Super Mario Sunshine 100%
COMPLETE AND UTTER TEDIUM! >:(
Getting 100% there is tough (and I'm actually one of the odd ones that likes that game) I actually found Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door 100% even harder because:
100% meant all badges -> which meant having to get that one badge in Pit of 100 Trials -> which meant I had to go through that dungeon -> which meant fighting some of the hardest and nastiest enemies in Mario history -> and if you die you had to do all 100 floors again.
Basically, I couldn't accomplish 100% until recently purely because of that.
For me, the hardest game I ever played was Super Mario Bros. Lost Levels. It was a sequel to Super Mario Bros. that was only released in Japan, but it was later released in an SNES game with Super Mario Bros. 1 to 3, and then in its 8-bit format later on in the Wii Virtual Console. It will without a doubt push your platforming skills to the limit.
Unofficially, there was a fan-made challenge to the Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time called the Uber Challenge. If you choose to accept it this game becomes insanely hard.
You have to keep your three hearts for the entire game, and there's a long list of items that you can't use (for example, no Iron Boots in Water Temple). That means that you have to pull off difficult glitches and tricks just to advance in the game. Throw that in with the fact that many enemies and bosses kill you in one or two hits, and you'll be playing through the same dungeon many times. I managed to make it to the final boss, but that's as far as my skill was able to take me. :scared:
The Pit of 100 trials in Thousand Year Door can be totally cheesed with a Danger Mario setup.
I somewhat knew about that setup because I used to see it in speedruns of these games. Personally, this is something I would never do myself as it makes the game too easy (but that's just me personally and I do not object to it if that's something someone wants to do). True that the game itself isn't as challenging to me now as it was when I was little. I used to only power up my HP (until 100 :lem-shocked:, which can't be done in the first game because the max was 50 or 55) and never my FP or BP, and still have trouble with bosses like Magnus Von Grapple 2.0. When I got older I realized that there had to be a balance with what I powered up because with a better balance comes better strategies. Powering up FP instead of HP meant more FP for more powerful moves against tough enemies/bosses, or powering up BP instead of FP or HP meant better badges in battles. That made me a better player at the game and I feel more satisfaction with that than to become a one man army.
Plus, that means cheesing the Shadow Queen with a Danger Mario power bounce, and she's one of my favorite final bosses ever because my heart still pounds when I fight her. She still gives me trouble if I'm not careful :XD:. Afterall, you can only use Veil so many times before something unexpected happens that throws off that strategy.