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00:07Welcome to MojoPlays and today we're looking at games that made seeing the credits a mammoth
00:11task. Whether they were crushingly long, crushingly complicated, or even just crushingly
00:15hard, these are 20 PS1 games that are almost impossible to finish. Let's go.
00:20Before we continue, we publish content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring
00:25the bell to get notified of our latest videos. Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories
00:3540 hours is already a serious commitment. Now imagine spending most of that time negotiating
00:40with random number generation. That is Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories. The rules barely resemble the
00:46card game people know today. Tributes are gone, fusion is essential, guardian stars matter enormously
00:50and the game explains almost none of it properly. Your starting deck can be bad through no fault of
00:55your own, while card rewards depend on whatever mood the universe is in. Fall behind and your
00:59best option is usually grinding the same duel repeatedly for stronger drops. Then the ending
01:04asks for six wins in a row. Boom.
01:15Irritating Stick
01:21There's something deeply insulting about an announcer yelling that you're too close to the edge while
01:26you're already desperately trying not to touch the edge. Welcome to Irritating Stick. You guide a tiny
01:32ball through painfully narrow courses with one collision ending the attempt, while a timer removes
01:37any chance of taking things slowly. It's basically operation crossed with a precision maze, except the
01:42board is actively rushing you. Later stages add tighter turns and nastier obstacles before you've
01:47properly recovered from the last stage. Steady hands help, memorization helps more, and eventually you
01:52develop the remarkable ability to hear watch out without immediately throwing a controller through
01:57your television. Here comes Mr. Robot!
02:07The first trap Saga Frontier 2 sets is looking absolutely beautiful. Soft watercolour artwork,
02:14lovely music, elegant presentation. Surely this will be relaxing. No, its story jumps between characters
02:20and different years, while character growth works nothing like a traditional RPG. Important opportunities can
02:26pass without you realizing they mattered, and the game rarely tells you what your party should be
02:30preparing for next. That confusion becomes expensive near the end, where an underdeveloped team can
02:36hit battles that feel borderline impossible, even after almost 100 hours of the game. Learning the systems
02:41helps enormously, but this is the kind of RPG where information you didn't know you needed 20 hours ago
02:46can decide whether you finish it.
02:59Dragon Warrior 7
03:05At some point during Dragon Warrior 7, finishing the game stops being a weekend plan that becomes
03:11something you need to take work off for. The campaign can push beyond 100 hours, and it doesn't
03:16exactly sprint out of the gate either. Even reaching the class system takes patience, then developing those
03:21classes means plenty of extra battles on top of an already enormous adventure. Dungeons are long,
03:26progression can be obscure, and later enemies will absolutely expose a party that has fallen behind.
03:31Nothing here is necessarily impossible by itself, the real problem is attrition. You finish an island,
03:38another one appears, another dungeon opens, and eventually you decide you'd rather play outside.
03:48Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero
03:56Before most deaths in Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero, there's a brief moment where you know
04:01exactly what you wanted Sub-Zero to do. Then the controls offer their own interpretation. Turning
04:06around requires a button, jumps are stiff, traps can kill you instantly, the wind temple is especially
04:11nasty with leaps demanding precision from a character who moves like he's only recently discovered he
04:16has knees. Combat isn't exactly a safe alternative either, because enemies and bosses punish mistakes
04:21really really quickly. Eventually you learn levels by repeatedly dying and memorizing what killed you.
04:27Once all that knowledge is locked in, things do become manageable. Unfortunately,
04:30getting there requires enough fatalities to make the actual Mortal Kombat tournament look reasonably regulated.
04:44Heart of Darkness
04:47Hey everybody, look, the eclipse!
04:52Most games teach you a challenge and then ask you to perform it. Heart of Darkness
04:57often reverses that process. First Andy dies horribly, then you discover what the lesson was.
05:02Each screen works almost like a compact puzzle, with one safe sequence buried among several terrible
05:08decisions. Take the wrong route, mistime a jump, or touch an enemy and you're immediately watching
05:12another surprisingly brutal death animation. Reflexes do matter, but memory matters way more. It's an
05:19annoying style that you see a lot in older games, where progress becomes this slow process of
05:24eliminating incorrect solutions until you discover the correct one, which can be pretty taxing if you
05:28consider yourself a seasoned puzzler.
05:34Final Fantasy Tactics
05:42The dangerous thing about Final Fantasy Tactics is how politely it allows you to build a terrible party.
05:48Jobs, abilities, equipment, positioning and character development all matter, but the game rarely stops to
05:53explain which decision you're making now might ruin your life later on. Grinding can cover plenty of
05:58mistakes right up until a story sequence suddenly locks you into harder battles. The ending castle
06:03being a famous nightmare where you save at the wrong moment with an underprepared team and your options
06:07become painfully limited. That's brutal after investing dozens of hours. The combat is fantastic once
06:13everything clicks, but getting there involves a lot of experimentation. Essentially, you're managing a
06:18medieval workplace where choosing the wrong promotion can result in three employees being murdered by a wizard.
06:34Fear Effect
06:35Talk or you'll start to tick, Jim. Now. Who are you waiting for?
06:40What? He's waiting for me. Get her!
06:43Tank controls, stealth, adventure game puzzles, sudden gunfights. Fear Effect basically opened the
06:51late 90s game design cupboard and tipped everything onto the floor. That mixture gives it a really unique
06:56identity, but it also makes finishing the game as exhausting as a tech conversation with your granddad.
07:02Which one is the remote for the telly? Why do you have 17 f***ing remotes? One section may require careful
07:07movement, the next demands obscure puzzle logic, and then stealth arrives just in time for the controls
07:12to become your greatest enemy. Some elements of the story and presentation certainly haven't aged
07:17wonderfully either, but its difficulty isn't something modern players invented. It was hard back in the year 2000 as well.
07:29Oddworld Abe's Odyssey
07:43Abe is trying to save his fellow Mudokons. You, meanwhile, are trying to save the last 10 minutes
07:49of progress. Oddworld Abe's Odyssey builds many rooms around exact sequences. Distract something,
07:55sneak somewhere, command somebody, avoid gunfire, pull a lever, and preferably don't move half an inch
08:00too far. Trial and error is unavoidable, but mistakes are punished so quickly that even learning the solution
08:05can become really, really, really exhausting. Plenty of screens give you almost no room to improvise
08:10once your plan begins. That cruelty is clearly deliberate, and finally solving a difficult section
08:15does feel fantastic. By today's standards, Abe fans are pretty on top of this one, but at release,
08:20boy oh boy, was it a toughie.
08:29Vagrant Story
08:38You swing your sword, it connects beautifully, damage basically non-existent. Welcome to
08:44Understanding Vagrant Story. Combat cares about enemy types, individual body parts, weapon classes,
08:49affinities, elemental properties, and several other numbers quietly plotting against you.
08:54Then the risk meter joins the conversation. Chaining attacks raises it, giving you certain offensive
08:59advantages, reproducing accuracy, and making Ashley more vulnerable. Get greedy during a boss fight,
09:04and suddenly the heroic warrior you've spent hours building could barely hit something standing
09:08directly in front of him. Once you understand the mathematics underneath everything,
09:12the system is brilliant. If you're a ten-year-old with no interest in study,
09:16this one is going in the unfinished pile.
09:25Einhander
09:33Square making a side-scrolling shooter was strange enough. Making one where your ship explodes
09:38after a single bad hit was apparently the next logical step. Einhander sends you through cramped
09:43industrial environments, while enemy fire arrives from multiple directions, making positioning almost
09:47as important as shooting. Gun pods provide the serious firepower needed to shorten tougher battles,
09:53but ammunition is limited. Wasted early and you're left pecking away with the weaker standard weapon,
09:58while everything around you becomes increasingly furious. There are certainly harder shoot-em-ups out
10:03there, but that doesn't make this comfortable. Finishing it requires sharp reactions, ammo management,
10:09and enough spatial awareness to recognize that the tiny gap between 12 bullets is apparently where
10:13Square expects you to hang out. Alien Resurrection
10:27The xenomorphs in Alien Resurrection apparently missed the meeting where old video game enemies
10:30are supposed to be idiots. They crawl across walls, drop from vents, attack from awkward angles,
10:35and can even flank you instead of obediently sprinting into your gunfire. What the hell?
10:40Is this the year 2000 or the year 2017? Even lower difficulties become tense because levels are enormous,
10:47and save terminals aren't exactly scattered around like vending machines. Hard mode make those terminals
10:53usable only once, turning every save into a decision you may regret later. Guess what? I regretted it later.
11:07The Lost World Jurassic Park
11:17One minute you're controlling a dinosaur, later you might be controlling a human. The only character who
11:22appears throughout all of the Lost World Jurassic Park is Anger. Each playable species handles differently,
11:27forcing you to relearn movement, attacks, and platforming, while the game keeps increasing
11:32the danger. The 2.5D graphics are genuinely impressive, but floaty jumping and awkward collision
11:37detection make plenty of hazards harder than they presumably intended to be. Some levels are vicious
11:43because they were designed that way, others seem to become vicious through physics-related accidents.
11:48Either way, you're gonna die my friend.
11:57Incredible Crisis
12:05There should probably be a medical disclaimer before certain sections of Incredible Crisis.
12:11One minigame wants furious button mashing, another suddenly tests rhythm, then one tests memory,
12:17timing, steering, or something completely unrelated appears before your hands have recovered.
12:22Because the rules change constantly, mastering one challenge does almost nothing for the next.
12:26You can dominate a section, and then arrive at the following event with the confidence of
12:30someone who's accidentally walked into a television game show they know nothing about.
12:34The button mashing challenges are particularly savage, demanding speeds that turn your controller
12:38into exercise equipment. Yet that unpredictability is also why the game is so memorable.
12:43It's memorable how much I f***ing hate it.
12:51Rayman
12:57Nothing about the colours, music, or character design prepares you for how nasty Rayman eventually becomes.
13:04The opening areas give you time to learn, but precise positioning matters almost immediately,
13:09and the margin for error only gets smaller. New abilities gradually expand Rayman's moveset,
13:14which sounds helpful until the leveled designers start building sections that demand near perfect
13:18use of everything you've learned. Later worlds can be absolutely merciless with enemies,
13:24tiny platforms, and difficult jumps stacked together. If you, like me, started with Rayman 2,
13:29you're going to be shocked at how hard this series actually was.
13:39Crash Bandicoot
13:48This is a tough one, because most people have fond memories of the OG Crash game,
13:52yet reliable sources like Retro Achievements state that only roughly 22% of the player base
13:58finished the original game. This is a shocking stat for 1996, when a new game is pretty much all you
14:03had to focus on for a couple months. Ask somebody who played the original Crash Bandicoot about difficulty,
14:08and there's a decent chance one rope bridge immediately enters the conversation.
14:12The dangerous part is how quickly the game gets you back into another attempt. There's barely enough
14:18time for good judgement to intervene. 20 failures later, you're still sitting there,
14:22intensely arguing with an orange idiot about the physical dimensions of a wooden plank.
14:36Tomb Raider 3
14:45Lara barely has time to stretch before Tomb Raider 3 starts dropping boulders on her.
14:50The opening jungle establishes the mood immediately, collapsing floors,
14:53hostile animals, hidden traps and jumps that still demand the series' famously exact positioning.
15:00From there, levels become larger and more complicated, while ammunition and health supplies
15:04remain valuable enough to make every unnecessary fight hurt. And I mean hurt bad. Previous Tomb Raider
15:10games could absolutely be difficult, but the third adventure pushes much harder on survival,
15:15exploration and resource management. Wander into the wrong place and you may waste items you badly
15:20needed later. That makes simply reaching the end a serious commitment, because the game doesn't just
15:25test whether you can solve each area, it tests how much damage you took getting there.
15:29Green up. Hmm. Well I'm not quite sure where you're coming from,
15:33but I just want to know about the Infada artifact. In the temple up there.
15:3710. Tenchu Stealth Assassins
15:42A perfect run through Tenchu Stealth Assassins can look incredible. Watch the patrol route,
15:47creep across a rooftop, choose the right tool, drop behind a guard and disappear without anyone
15:52noticing. Then you try it for yourself and Rikamaru turns slightly too far, clips some scenery and
15:58apparently invites the entire neighbourhood over. Direct combat is dangerous enough that stealth is
16:02basically mandatory, yet the controls can make precision really difficult. One sloppy movement can
16:07trigger an alarm or completely wreck the mission, meaning patience matters just as much as planning.
16:12The concept was years ahead of most console stealth games, but actually finishing it exposes the gap
16:17between those ambitious ideas and what a PlayStation controller could comfortably offer.
16:27Nightmare Creatures
16:39Long before Hunters were rolling through Yharnam, Nightmare Creatures was already sending players
16:44into foggy streets filled with horrible things that wanted them dead. The comparison to Bloodborne is
16:49easy now, though actually controlling this game is considerably rougher. Enemies move quickly,
16:54visibility is limited and saves are precious enough to make every major mistake sting. Then there's the
16:59adrenaline system, which pressures you to stay aggressive even when your health bar is suggesting a
17:04very different strategy. Surviving the campaign is already difficult before Crowley appears on the
17:08rooftops alongside four guardian demons for the final battle.
17:17King's Field
17:25It seems almost convenient to put a From Software game in the number one spot, but the difference here is
17:31that From Software was doing this hard game thing long before they had their reputation. Movement is
17:37painfully slow, combat punishes impatience, traps appear everywhere, and useful directions are apparently
17:43considered classified information. Its ambitious early 3D world adds another layer of confusion with
17:49huge dungeons that expect you to explore carefully while still learning how the controls work.
17:54Modern players can immediately recognize the philosophy that would later define Dark Souls.
17:59Get lost, die, pay attention, learn something, try again. It's a crushingly slow and difficult game.
18:06The perfect combination for a game being unfinished by the masses.
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