Achievements in video games are an integral part of the modern gaming experience. Some games give them out like candy. Other games reward them as you progress through the game as normal. But, some achievements make you WORK for them. Looking at a game’s global stats and seeing that less than 2% of anyone that owns that game got a particular achievement fills people with hopelessness…and some with intrigue.

I’m one of those people. I know in my heart of hearts that I won’t be completing any of these challenges any time soon. Here are a few achievements/challenges in games that I’ve played that will make me destroy something if I attempt them, but would be fucking awesome to accomplish.

Spelunky HD
Achievement: Speedlunky
Earned by: Complete a run in under 8 minutes without using shortcuts.

For the Spelunky remaster, an average run for this treasure-hunting roguelike lasts at least 30 minutes, provided you stick with the main 16 levels. Normally, you would be spending less than 2 minutes per level on the first 15 (since a giant fucking ghost appears to kill you at the 2-minute mark), then beating the final boss, which can take a few seconds to several minutes depending on what items you have.

I’ve seen a few videos of people doing Speedlunky runs. Nearly all of them involve sprinting into the first shop you see and stealing items, which gets the shopkeeper angry enough to start shooting you. If you manage to survive that, there will be one or more pissed off shopkeepers in every level after that, waiting inside the shops and near the ends of the level to fuck you up. Your only options are to dodge them or shoot with reckless abandon, because you need to conserve your bombs for the last level (if you didn’t get your hands on a teleporter).

It’s inventory management, dodging shotgun pellets, not getting any healing kisses from pretty ladies/handsome gentlemen/adorable pugs, and hauling absolute ass to the end of the level in less than 30 seconds WHILE EVERYTHING THAT NORMALLY TRIES TO KILL YOU IS TRYING TO KILL YOU.

I’m lucky to end a full run normally, you think I can do that shit in less than 8 minutes?!

Faith: The Unholy Trinity
Achievement: Good Christian Boy
Earned by: Complete Marathon Mode, getting good endings only, without dying

The full release of Faith: The Unholy Trinity brought Marathon Mode, where you can play all three chapters back to back in a single session. Each chapter has multiple endings, and getting the good endings requires fighting additional bosses or keeping people alive during fights.

In Faith, all but two of the enemies in the game can kill you in one hit. Your only weapon, a crucifix, forces you to stand still to use it. You can’t point the cross diagonally, which is where many enemies will be attacking you from. Also, you walk SLOWLY. Poor reaction time or mis-estimating the size of a demon’s hitbox will end a run very quickly. While there is a glitch that allows you to continue walking with the cross raised, it resets frequently, usually during cutscenes and area transitions. If you forget to reactivate it, you might be caught out by a demon coming in a weird direction.

I am hesitant to even do lab work on this achievement for two main reasons.
1. The knowledge that I could be 90 minutes into a two-hour run, then die and negate all that progress would make me yeet my controller across the room.
2. The bosses that float around in sine waves keep tripping me up. I always mis-estimate how much space I have to move and end up getting MORTIS-ed.

Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy
Achievement: Got Over It
Earned by: Completing the game

Getting Over It was designed to be rage-inducing. You play as Diogenes sitting in a cauldron, using a large hammer to pull and lift himself over things to move around. Your goal is to climb a mountain of random stuff and reach the stars.

The only controls are with the mouse, and even trying to adjust your mouse’s position on your desk is enough to push you off the mountain and back to the start. There are other little traps on the mountain, including a bat jumpscare and a snake that will escort your happy ass allllllll the way back to the start if you hook onto it. To add insult to injury, falling from a significant enough height or from a certain place causes either a song about failure to start playing, or a rather condescending-sounding Bennett Foddy says some words about how you fucked up. Sometimes both.

There are a number of people who have played this game, fallen from “Orange Hell,” the midway point, and then broke something in frustration.

Apparently, there is a proper reward for making it to space, not just an achievement badge. To be in that secret club of 9% of Getting Over It players would be pretty great. But, not nearly worth the headaches and advanced carpal tunnel.

Trophy-less Challenges:

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Challenge: Beat the game within a single 3-day cycle

You probably already know the deal. Whatever it is you’re aiming to do in MM, you have three in-game days to do it. At 6am on day three, the world is destroyed. A few very dedicated people have figured out ways to complete the four main dungeons and beat Majora within a three-day cycle. In theory, the first two dungeons can be completed within the first day, leaving the other two dungeons some wiggle room just in case of some boss nonsense. Once you reach Majora, the timer stops, so you can take all the time you want killing him.

I’ve only been able to complete the first dungeon within 24 hours. The rest of the dungeons have mechanics that require a lot of back and forth (Snowfall’s shifting center pillar, flipping the Stone Tower, etc.), and the RNG on some mini-bosses will definitely waste time. But, the biggest strategy is memorization of dungeon layouts and the best path to take. Use of in-game items that either slow time down or allow you to run faster are used, too, though some have opted to not use one or the other.

If you’re like me, and have garbage memory and a bad sense of direction, you’re going to have a rough time with three of the four dungeons. ESPECIALLY Great Bay.

Undertale
Challenge: Defeat Sans the Skeleton without taking damage

During a genocide run of Undertale, the final boss is not the king of monsters, or the fucking evil flower. The final boss is Sans, the chubby, wisecracking, always smiling skeleton. To be fair, he warned you early on that if you continued down your violent path, you were going to have a bad time later. At the end of the game, Sans makes good on his threat, by fucking doing this…

And that was just his opening attack. You need to dodge all of that before the fight properly starts/you hear the first few notes of Megalovania. You need to keep dodging shit like that all during the fight. AND he can still hurt you while you’re trying to decide what to do in the battle menu.

In theory, the fight should be pretty simple. Sans only has 1 hp, and his attacks aren’t entirely random. It’s possible to memorize his patterns and avoid them accordingly until you can finally hit him. But, his attack patterns are all multi-stage, becoming more complex as time passes.

I started a genocide run a while back. I managed to make it to the Undyne fight but found myself becoming frustrated with how difficult it was. I then thought, if I’m having this much trouble with Undyne, how the hell can I beat Sans? That made me give up on the run. The thought of having to have to go through all of Sans’ attacks is bad enough. But to do all that without taking any damage? Hell to the no.