As with many games though the ending of Gods was such a disappointment, after all that effort, playing time and learning the jumps, traps and treasures to be greeted with such a relatively crappy outro.

Would make you want to throw the game out of the window!


Just remembered another couple of toughies, though not sure you could call then 'Jump n Runs':

Gold of the Aztecs (Shuffle, jump, run, somersault, shoot, die, begin again. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr - mucho patience needed!)

Yolanda (just utter frustration, though easier if you learn the traps)

Actually I don't mind expanding the thread to ALL genres of games but it's too late I can't change it (and something like this already exists on the boards here somewhere :))

Damn, after playing through Lionheart with relative ease now I STILL cannot get any further in Gods (roughly tried both for about the same amount of time). Gods has passwords but the final part of the first world is already hardcore beyond all recognition. If you compare Lionheart to today's games it's already unbeatable hard - now do that with Gods, I mean what amount of time do you have to invest in that game to actually beat it :D I wonder how many people beat Cadaver for that matter - or hey, Xenon 2, that ultra slow but incredibly good sounding (and looking...) game - who actually played through that beast? :)

Oh oh and one more thing - I get further in Shadow of the Beast (1!) than Gods, Cadaver or Xenon 2. All 4 games are favourites of mine so that's not the problem and by the first game I mentioned you can see that I do not just suck at the stuff - so really, you beat Gods: Shadow of the Beast is a piece of cake (and should subsequently be rated far better in terms of playability...) :D

Sorry, always getting off topic when it comes to Gods xD

I beat a cracked version of Gods without cheats, and I wasn't very good at platformers at all. So it is very beatable.

Epic, getting really embarassing how many people seem to have beat the game with ease xD How do you think about the difficulty of other jump'n runs?

I never found platformers easy to play, but then again, maybe it was a case of not trying hard enough.

What I'm trying to say is, most of my games were pirated, and hence came bundled with a very convenient trainer. These disabled hit detection and granted me unlimited lives, unlimited energy and so on. And as a young boy who struggled with these games, of course I enabled the trainer by default!

Other games (which didn't come with a trainer) seemed easy for the most part, but then had frustratingly difficult parts thrown into the mix, seemingly in order to prevent your progress. Hudson Hawk is a good example - it's smooth going for the first three or so levels, and then you are subjected to a safe cracking twitch mini game that, I thought, was really hard. I rarely made it past this section, which was a shame, because I loved how stylised and slick that game was.

Another good example of the above point is Rainbow Islands - smooth sailing for the most part, until you hit a roadblock in the Vampire boss, whom I could never defeat.

Other platformers were just outright hard, bordering on the tedious. I recall a part in Robocop 2 were you had to land a few particular pixel perfect jumps in succession, or else it was instant death in a simmering vat of acid. I could rarely pull it off. Again, yet another shame, because I liked that game alot.

However, despite my ineptitude at platformers, I did manage to beat Gods, my favourite Amiga game ever, as well as Turrican and Toki (the latter being an achievement I am especially proud of, as I found the game quite difficult - especially the roller coaster section and the final boss). I beat these three mostly though a combination of memorising events and attack patterns, quick reflexes and sheer luck.

Just finally, I also reviewed Leander for the last installment of APoV magazine. I didn't have the time to go through it without cheats, but I will say that it seemed quite beatable, using the tactics I discussed above.

More of a shooter/beat 'em up/racer/flight sim fan when it came to Amiga games, though.

Well, at least Gods has its password system. I might just try it again. Such posts are always so encouraging!! :D