I mean, they came out at around the same time and centered around archetypal old wizard types, and I think both of them had a feature article in Nintendo Power.

There was a different game, Equinox, that was a sequel to Solstice a few years later.

I played so many of these style of isometric platform puzzlers on the c64, and kind of hated them all, for whatever reason solstice was the exception.

The Immortal is one of those games that's a lot harder emulate than on an actual console. I beat it as a kid, a few of my friends beat it, but whenever I tried to play it as an adult I couldn't get past that rowing stage.

Turns out it was USB and display latency, because when I finally got the acual NES back up with a little CRT it was still hard but very doable with 3 or 4 tries. Never even came close on an emulator.

That was fun, I'm now 3.12% buffer.

Most people hold up Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, or Ghouls & Ghosts as the most impossible NES game, but I propose that it's actually Legacy of the Wizard.

(or possibly Cobra Triangle)

Ghosts & Goblins, my mistake

Legacy of the Wizard isn't quite as bad as the others, it just takes forever to figure out what you're supposed to be doing.

The final two levels of TMNT are some bullshit, also.

Legacy Of the Wizard is fun, it's just HUGE, like a bigger, more cryptic Metroid with half a dozen playable characters that all have unique attributes.

It the pre-internet days as a kid nobody I know ever figured out the trick to beat those jet pack guys easily, so the second to last room of the last level of TMNT always ate up al my remaining lives. Getting there wasn't so bad if you had the time and patience.

Ninja Gaiden is hard but fair up until the last boss, but if you don't beat that boss on your first try then it's so demoralizing (getting sent back like 3 levels and then not getting the health refill between the final boss forms anymore) I usually don't feel like playing it for a month or two.

Batman is really well balanced until the last boss.

Ghosts and Goblins is hard and I've still never quite beat it but the hardest thing for me is the scrolling - it's so jerky it gives me eye fatigue.

Castlevania III can be pretty frustrating if you make the mistake of taking the hard path without Grant.


Kirby's Dream Land is the hardest though, not because of the actual game bu because I was about 92% through it when it wiped all my saves.

I've never beaten a Mario game on any platform, but I've beaten Jekyll & Hyde.

Been playing a fair amount of NES during the pandemic, and I'm really glad I held on to all the old games people gave me over the years and filled in a few classics last winter before it hit, because I'm not the only one and a lot of that stuff got way too expensive really quickly this summer.

The maze of the airbase level in TMNT was bullshit, but not even 1% as bullshit as mapping out the maze in Legacy. Aside from the maze, the final levels were trivial if you wanted to tediously farm scrolls in level 3.

I tried mapping out Legacy of the Wizard for 2 years. I never even found one of the 5 crown bosses. I gave up because on top of having to map out that impossible dungeon, you had to tediously grind gold (that you may or may not get from RNG), and all progress on a run could be lost by missing a single jump.

that was meant to be part of the above ever-growing comment thread