I just replayed the original Super Mario Kart for the first time in years and it got me thinking about how there are very rarely any near-impossibly difficult video games released these days. The ones that are definitely aren’t as popular as they were back then either.
The Mega Man X games for super Nintendo come to mind. You better spend the time finding all the upgrades or ingest some dangerous illegal substances if you want to finish those. Especially the third one. They sure are a blast though. Exorbitant once you get really good and master the nuances of the dashing and jumping and wall climbing it becomes a very satisfying experience.
Speaking of the third one I recently discovered a romhack that lets you play as zero unlimited like in the PlayStation titles. (Original would only let you use him once a level, couldn’t fight bosses, and if you died once with him he was out.)
The guy that made it is working on implementing this into the second one as well