Hardest game . . .
This question is too easy. I might have even answered it somewhere in this thread, but there is no way I am going to remember for certain.
Might & Magic, Book One: Secret of the Inner Sanctum
This game will kick your ass. Do not play it unless you are a sadist. Do not play it unless you are the kind of person that beats every videogame on "advanced" or "hard" mode overnight. Do not play it unless you are a self-professed gaming pro. MM1 will dump you into the middle of a strange town with no sense or feel for who you are, where you are going, or what your ultimate goals are. The entire game is one like massive RPG-riddle, a joke played upon the gamer. Only after several years of fighting my way through as a very young teenager (11-13ish) did I realize the plot of the game was to discover the meaning of life. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? Why would anyone make such a game? I know it came out for a few platforms back then, but the most difficult version was the NES I believe. In any event, it is the one I played. More Might & Magic games were cranked out as years passed, all a bit more fair than their mighty predecessor, but the entire series generally holds a reputation for being stupidly hard and frustrating. The franchise fell off the map a few years ago and is not likely to ever rear its ugly head again.
Cheers,
WD
PS: The game was so hard that at the end of the instruction booklet was provided an address. If you took a picture of the final screen at the end, you could send off and were awarded a certificate for completion. The instruction guide, I might, was big and fat but utterly worthless for helping you advance in the game itself.