7 Wildly Masochistic Player-Devised Video Game Challenges [With Video]

There’s a sense of accomplishment to be had when you beat a level in a game, or when you beat a game entirely. You’ve conquered the obstacles placed in front of you by the game’s creators and lived to tell about it. But sometimes, overcoming those challenges isn’t enough. Sometimes, you need to take things to the next level yourself, by devising the most inane, awkward, and just plain silly challenges conceivable. Here are seven of our favorites:

1. “The Super Mario 64 Challenge”

This challenge, like most of them, is simple to explain and incredibly difficult to execute. The challenge is to activate a life mushroom, then get all the red coins on the level without letting the mushroom catch you. But the eager shroom will rise, fall, and float through walls to cut you off at every turn. You can see how perilous it is below:

That guy playing has very deceptive friends.

2. Beat the Elite Four with Magikarp

For any of the Pokemon games, this challenge can apply. Take everyone’s favorite dinky little useless fish and DECIMATE THE ELITE FOUR WITH IT! You’ll want a good store of potions, and the very best attacks a Magikarp can learn (of which there aren’t many). It can be done, though, as evidenced by the below video along with several others like it across the YouTubes.

Naming your Magikarp “MagikarPWN” optional, but recommended.

3/4. Guitar Hero, Feet-Only Mode; Dance Dance Revolution, One Foot Mode

These two non-creative names I just made up are pretty much self explanatory. In the first , you try to play Guitar Hero with your feet. This is as challenging as you make it, but anyone who can beat any song on expert, or even hard, using feet and feet alone as conquered the feat in my book. And for the later, take any DDR song on a semi-difficult level and do it with one foot. (Your other foot can be on the ground, you don’t need to flamingo it up.)

Here’s an easy version of the feet feat, perfect for Glee fans:

And here’s a more difficult rendition of the DDR challenge:

His knee is going to be soooooore in the morning.

5. Cheat As Many Super Monkey Ball Levels As Possible

This one isn’t quite as specific as the others, but it’s probably my favorite to watch. There are a lot of shortcuts accidently strewn about the levels of the Super Monkey Ball games, and some levels can be beaten in hilarious, amazingly quick and cheap ways. See if you can master those shown below and come up with any other amazing monkey escapades.

Ballroom Blitz certainly doesn’t hurt how mind-blowingly entertaining that video is.

6. Beat Final Fantasy XIII Without Leveling Up

Not much more to say here. Can you get through the whole game without bettering yourself with the Crystarium? Well, a bunch of people have done it, so probably yes. Is it worth the time to go through the whole 50+ hour game just to test this theory? That’s up to you.

Here’s YouTuber MasaBlade’s no-Crystarium boss fight with Cid Raines:

7. Megaman X Series, No Armor/Upgrades/Weapons

Similarly to the above, can you get through the Megaman X games without getting any upgrades to your armor or weapons? It’s basically imposing a “hard mode” on yourself, but really, isn’t that what all these challenges are? Go, Megaman, go!

Pew pew pew, it’s a ray gun! Pew pew pew, it’s still a ray gun! All I have is this gorram ray gun! Pew pew pew!

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