Ah, text adventures.
It was an adventure of it`s own, to find out what words and phrases the parser was able to understand. Often they used really weird words for rather common things. Words that even people, who grow up with english, normally not use in everyday life.

I'm not sure I'd call games that any player can theoretically pick up and achieve reasonable progress as 'hardcore'- so stuff like fighters and shmups wouldn't really count. Maybe things like Dwarf Fortress or grand strategy stuff or Crusader Kings and the like.

Video games...are for casuals.

Hardcore is old board wargame stuff where you don't even have a computer to do your calculations. Especially the monster games from the SPI era like Drang Nach Osten, Wacht am Rhein, Terrible Swift Sword. Or Advanced Squad Leader or World in Flames. Nothing on PC compares to games like those, not even the old SSI games. Even the PC version of World in Flames doesn't have any AI because it's just too much work to make something so big and complicated actually work for something as dumb as a computer.

For video games then racing simulators where people play nothing else, it is a hobby in itself, they have their own online racing leagues...these people are still playing Grand Prix Legends and GTR today. It's their life, these people barely even know any other type of video game exists.

Flight sims go close, especially civilian stuff like Flight Sim X. People so dedicated to their form of gaming that they form virtual airlines and run to schedules and stuff. I know someone that flies in one of these airlines and flies cross continental flights in real time (and makes his wife dress up as a hostess and bring him his meals). Now that's hardcore.

Paragraph 1 : Yes...

Paragraph 2 : Try Gary Grigsby's War in the West series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77peW2iymPo

That player seemed to beat it at least.

Then again I don't know if the game has several difficulty levels, and whether the complainers meant that it is unbeatable e.g. with the hardest difficulty. For instance Forsaken, it is quite an easy game if you play in the easiest difficulty (enemies die from two shots, you have lots of time to complete the level etc.), while in the "Total Mayhem" difficulty... frankly I'm convinced the game is impossible.

Yep. When people mention e.g. bullet-hell shoot'em ups, they are easy to learn but hard to master, as you need exceptional reflexes and eye-hand coordination to survive in them. I'd say they are difficult yes, but not really hardcore.

My idea of "hardcore" is more that it is hard to even learn to play, most gamers will simply give up before they've even learned how to play the game. Like modern-era flight combat simulations or grand strategy games, especially if they just throw the player to the game without proper tutorials and expect you to learn by heart some 500 page manual about the game controls and logic and different missile and radar types and nations and and and...

On the other hand, Candy Crush Saga (a casual game) is very easy to pick up and play by anyone. Yet, the game certainly becomes very difficult at later levels, I guess all people will give up on the game at some point in the 100th level or whatever. CCS's difficulty in later levels comes mostly from very complex tables and how much luck is involved, ie. you have to retry each table hundreds of times until you get a series of stroke of luck, just the right pieces dropping into the right places. Or then you should buy some powerups in the game with real money (micro-transactions) to proceed to the next level. :)

I don't think anyone would consider Candy Crush Saga "hardcore" even if it is a hard game later on.

hello kitty online is so hardcore, trust me

Visual novels.

I tend to think that "losing is fun" also refers to the fact that "Not losing" is easy once you know how the game works. Building a perfectly safe fortress is very easy, but also very boring. To have fun, you have to challenge yourself. Put your fort n a "lively" setting with hostile neighbors. Explore the caves. Tame savage animals. Establish surface defenses, traps, patrols instead of sealing yourself underground. Build accident-prone magma-powered contraptions. Flirt with Hell.
Get yourself into danger.
And enjoy the ride when everything go awfully wrong because of a small mistake ^^

Anyone can seal himself underground and grow Plump Helmet mushrooms until the end of the world. Safe is dull. Losing is awesome. ^^

There's the whole "unfair platformer" subgenre, which includes such games as Syoban Action (and the commercial release Eryi's Action) and I Wanna Be The Guy. Basically, the game plays like a 2D platformer, except that the game is filled with hidden traps that will very likely to cause you to die when you trigger them. Sometimes, these games can feel like puzzle games disguised as platformers.

I personally like Syoban Action's first 4 stages; the game is unfair without being too difficult. The end of level puzzles I find to be particularly interesting. (You can try hitting the flagpole, but that won't necessarily allow you to safely complete the level.)

It helps that these games generally give you infinite lives. (Syobon Action might not *look* like it gives you infinite lives, but it does.)

By the way, if you want to play something *truly* ridiculous, start Syobon Action and press 0 for "mystery dungeon" mode. Note that, on any given life, the level is not guaranteed to be beatable on this mode, but it can be fun.

I should point out that Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV, while difficult, are *not* in this subgenre, as those games are fair (or at least they try to be) and won't kill you just because you didn't magically know there was a hidden block there, for example.

Grand strategy / Wargame simulation

My vote for hardcore game genres is strategy as well. Something that requires lots and lots of learning time. So maybe add in bullet hell shmups where you have to memorise attack patterns etc.

On the other hand, a gamer that's sunk at least 240 hours in any game, be it Candy Crush or Skyrim, I would categorise as "hardcore", just because they're that invested in the game. Or maybe achieving some kind of feat in the game. Like completing Resident Evil using only a knife.

Maybe I'd up the number of hours played if the game was a RPG, though. I wouldn't categorise myself as a hardcore gamer in any way, but I do regularly max out the time played stat. Because I grind. A lot. ;)

I have never heard of those games. However, I can already tell that they look really complex and difficult with the amount of options popping up. No doubt going to take a very long time to learn and actually win.

Pressing Next for 4 hours straight is pretty hardcore...

Technical simulators like X-Plane and other flight sims.

To me flight sim gamers epitomize what I associate with being a hardcore gamer. Having the dedication to study a manual that's sometimes hundred's of pages long and filled with technical information, and consequently trying to master dozens of keys. The learning curve for these games is extreme and requires a very special kind of gamer.

Certain racing sims are quite hardcore at the core, having a rather steep learning curve and being quite technical, games like RaceRoom, Stock Car Extreme, rFactor 2 and the many Richard Burns Rally mods. However, speaking from experience, learning these games is far easier than learning a flight sim.

Agree.

With sim racing games you only feel a tiny portion of the real-world physics when driving a car or riding a bike.
For example, you don't feel the pressure of taking a corner too sharply or too fast. My old driving teacher used to tell me that you drive as much with the senses in your back as with your eyes, feet and arms.

There's a specific limit to where a sim racing game can take you with our current technology. As impressive and challenging as they may be, they are still just games to me; lines of code and 3D graphics. Not that this diminishes their value of-course.

From what I've read, professional racing drivers who use simulators mainly use them to roughly learn the tracks.
However, as Lewis Hamilton pointed out in an article some time ago, these simulators don't capture the true nature of the tracks, with all the bumps and other details.

Still, as far as real-world practicality is concerned, I think sim racing games are limited to giving you a basic understanding of the tracks and cars they contain. The marketing of these games will always exaggerate what the games can do, but that's due to competition; every sim game developer wants to claim the 'one true sim game' title.

Flight sims like X-Plane are used for actual training by beginning and professional pilots. I can certainly see how it would help with memorizing where all the buttons are and what they do.