If you were a kid in the late ‘80s, or early ‘90s, there’s a really good chance you had an NES hooked up to a TV in your house. You probably saved Princess Peach from Bowser, collected all eight fragments of the Triforce and kicked some ass as Samus Aran.

There were some games, however, that presented challenges we couldn’t handle. Games that kicked our asses, instead of the other way around.

The following, are 8 NES games we never beat.

Ninja Gaiden

Most us of us knew someone who claimed to have beaten Ninja Gaiden, and we all looked at that person with a certain level of skepticism. I’d say it’s wrong to jump to conclusions regarding a person possibly lying about a video game accomplishment, but when we’re talking about Ninja Gaiden, it might be the one jump we can actually make.

Not only were the jumping puzzles difficult (specifically Level 6-2), but you could be knocked off by a bird. What kind of ninja gets killed by a bird!?!?!

Battletoads

While we may all have known someone who claimed to have beaten Ninja Gaiden, no one knows anyone who’s claimed to have beaten Battletoads. This is because such a claim is the equivalent of saying you ride a unicorn to work, or have a pet dragon.

Battletoads isn’t just considered a difficult game — it’s considered impossible. In fact, when you Google “Battletoads impossible,” it yields over 80,000 results.

The bane of every Battletoads player’s existence was the Turbo Tunnel speeder bike stage, which featured 108 obstacles to maneuver through over the course of just two minutes. Widely considered the most difficult level of any video game in history, just thinking about it gives people the video game equivalent of PTSD.

Ghosts ‘N Goblins

When you’re a kid and you see a horror-themed video game where you’re a knight on a quest to save a princess, you think, Awesome! I’m up for this! When that game is Ghosts ‘N Goblins, you learn very quickly that not all princess are going to be saved.

A game where if you get hit once you go from being in your armor to being in your underwear, and if you get hit twice you die, I don’t know how often I made it past the second level of Ghosts ‘N Goblins. That said, if you were one of the select few who made your way through the entire game, you were rudely greeted with a message that informed you the battle you’d just won was “a trap devised by Satan,” and to actually win you had to play the entire game a second time, at a higher difficulty level. Congrats ... ON NOTHING!

Gauntlet

Gauntlet was a game that kept it 100, and by that I mean it had 100 levels. Yes, 100 freakin’ levels! Even with each level having a time limit, in the days before energy drinks this game would have been difficult enough to complete simply from an endurance standpoint. Throw in the fact that in later levels there are invisible walls, and it was enough to make even the most seasoned gamer go mad.

Personally, I threw in the towel after failing countless times on a level that was ALL invisible walls. Despite this, if anyone would like to spend a very long night attempting to beat Gauntlet in two-player mode, I’d be down to give it a shot.

Adventure Island

When it comes to Adventure Island, the graphics were great, and the concept worked well, but holy hell they could have given us a little more leeway when it came to what would kill us.

If an enemy touches you, you lose a life. Heck, if you so much as trip over a rock, you lose health, which also gradually depletes over time and has to be replenished via picking up fruit and milk. Oh, and if you didn’t get the bee at the end of the first stage, you couldn’t continue!

I never completed Adventure Island, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. I always faltered on the Ice Temple stage. The realistic lack of traction was a killer (but, I guess, taught a valuable lesson about winter safety, or something).

Blaster Master

Another game with great graphics, and really solid gameplay, Blaster Master would let you get pretty far in the game before the difficulty was ratcheted up to impossible.

I remember there was a level where you were supposed to hover upwards to get to the next stage, and I could never get high enough. I’d be hovering as much as I could, attempting to get over a cliff, and nothing would happen. Time would run out. It was the most frustrating thing in the world (and it will be made even more frustrating when someone leaves a note in the comments section informing me of how to do it correctly).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

While all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game releases were fantastic, the original TMNT video game for the NES was so far removed from that family of games that the only thing it had in common with them were the characters.

The level that most frustrated everyone was the infamous dam level, where you had to disarm eight bombs, underwater, before the time ran out, while swimming around obstacles such as electrified seaweed (which, to be fair, might actually be a thing in the Hudson River). It was a challenge very few were up for.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

A lot of people initially disliked Zelda II because it was nothing, and I mean NOTHING, like the original Legend of Zelda. When played without thinking of the original Zelda, however, Zelda II isn’t a bad game, and you can get pretty far in it, but Dark Link (aka Shadow Link) was my downfall. Dark Link, who was the final boss in the game.

Lemme tell it, it really hurts to get all the way to the final boss and not be able to complete the task. To quote Linkin Park, “I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”