Nothing more frustrating than…

A leprechaun with a wand of digging.

I’m a classic gamer at heart. There’s nothing more satisfying than playing an old classic and showing up those youngsters by beating a game so old and hard they wouldn’t even know what to do.

The game I’m referring to here is one of my favorites: NetHack.

It’s a DnD style game where you venture into the Dungeons of Doom and search for treasure, adventure, and, if you’re good enough, immortality.

This game lacks something that most modern games do not: graphics. You’ll hear debates over whether good graphics make a big difference in the immersion factor of a game, but when playing this game, the arguments just don’t apply. There’s nothing but letters, numbers, punctuation, and the occasional IBM ASCII character.

This game is far too deep to cover in a single post (or in a hundred posts, for that matter) so let me say this: this game is fun, deep, HARD, and immensely replayable.

What it is not: forgiving. It’s brutal. Most games have some sort of save mechanism so you can play later or restart if you lose. No such luck here. While you can save the game for later, if you die then the game is over. You must start from the beginning. No continues. No more lives. Nothing.

I love this game, and have been playing it for years (I started in Jr. High, almost 10 years ago). During this time, I have finished it *once*. That was one of the most enthralling experiences I have had.

Are there any games that you feel this way about?