That One Boss/Rhythm Game

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Wearing a bucket on your head will not increase your chances of beating this song, or maybe it will."

—The loading Screen for "Jordan" in Guitar Hero 2

Examples of That One Boss in Rhythm Games include:

Guitar Hero series

  • Guitar Hero, the original, had a very Impossible Hammer-on and Pull-off method that pretty much required players to strum every note, even when the rhythm is finger-breakingly fast. This made some songs such as "Texas Flood," "Cowboys From Hell," and "Bark at the Moon" ridiculously hard. Cowboys is particularly dramatic, as its main riff is very hard to do without strumming every note, let alone strumming all of them!
    • Some of the tracks from the first game were re-released as DLC for later games with improved hammer-on and pull-off mechanics. With the more reliable detection are much, much easier, so it was more an issue with game mechanics then the song themselves.
  • In the sequel Guitar Hero II, "Freya" got a lot of people stuck, as did fast country song "Psychobilly Freakout" and "Carry Me Home's" intro. And that's just the earlier sets! Last set has ridiculously fast "Misirlou", "Institutionalized's" discord, "Hangar 18's" Nine solos, and "Free Bird's" very long sequences. "Free Bird", by the way, being a very long song that has an extended slow part at the beginning, can be dramatic to play. Failing at the 6th or 7th minute in could be expected.
    • The Xbox 360 version of GH2 was more balanced. Song order was heavily rearranged, for example "Freya" moved up from the fifth to the sixth difficulty tier, "Psychobilly Freakout" had no change, and "Carry Me Home" Moved up from the seventh to the eighth difficulty tier. Eight songs were added exclusively to this version, six of which range from tier one to tier seven, and the last two are in the bonus setlist. Two of them in the main setlist are master recordings, while the other four are cover versions.
  • In the spin off Guitar Hero 80s, the last set is almost entirely this trope. "Play With Me's" solo is long, wicked fast, and made purely of some of the trickiest things to do in the game.
    • Note, however, that the solo in Because It's Midnite is harder than anything that comes up in the last tier, which is jarring because it's a keyboard solo and the song sandwiching it is very easy. And this is the second tier.
      • Heh, I thought it was a keyboard solo too, until I saw the Brothers Chaps play it live in a bar on YouTube. Crazy.
      • What really elevates that to That One Boss territory is that it's pretty easy on Medium and not too tough on Hard. This may qualify for the single biggest jump from Hard to Expert in Guitar Hero. Oh, did I mention that it's the encore song of the second venue?
  • Guitar Hero III's answer to this was Metallica's One. The first 4/5 of the song qualify as being maybe 2nd or 3rd tier, rather than top. Then you get to the solo, and fail five seconds later.
    • It's worth noting that the "Darkness" riff is not very hard at all on a real guitar, but the game's rhythm handling makes it pant-wettingly hard. The Fast Solo A is much much worse.
  • Holiday in Cambodia has one of the worst cheap shots in the game on expert. It's right at the beginning. You have to strum super fast for a good 30 seconds nonstop, and you must keep the slightly changing rhythm exactly or fail in less than 5 seconds. Oh, and there's no drums or anything to help you stay on beat. If you were playing it in real life, this would be super easy, because the exact number of strums and timing would not matter. But it definitely DOES matter here... Darkness riff has NOTHING on this.
    • And if the song itself wasn't bad enough, there's the Nightmariffic lyrics.
      • Actually, this is often the most frequently skipped song in career mode, with Raining Blood being the other one for the reason noted below.
    • Raining Blood. Mosh 1 is the destroyer of souls and crusher of hopes.
      • And the render of hair and garments. This troper finally beat it after six months of practice - there's never been another song in the series that's caused quite this much pain, horror and outrage.
      • Bad news: It's coming back for Smash Hits. As if War Ensemble wasn't enough.
    • Before I Forget by Slipknot is infamous for its bridge chord progression that, on Expert, goes (GY)(RB)(GY)(RB)(YO)(RB)(GY)(RB) at an eighth note rhythm, then adds in some (RB)(YO)(RB) changes at sixteenth-note rhythm for good measure. This makes it very hard especially considering the real song is in a Dropped tuning and thus these chords are done with one finger.
    • The final boss. Extremely hard to do, even on the second-hardest difficulty level, without using an exploit that still relies on random chance.
  • Guitar Hero On Tour has a solution to Metalica's One and Carry Me Home. It's Ozzy Osbourne's I Don't Wanna Stop. The song is hard even on easy and it's the only reason this guy hasn't beaten medium mode.
    • If we're talking about portable Guitar Hero games, then "Misirlou" on Guitar Hero Mobile deserves mention. The song starts out fast, but possible. Then the guitar break hits, and the notes come at probably the same speed as the console version. It is impossible to press a cellphone's buttons that fast.
  • And, notably, insanely technical prog-metal band Dream Theater have been confirmed for the next Guitar Hero. I can hear the complaints of insane difficulty rolling in already...
    • Pull Me Under isn't that bad; there are maybe three truly difficult sections, but they're short enough to bluff through with star power. Although its bass line has some nasty sections, as do the drums. Just be glad the developers didn't decide to use "Lie", those two solos would be nigh unbeatable.
    • The real killer in World Tour is B.Y.O.B. Both the guitar and bass parts are nasty, and the song starts on the hard section, but if you're lucky you might get to the rhythm section and/or get a chance to build up star power. The worst part is that it's the only song to appear in all 4 instrument careers and band career.
      • Not to mention that it almost deserves the designation as hardest Medium-difficulty drum chart - This troper, a proficient drummer in real life, failed it on Expert, dropped to Hard, failed again later in the song, dropped to medium, and barely made it past the same exact part on medium. The only thing significantly worse than it is Hot for Teacher on drums, which the same troper can't even last to the start of the guitar part on Drums-Expert. and keep in mind this is with the ROCK BAND 1 drum set, not the World Tour drum set (which makes some songs a lot easier on Expert, but uses 5 surfaces and a kick bass as opposed to 4 lanes and kick bass and for the Rock Band Drum Kit the cymbal note is charted to the blue pad)
    • Thanks in part to a strict judgement system, vocalists get these regularly even for songs they can do easily, especially on Expert (where you must get somewhere around 90% on each phrase to sustain a combo - miss one fraction of a syllable, and you'll get 99% or worse on the phrase). One of the biggest offenders, though, is the final main setlist song for vocalists, Beat It, which has extremely short notes. miss one? there goes your combo. miss two? your rock gauge drops a bit. miss 3 or more? your rock gauge drops a LOT. Miss too many and YOU FAIL! the achievement for this song on vocals (requiring a score of 123,450 in vocals solo) is so difficult that people usually end up resorting to trying to get the maximum number of points from the freeform sections alone and hoping that they can do good enough on the rest of the song to get up to the 123,450 for the achievement.
    • Satch Boogie (showing up in single player guitar career in the bonus setlist) can easily nail people who have cleared TTFAF on hard. The section you will more likely than not fail at is the Surf solo, a long slide/tap section going up and down the guitar fretboard. It is, however, much easier than the DLC version for Rock Band due to a wider timing window.
  • Guitar Hero: Metallica has arrived. Yes. A game full of Metallica songs. And it has an Expert-PLUS chart for the true drum fanatics.
    • Yup. To beat songs on it, you need an adapter to hook up two pedals at once so you can double-pedal like Metallica does it. That's the only real difference.
      • It won't be a problem for the top brass...unless the hard half of Master of Puppets (Battery, the title track, and Disposable Heroes) gets in. Battery has green snakes as riffs along with nearly random solos (on a guitar, they aren't nearly as difficult or random), while Master of Puppets has an improbably difficult solo six minutes into the song. Disposable Heroes, though....it has over three thousand notes, a screwy AND quick riff, and a solo that comes out of left field and could easily go toe to toe with the Soothsayer solos. If that gets FC'ed, then everything else will. Incidentally, Battery is confirmed for Rock Band 2. Given the stupidly strict timing window and HOPO system of the original game, it won't be unlikely it'll surpass Ba TM and Jordan for the record of the song that will take the longest to be FC'ed.
        • Sorry guys, but about that, Danny Johnson full combo'd every single song in the game within three days.
      • Two songs from "Guitar Hero: Metallica" deserve special mention here: War Ensemble and Dyer's Eve. That sound you hear is this troper's ankles snapping from seeing all those pedal notes. Not that the other instruments are any easier, mind you. The former being FC'd on normal Expert by ccmoose of Scorehero was a definite crowning moment of awesome.
        • This troper found "Fight Fire With Fire" even worse than "Dyer's Eve". "The Shortest Straw" also has a nasty solo.
      • Your forgetting that "One" is back and hard as ever. Contrary to earlier info, it has been modified, partly to take advantage of the new sustain feature, partly to rework some of the parts that don't make sense, and partly to rework it into guitar+bass format. Yet it's still a TOP TIER SONG and still has the dreaded FAST SOLO A! Not to mention, it is full of slider notes that must be hit precisely on.
      • And as far as vocals go, you've got plenty of kickers. Albatross (bad singing makes for pitches that are tough to discern), Tuesday's Gone (long song with weird stuff near the end that's tough to memorize), Fight Fire with Fire (pretty easy except for the "Fight fire with fire" phrases at the end, which there are eight in a row and all must be executed in one breath), and of course, Queen's Stone Cold Crazy (rapid note changes, and two phrases which are insanely fast and difficult to hit most of the time).
  • "Raining Blood" has already been mentioned here, as it's a nightmare Difficulty Spike in the original Guitar Hero III. It deserves to be nominated again because they actually made Mosh 1 even harder in Guitar Hero: Smash Hits.
    • Quite a few other songs got the same treatment in Smash Hits, including the already-insane "Psychobilly Freakout".
      • So did Play With Me, and many other songs on Smash Hits. You may blame Beenox (whom Neversoft outsorced the game to while working on other Guitar Hero titles) for these messes.
      • If they mix in the Mangini version to the drums (in Play With Me), prepare to mirror that string of 32nds... with your feet.
  • And Guitar Hero 5 manages to have a decently hard song by the name of Do You Feel Like We Do(Live) by Peter Frampton, which is around Fourteen minutes. And that's the easier of the hard charts. You also get an achievement for reaching the 95% mark in the song, regardless of whether you beat it or not.
    • In the vein of actually harder songs, we have 21st Century Schizoid Man which has a section best described as "seemingly random yet in key oscillator-like noise solo." it's a tap section. Guess what the challenge for the song is? Oh, and drums? 10/10, with an Expert+ chart. Good luck, you'll need it!
      • Guitarists that find the above easy may be challenged by the hard guitar chart of Scatterbrain (Live). a 9/10 chart that makes you wonder what constitutes a 10/10 chart for guitarists.
      • Likewise, there is also the ungodly chord mess known as "Done with Everything, Die for Nothing" by Children of Bodom. It's only an 8/10 song, too... and Drums-Expert is near-impossible to full-combo thanks to the Expert/Plus bug
      • "Under Pressure" on vocals. It you can get that note (and you'll know the one), you are either Freddie Mercury's revenant, or someone just performed a perfectly timed Groin Attack on you.
      • Brianstorm on drums. For GH drum set users, the tom fill pattern will be what gets you. For RB drum set users, THE WHOLE BLASTED CHART will screw you over. do note that the hi-hat stays on yellow for RB drummers, and compare it to Everlong on Rock Band 2, only with the red and yellow swapped in the hi-hat section.
  • In Guitar Hero Van Halen, Spanish Fly gets rather quick on guitar. And it's a short solo with exactly 4 star power phrases, with a 3-star being in the area of 44250 points. Good luck making the local high score board on expert, with the predetermined 3rd-place score being 55,423 and first place being 64,289.
    • Oh, and Eruption is hard. Fortunately, it's a lot easier than Spanish Fly to get 1st place on the local scoreboard (65,000 points is a 3-star, mind you). Oh, and 5-starring all three solos and the song Little Guitars on Guitar-Expert is required for two different achievements, so have fun with that. (thankfully, Cathedral is VERY easy to FC, particularly on a Rock Band guitar)
    • Don't forget I'm The One. On guitar, while definitely not as difficult a song to survive or get five stars on as Eruption or Spanish Fly (this troper can pass it consistently and has only ever had to save star power once), it might just be harder to FC. In addition to a bunch of random mini solos scattered around, the first solo has slider triplets at 18 NPS, but that's FAR from the worst part. The second solo begins with a very difficult pattern, followed by a brief star power phrase which leads into some strumming at 22.7 NPS WITH NO HAMMER-ONS AT ALL. Even if you get past that, you still have the end wankery, which starts with some RBO chord strumming followed by a zigzag that fluctuates in tempo and averages at 20 NPS. Have fun.
  • DJ Hero has Beats and Pieces and (the much more technically difficult) Groundhog. Unless you know you can reorder the songs in the setlist before playing them, your turntable arm will be dead when you finish the Scratch-heavy Beats and Pieces, which isn't good because Groundhog has scratches and taps out the wazoo in addition to lots and lots of crossfading action.
    • What's even worse (for the latter) is that the crossfades and effects taps are about 1/4 of a second out of sync with each other, forming the bulk of the song. With a few random taps thrown in, of course.
      • Also, it's only a bit easier on Medium than it is on Expert. On Expert though, there's no question that Beats and Pieces is harder to 5-star unless you're really good at scratching.
    • For the DJ-Guitar mixes, Bring The Noise 20XX is about as hard as it gets. The Guitar Chart is mostly unchanged. The DJ will be the one that determines whether or not the song is 5-starred.
  • Guitar Hero 6 is looking to usurp the third game's title as the most ridiculous title in the series in terms of sheer difficulty. Not content with JUST bringing back Dragonforce for Fury Of The Storm, they also have Black Widow Of La Porte, by John 5, in the game. Doesn't sound bad enough? How about Megadeth's "Sudden Death", recorded just for this game. According to Dave Mustaine, when he showed Neversoft the original version of the song they told him that it sounded great, but that he should "add more solos". They did.
    • To clarify, the entire last setlist will rip you a new one. You have:
      • Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants by The Dillinger Escape Plan
      • Speeding(Vault Edition) by Steve Vai
      • The aforementioned Black Widow of La Porte by John 5 Featuring Jim Root
      • If You Want Peace...Prepare for War by Children of Bodom
      • Chemical Warfare by Slayer
      • Fury of the Storm by Dragon Force (video game)
      • AND you have Holy Wars...The Punishment Due, This Day We Fight, and Sudden Death by Megadeth. That should tell you something.
  • It seems that if there's a David Bowie song in Guitar Hero 5, it's going to be almost impossible to sing. I bow down to anyone who can get a great score on 'Fame' or 'Under Pressure'!
  • Hello? Through The Fires And Flames? Bonus song in Legends of Rock? Eight minutes of torture? The number of people to ace it on expert can be counted on one hand? Ring a bell?
    • Bonus Boss, because you can't fail it in Story Mode. Of course, you will fail it in Quickplay.
    • Dragonforce's own lead guitarist has attempted this song. And failed.
      • That's justified, as playing Guitar Hero is nothing like playing real guitar.

Rock Band Series

  • Similar to "Free Bird" in Guitar Hero II is "Green Grass and High Tides" from Rock Band. It isn't so much that it's boringly easy for any period of time. No, it's the fact that the song itself is long and mostly moderate in difficulty, then after nearly eight minutes, it throws 15 seconds of extremely fast zig-zag (an eternity for all but the most skilled), shortly follows it up with ANOTHER 12 seconds of zig-zag (not Overdrive bluffing your way through that one), and ends the song with 20 seconds of extremely fast three fret rolls. It's one thing to lose because you lack the skill required; it's another to lose after eight minutes because they throw in the music game equivalent of a cheap shot.
    • That's not the problem, in fact, mainly because hammer-ons and, more importantly, pull-offs still apply to solos. The REAL difficulty is that the strummy part (in the second solo) is SO FAST it fits just under the strum limit of notes per second (the NPS is about 0.20 below the limit there, get over the limit and you'll accrue a crapton of misses). It has reached the point that it's less about FC'ing the song, and more about doing a perfect run BESIDES that part.
      • And yet, despite this, some people have still managed to clear the whole song without strumming during either solo on Expert without using Overdrive. This troper has done it with only one part of the song even dropping him into the yellow (and when it dropped, it went all the way to the red - guess which part it was?).
      • Additionally, not only has that part of the solo been independently FC'ed, the entire song has been FC'd as well. the exact number of notes? 3058.
      • Which number the game considerately tells you in one of the possible intro screens when you start a solo run on Expert guitar.
    • Rock Band also has a good number of these on drums. One particularly notable example is "Foreplay/Long Time", where the instrumental "Foreplay" section features a fast, repeated triplet pattern of two reds and a green or blue and bass hit; the main difficulty is that there is no way to hit this pattern with the standard alternating left and right hand hits. And it comes up a lot during those first two minutes. Comparatively, the remaining "Long Time" section of the song is incredibly easy, but the main difficulty is getting there...
      • Ironically, even the original drummer may not have been able to pull this off. The song is considerably easier on a real drum set, since the bounciness of the drum head helps you do the snare double-hits without killing your arm.
    • This Troper was doing great on the drums until he hit "Run For The Hills." That song is evil.
      • It's not just the drums that cause people to cry, it's brutally hard on guitar as well. This troper has seen the murderous solo but can't even get to it without a lot of help from band-mates because the rapid-fire triplets give him a kicking.
      • The Cover for Run to the Hills is especially crazy on the Hard difficulty (on drums), compared to the songs leading up to it, and indeed the finale after it. The developers themselves even said that some of them have more issues on Hard difficulty than on Expert. The DLC version remedies this by NOT switching snare and hi-hat and using an eighth-note run for the hi-hat instead of a "The Hand That Feeds" pattern.
    • It has to be said that, being much closer to how real drums are played, this is less of a game example and more of a Truth in Television case of That One Boss.
      • Similarly vocals. If you can sing, there's little difficulty to be found at any level (save for very specific songs - I Get By (see below) being one of them). Otherwise, only Easy for you.
    • The other infamous career-stopper for Drums on Expert is "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". It's pretty easy up until the guitar solo, which throws rapid-fire bass pedaling and a long sequence of snare rolls at you. And because of how the game engine works, it's all too easy to get off-beat and fail five seconds later.
      • Not to mention that after beating this part, there's still a whole lot of tough drumming for your fatigued and overly-excited body to perform.
      • Even the vocalist doesn't get away unbruised from Don't Fear the Reaper. The song is easy enough to sing, but during the instrumental parts of the song you need to clap your hand on the microphone (in a very specific manner, may I add) to simulate playing the cowbell. The outro of the song has you doing this 96 times in a row. By the time you're done, the palm of your hand resembles a raw steak, and will be thinking "No more cowbell!" (There are other ways to do this, such as hitting A on the controller, or... taking a spare drumstick and hitting the microphone like a cowbell.)
    • You don't even wanna think about Flirtin' With Disaster on drums, do you? The trick is the chorus and opening. But after that, its off beat bass hits.
      • It can be stopped, however, by a burst of Maxed Overdrive... It'll last about the entire solo, and as long as you spam, everything will be all right.
    • Over half of the bonus songs (which you have to play to complete the "Endless Setlist", so they don't really count as "bonus" per se) are insanely difficult on vocals, but the worst by a long shot is I Get By. Especially the middle bit, with its insanely fast tonal shifts and rapid-fire vocals, most of which still require you to actually be in tune (which is not the case for most other songs this fast).
      • That song is nothing compared to Rock Band's equivalent to Buckethead's "Jordan". It's called," Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld." This song, on medium, makes "Maps" on Hard and "Run For the Hills" on medium look easier than the tutorial. It has a ridiculously hard note pattern and speed, four seconds in! It repeats this three more times before the vocals start.
    • Young Man Blues on drums. It was released as DLC over two years ago and has not been FC'ed on Expert to this day.
    • Another final tier song: Next To You. A very short, but very painful experience in flailing (and failing), because of the quick tempo, the insane combination of hits and the what seems to be never ending bass pedal hits. If you still, somehow, get past that, you still have Flirtin' With Distaster, Tom Sawyer, Won't Get Fooled Again, and, of course, Run to the Hills (all on the same tier). HAVE FUN!
  • Rock Band 2: Battery on Guitar and Bass, almost reasonable compared to
    • Visions would like to see your drummer, bassist, and guitarist. Doing that song on Expert makes Panic Attack and Painkiller (other candidates for hardest song) look easy.
      • Made all the worse when you step down to Hard guitar or bass and realize it is just as bad, if not worse, because there are practically no hammer-ons in the Hard charts...
      • It's worse. This troper can beat every song in the game on expert, but has never beaten Visions on hard.
    • Ace Of Spades '08 on Bass. I hope you like off-beat, asymmetric double strums, cause you're screwed if you can't master that.
    • If you really want to embarrass yourself while playing bass, get Rock Band 2 and try "Panic Attack" on expert.
    • I have seen many fall to the drum rolls of Teen Age Riot and Everlong.
    • Bodhisattva deserves special mention due to how Harmonix charts songs for Rock Band. First, the entire song is charted. Including all of the ending. Next, somewhere down the line, someone decides whether or not it will have a Big Rock Ending. Bodhisattva has a 28.3+ Note Per Second run that, fortunately, is taken out due to the Big Rock Ending.
  • Rock Band 3 has quite a few. Let's start listing the big ones:
    • Full Band: Take your pick between Roundabout (5 on vocals, 6 on everything else) and Llama (6 on everything)
    • Drums: Llama again, and in more ways than one - 3-starring the song on Expert is a requirement for the Hall Of Fame Challenge setlist (on Expert) to be completeable. You also need a 250-note streak for another challenge. Expect to clear Guns of Summer before you get either of those two goals, even with judicious use of No-Fail.
    • Bass: Roundabout again.
    • Guitar: Freebird, for reasons similar to why it's so damn hard in Guitar Hero 2.
    • Keyboard: Roundabout yet again
    • Vocals: jury's out on this one, though Good Vibrations (LIVE) or Bohemian Rhapsody are generally considered the hardest (the third hardest listed, Llama, is actually extremely easy if you can hum)
  • Lets also just note that there are two full Megadeth albums as DLC. You could pick a song at random, and it will probably be bone-crunchingly hard.
    • Special mention has to be given to "Take No Prisoners" off of the Rust in Peace album. The intro has some weird hammer-ons and pull-offs on guitar, but Guitar Riff 2 throws all rhyme and reason out the window.
    • By the way, remember breaking your fingers over "Hangar 18" from Guitar Hero 2? Guess what: it got harder.
  • Afterlife has some lightning fast guitar riffs at the start, but at least they're simple. Then it throws away all reason during the solo. It's not even rated at the highest difficulty, though it is still rated "nightmare" ("Challenging" in Rock Band 2 due to cutoff changes), which is a good description for the quickly advancing army of gems set out to destroy any guitarist foolish enough to challenge them.
  • Good Mourning/Black Friday plays the same treachery as Battery, making you complacent in the first minute or so, then kicking the crap out of you...on ANY instrument.
  • Painkiller, the last song in Endless Setlist II, is the hardest song on disc (As of Rock Band 2's release), but it's currently the second-hardest full-band song (Including all Pre-Rock Band 3 DLC to date) just behind Satch Boogie. Take everything that's hard about it from GHWT and add a smaller timing window. You have a decent chance of failure at the surf solo on Guitar Hero. You have an almost guaranteed chance of failure at the same section on Rock Band if the Guitarist is on expert.
    • It should be noted that Fake Difficulty comes into play here, which is part of the reason the surf solo (Guitar Solo 2A and 2B) is so easy to fail at. If you tap above the fret the next note is on, it counts as a miss, which is to be expected. if you tap BELOW the fret the next note is on, it also counts as a miss. Believe it or not, it is actually easier to do if you ignore the green fret altogether and just worry about the four high frets.
      • But realy Painkiller is the hardest song on disc.
    • Full band, maybe, but Panic Attack's bass track makes Painkiller look like a warm-up in comparison. The song opens with the bass playing essentially the exact same riff as the guitar, only without the benefit of any sort of lead-in or percussion to help you keep track of the 5/4 timing, and just keeps getting worse from there.
  • Soundgarden's Jesus Christ Pose. For the vocalist, good luck figuring out the pitches on your first or fifth attempt on Expert, especially if you don't sing falsetto. For the drummer... well, good luck and hope you can handle the same rhythm for about half the song. For the Guitarist... well, you get off relatively easy. for the Bassist, hope you have good stamina.
  • Guns of Summer by Coheed and Cambria. May God have mercy on your guitarist and drummer's soul.
    • Elaborating on this: Remember Through The Fire And Flames back on Guitar Hero III and how the difficulties roughly were on that for Lead Guitar? Remember failing out at 5 percent into the song on Expert going "What the Fuck?!?!?"? Remember when you first hit Visions? That's more or less what Drums are, only more so since you can 5-star it on Drums-Hard and only reach 8% on Drums-Expert. The Guitarist has it easy in comparison (with an easy-to-figure out hard-to-fc riff for the most part), but still needs to be good at sliding.
  • Green Day: Rock Band isn't very hard, but one MAY qualify for this trope. We Are The Waiting/St. Jimmy. It starts of with We Are The Waiting, an easy song with a damn catchy chorus. The only hard part in this song is after the first chorus, where it throws 3 button chords at you inbetween an easy riff. Then it stops and St. Jimmy begins. It is basically an alt. strumming discord with an incredibly fast beat. This troper can get 97 percent on it easily, but all of the discord causes him to break the combo and only get 4 stars. This troper also has not played it on any other instrument other than guitar, so anybody else can elaborate on drums and such.
    • While we're on the subject of Green Day and in turn Green Day Rock Band, the DLC song East Jesus Nowhere deserves special mention. Why you ask? Well the song for the most part is quite easy on guitar, but then comes the bridge...oh dear lord. The bridge is comprised of rapid alt-strumming to the extreme up and down the fretboard that barely scrapes through the notes per second limit and is the only reason why very few people have fc'ed it. Have fun.
      • Also, while Green Day Rock Band is a cakewalk on guitar and bass, drums are a different story. The drum solos on offer in Emenius Sleepus and Burnout are insane, not to mention Chump's outro, and then comes Homecoming. The rolls in the middle last for a good minute or so and are very, very fast. These rolls are a key reason why no one has fc'ed the song in it's entirety yet. Have fun drummers.
  • Just new (as in, today): Avenged Sevenfold track pack. One is a song that has the drummer from Dream Theater in it, one has a flailfest solo, and the one that made me fail out is one with a solo that makes Surfing With the Alien's intense Clusterfuck of notes look easy by throwing in about a minute's worth. Have fun.
  • You want real action? We Are the Nightmare on Expert Drums. Watch and weep. I don't think I need to say anything else.
  • While around 40% of the Rock Band Network tracks qualify, anything by Chaotrope will definitely push the limits of anyone who tries it. Oh, you full-combo'd Guns of Summer on Drums? You've Gold-Starred the entire Rock Band 3 on-disc setlist without ever touching the shredboard? Expect to fail out repeatedly. Especially on Baptized By Fire.
  • Just out for DLC, the two Dragonforce songs are possibly the most difficult songs available outside of the Rock Band Network. "Operation Ground and Pound" is difficult, but not overly so...that is, until solo 4A, in which case anyone failing is most likely laughing in disbelief at what they just got a glimpse of, and "Through the Fire and Flames" has, like the GH 3 version, the insane intro... and then makes the rest of the chart harder. As for keyboards...good luck getting through the synth solo of TTFAF on anything higher than hard, assuming you don't fall victim to the onslaught of chords, followed by an insane flurry of notes in the first chorus.
  • With DLC, you also get hit with one of these in the absolute LAST place you'd expect, the Miley Cyrus DLC pack. A cakewalk for the most part as you'd anticipate, then you get to "Can't Be Tamed" on Expert guitar, and you're effortlessly gliding through until a little over the 2 minute mark, and then the game throws you a curveball in the form of a really nasty 40 second long zig-zag solo that one section can single-handedly cause you to fail the song. To add insult to injury, the song itself has no actual guitar, Harmonix charted that solo just for the game, and most players weren't expecting such a difficult solo section in a song that has no guitars.


Dance Dance Revolution Series

  • Any song from the original Dance Dance Revolution could qualify. Performing a Guitar Hero 1 before the series was thought of, any time one put their foot on the arrows when there was no arrow there was considered a penalty. This made the hardest song, Paranoia, even harder to pass.
    • That was an optional mode that did that. Even in the arcade, you had to do something special to get that penalty inflicted on you. It does significantly increase the difficulty, though.
  • The song Hero, from 2nd Mix, featured mini-gallops after the chorus. It was a tricky pattern at the time.
  • 3rd Mix featured In The Navy. This song, especially on the Maniac difficulty, taught many players to master the gallop steps.
    • And when you think you have them down, Rhythm and Police throws more at you, but they are timed such that the first arrow is on the beat instead of the second, which really messes with you after learning the other way.
  • Any song that has a mislabeled difficulty rating can make things worse. Flashdance (What A Feeling) and End of the Century from 3rd Mix (both Maniac) were introduced as 8 footers out of 9 at the time. They might seem easy on a controller, but when one actually steps to the notes, these songs will brutally murder one's stamina, even if some time was spent practicing them.
    • "End of the Century" was so notorious it actually got re-rated later to a 9.
    • Supernova had this issue with Sunkiss Drop. This was rated a 7, but did not feel like it.
    • Crazy Control from the later home consoles was rated as both a 6 and a 10 at different points. Its true rating is more in the middle.
  • DDR MAX had the secret boss song Max 300 for those that earned an extra stage. It was the fastest chart at the time (at 300.1 BPM), a speed mod of 1.5x was applied for you, the arrows scrolled down instead of up, and any mistakes could not be fixed due to the lifebar not going up on successful combos.
  • When DDR Supernova came out, Fascination MaxX was the new hardest canon DDR song. Some consider it to still be the hardest. That is just on Expert. Challenge has Hard Mode Filler in use, with the worst bits right at the beginning and end.
  • DDR Supernova 2 brings two of the currently three Pluto boss songs. Pluto does not use as many stops as Chaos, but it does not have a consistent BPM. It also does not make it easy for the player to tell when the song stops during the fast part. Pluto Relinquish, originally found in the console versions, has been critically acclaimed as one of the hardest songs to date. Observe.
    • It also brings us Paranoia Hades. It is quite possibly one of the hardest, if not the currently hardest Paranoia remix. On Heavy it's bad enough with 8th note crossover patterns that sound like 16th notes, lots of jumps, and a BPM shift that throws in triplet steps before coming back to full speed with mini 8th runs...but on Challenge it's turned up to eleven. Constant 8th runs that end with jumps, jackhammer triplets at the slowdown section followed by Iron Maiden-esque gallops, and then ending in a long 8th run that will make you beg for mercy. Observe.
  • Hottest Party for the Wii is mostly not bad, but Super Samurai often becomes a stumbling block, especially to unlock the song. No speed mods in the game means one is forced to use 1x. The song does not flash its receptors to the beat at all times: this makes the quarter notes blue during the early and later stages of the song. This song can make one want to use a controller to unlock the song.
  • Any song that contains the word Evolved in it. Not only are the songs hard to figure out, but one gets a different chart every playthrough.
    • L.A. Evolved is the exception to the rule. While it is still insanely fast, there are no variations and no speed changes.
  • Trigger from DDR X. A lot of the speed changes in it are pretty unnecessary, and it features 8ths at 400 BPM. That might not be as bad as the shit 888 throws at you, but it's still not far behind.
    • 888's Challenge chart from Universe 3 and DDR X2. It has just over 750 steps (a normal boss song has about 500), of which most are 16th notes at 222 BPM.
  • Valkyrie Dimension, the final boss of the replicant D-Action folder and the final song of the Vs. Replicant course in DDR X2. Just getting into the folder that has it is a pain in the ass, let alone unlocking the songs that are in it! You need to unlock and AA them all to get to this song. Of course, being forced to play it in sudden death mode doesn't really help, and just about everyone failed at the ending trills. This is the closest anyone has ever gotten on video. Despite this, someone finally [dead link] passed it in September 2010, then it was passed frequently as part of the Vs. Replicant Course most notably on Difficult.
  • Pluto the First, a console boss that's now in the DDR X2 arcade. Perhaps the only DDR song that is universally That one boss to be, sometimes for its erratic music, sometimes for its chaotic steps, and often for both. Its impact is worsened by the fact that, as of this writing, its only appearance is in a course, directly preceding another course-exclusive (Mei) that many DDR players have been eager to play for a very long time.
  • New Decade, another Replicant song, is considered to be the second hardest after Valkyrie Dimension. Here's the Challenge chart. Taken a step further in DDR II, which gives it a long version. That's right, one of the hardest songs in history was extended!

Other Game Series

  • Am I the only one who played Gitaroo Man and had to go through the soul-crushing ordeal that is the Sanbone Trio on Master Mode?
    • This troper had the most evil time beating Mojo King Bee on masters play, and is currently stuck on Sanbone trio.
    • At least Sanbone Trio's difficulty varies throughout the song. Ben K's first level is like catching rocks in a tornado.
      • This troper Cybele had difficulty on Gregorio the 3rd...on the standard mode. Plus, Gregorio is a total freak in terms of looks. He looks like the love child of Gackt and Michael Jackson...Nightmare Fuel? You bet!
        • Good luck trying to defeat Zowie (The Big Bad in this game) in master mode, you'll most likely fail before you get to the first charge phase.
    • Although it was a long time ago, I got stuck against the first stage Ben K on STANDARD MODE for MONTHS. After finally passing it, I drifted through the rest of the game with ease up until the already mentioned Mojo King Bee Master Mode.
  • Guitar Hero's less famous predecessors Frequency and Amplitude had several songs, usually near the end of the game, all composed by members of Harmonix's in-house music team, which become this. Furious finger-work and judicious use of the Auto-Blaster power-up are almost mandatory for survival.
    • This troper had the most difficult experience with the either punk or metal songs late in the Amplitude tracklist. Who knew straight 8ths could be so hard on a PlayStation 2 controller.
      • The Blink182 song's rightmost drum track was mostly not all that hard, except for the occasional drum fills. Hitting the same shoulder button three or four times in a row in time to 16th notes at 180-odd BPM? Yeah, good luck with that... Even Spaztik, the Bonus Boss, wasn't quite that sadistic.
  • Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan has two: "Koi No Dance Site," infamously tough on the Insane difficulty, and "Ready Steady Go," the last song, where hit markers are everywhere at the end. The American spiritual sequel, Elite Beat Agents, is considered by most to be a touch easier... aside from the syncopated "off-beats" on "Canned Heat." Then you get to the final song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and its near-impossible final verse. Similarily, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 has the final stage on Insane difficulty.
    • This troper has beaten both Ouendan and EBA on insane with 100% and is now missing much of his hair.
    • This troper still has trouble with "Let's Dance" on Crusin,and is able to get an A rank on "Canned Heat" on Insane. Explain this.
    • On the highest difficulty, Jumpin' Jack Flash has a health bar that drains very fast, so not only are there a lot of notes to hit, but you have to hit them with good timing. It's possible to lose without breaking your combo, and conversely hard to pass without getting an A.
    • Honestly? The ice-skater level on Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is possibly the most difficult level on the hardest difficulty, if only because combos don't come up fast enough to keep you alive if you don't get PERFECT 300s for almost every beat combo. The bar drains ridiculously fast.
    • This troper can hit most beats flawlessly, and has a proud collection of A and S-ranks across all three games, yet will never ever beat the final song of any game on Sweating/Hard. Why? Because that's exactly the point where the requirements of the spin markers pass his human limits, and the bar drains too fast to survive more than one failed spinner in a row.
    • The VERY LAST PART of Countdown on Insane difficulty. Can you say "YOU WA SHOCK!!!"?
    • Once you get to Sweatin difficulty, "Canned Heat" is cake. You know what never gets easy for This Troper? "Lets Dance". It literally destroyed her ability to listen to Bowie. All his music now fills her with rage.
    • This Troper has yet to beat Ready Steady Go on Normal, 4 years after he got the game. Why did there have to be 3 spinners in a row? Why can't we skip the 30-second intro? Sekai wa Sore o Ai to Yobun daze is easy enough, and Jumpin' Jack Flash was barely passed on the same difficulty.
    • "The Anthem" on Hard Rock always drives this troper up a wall. She's constantly after S-rank Perfects, and the very last spinner...ARGH! It goes way too fast for her fingers, and thus she always misses the very final beat, ruining the chances of a Perfect. It really discourages trying again and again since the song is rather fast and tiring.
  • "Aurora no Kaze ni Notte" in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch: Pichi Pichitto Live Start. The song is one of the more difficult ones on its own, but what really drives you to insanity is that you can only play as Caren, whose singing voice is beyond Hollywood Tone Deaf and genuinely terrible. Bound to distract anyone that doesn't play with the music off, which defeats the whole point of playing the game.
  • Bathroom Rap in the first Parappa the Rapper game where you rap against all the masters to get ahead in line for the bathroom was pure evil. Of course rapping to get to the bathroom is not made up.
    • The game's painfully small timing window certainly doesn't make this any easier. Of course, on subsequent replays this can become a lot easier if you get a Cool rank right at the start and improvise your way through the whole level.
    • Taste of Teriyaki from Um Jammer Lammy. Complicated offbeat rhythms combined with the small timing window? Forget it.
  • Daigasso! Band Brothers for DS has "Recording Ticket Gold", which randomly picks 3 songs from the main 38 tracks and a random instrument from each, and requires you to get total score of 297%. Yeah, you get a 3% margin of error on 3 random songs on the hardest mode. You can't pause either.
    • In the Daigasso! Band Brothers games, pretty much anything on Pro (Master in DBBDX) Drums is essentially impossible.
    • Its hard to pin a single song down as "That One Boss" in DBB/DBBDX, since most of it is user created content, but some songs like Necrofantasia, Battle on the Big Bridge and FF7's Boss theme are commonly referred to as "Totally freaking impossible".
  • Taiko no Tatsujin for DS. Go Go Kitchen (written in Katakana) WILL make you punch a hole in your DS.
    • Correction:Aside from 1-4 star songs, ANY song on Oni mode in Taiko no Tatsujin will make you destroy your DS. Also, any song from the 2000 series.
  • Remix 8 of Rhythm Heaven. Due to its fast pace, this song requires precise timing to succeed at, especially if you're aiming for a Superb rating. It doesn't help that it cycles through several different games in quick succession.
    • Likewise, Remix 5 in its No Export for You predecessor, Rhythm Tengoku for the GBA. It's not QUITE as fast, but still goes at a speedy clip, requires precise timing to get right, and what makes it worse is that, like Remix 8 from Rhythm Heaven/Tengoku Gold, it doubles as Crowning Music of Awesome.
    • Forget Remix 8. It's the two Locksteps that get this troper every single time. He cannot, no way, no how, get the offbeat correct.
      • Lockstep is a very interesting case. It consists of you constantly switching between the beat and the off-beat. It is absolutely impossible to beat by trying to muscle your way through, but once it clicks, you'll get perfect every time afterwards. It's really just about getting that one skill instead of practicing/grinding.
  • The final boss of Bit.Trip Beat completely drops the rhythm aspect of the game and forces you to play a full game of pong against a computer player, complete with the oldschool physics that make the ball go absolutely haywire if hit the right way. If you perfected the incredibly difficult song up until this point... getting a perfect score has just become a Luck-Based Mission. Oh... and if you start winning, the computer paddle starts splitting into two... then four...
    • And again in Bit.Trip Core, the second boss is notoriously difficult. You have to play a game of Missile Command against falling beats, and starting in the second wave, the beats start erratically changing directions and faking you out. You die if you miss about four of them. (Thankfully, the rhythm aspect of the game is retained this time.)
  • I can think of some really difficult selections from Beatmania IIDX. AA and Scorpion Fire in RED (11), Mei in Happy Sky (12).... there are a ton more, but I can't think of any.
    • Himiko, Nageki no Ki, D, Mendes, Waltz Of The Big Dogs [A]...the list goes on and on.
    • 5.1.1. [Another], particularly before the new Hyper chart was released. Okay, 5.1.1. [Normal] and [Hyper] (again, pre-redesigned Hyper), great beginner's charts. So the Another shouldn't be too bad, right? Wrong. Constant scratching combined with difficult scales turn 5.1.1. from a a simple newcomer-level song into complete hell.
    • The PlayStation 2 release of DJ Troopers introduces the Black Another charts. If a song has one, then it's bound to be That One. But the worst is Do It Do It, which has to be seen to be believed.
      • Mendes [Kuro] and Flowers [Kuro]. That is all.
    • The Safari [Hyper] has stopped many a run of various IIDX 7-dan courses.
    • All these examples are single player. That's not saying Doubles players are let off easy; there's Mei (again), Almagest, Quasar (which has been the final Kaiden song since the course's creation), Quantum Teleportation and Quell -The Seventh Slave-. Quell in particular is so hard that, as of August 2011, it has a clear rate of 1%.
      • And then there's charts that clearly weren't designed with a single player in mind, such as Cheer Train [Another], which has the nerve to group turntable and key notes together on one side!
  • DJMAX Technika's Popular Mode has some paricularly challenging songs on its 3rd stage. Sweet Shining Shooting Star is a somewhat easy song up until the chorus section, at which point you're presented with a charlie foxtrot of notes, while Blythe, Sin, and Son Of Sun get their difficulty from having double-speed wipes combined with lots of eighth notes, some of which are of the "chain" variety to make things worse.
    • The Heartbeat Set's normal last stage, Colours of Sorrow TP. If you're only good enough to play the easiest songs in the set (typically Divine Service TP, Remember TP, and either Play the Future TP or Stop TP), CoS TP's difficulty will likely come off as a shock to you. It doesn't help that the sections with repeat notes will be a source of many misses unless you hit the touchscreen in a rather specific way.
    • And ditto for Customizer Set, which has Son of Sun TP as its normal last stage. If you're only good enough to clear Shoreline PP, Y TP, and Sweet Shining Shooting Star PP, SoS will give you a mental SOS.
    • Technika 2 has D2 (Hard). It would actually be easier than its Normal chart, but there's one particularly harsh condition that makes it otherwise. The timeline in the Normal chart is scrolling at double speed, which for some makes the chart fast enough. On Hard? It scrolls at quadruple speed--it takes the timeline about a second to completely scroll to one direction and back. To make matters more difficult, the timing windows are much stricter than on any other chart. Many players find that even if they watch videos of the chart many times and think they can do the chart, it's when they try the chart for real that they realize that it is MUCH harder than it looks.
    • And now that Crew Race, a mode where player-created crews can make their own courses with target scores to beat, you can BECOME That One Boss! Most of the crews like to put high-end songs with high scores and annoying modifiers. Failing that, there's crew courses consisting of easier songs...but many of those will require you to nail a Perfect Play of the entire course to win.
    • With the recent release of "Maximum Set" on Technika 2 only a few people had passed its boss songs (Cypher Gate MX and D2 MX) because it's just so HARD to clear and Club Mixing's not-so-lenient Groove Meter doesn't help too.
    • Technika 3 features Black Swan, the first song in the series to be in a non-4/4 signature, AND to have multiple time signatures. Here's a look at its Hard chart, and it isn't pretty.
  • Any song with an "Insane" level in the Mungyodance series. The Destination series, Reasons To Live, Origin, and Chaos Theory come to mind.
    • Gabba Bond (4Skips vs Big Kiss Remix) on Insane, due to the heavy amount of mines in the chart. And after hitting one, avoiding any more becomes a sadistic endeavor due to the added mods.
    • The Seven Gates. The steps aren't too hard compared to the likes of the above songs, but it's still very draining, mainly for the fact that it's almost 11 minutes long.
    • Step on Stage. Its fast-paced vocals paired with a much too slow bpm and liberal use of hands drive this troper up a wall.
  • While Evila is the most-cited That One Boss in Space Channel 5, Giant Evila and Purge the King usually aren't far behind. You need to do the opposite of what they say before shooting, or else you'll hit your allies. Giant Evila sends out a lot of shoot commands, which gets confusing, and while Purge the King has a much shorter segment, he only gives you three chances to fail.
  • Bounce (FSG Remix). A low amount of checkpoints, one of the faster songs in the game, and good luck clearing it in Empire mode, because the AI almost never misses a beat. You have to be completely precise in your hits; so much as one screw-up could through the whole mix away for you.
  • Any chart released with the 1.30 patch for Pump It Up Fiesta. For example; Cleaner, Gargoyle, What Happened, and Superman.
  • In The Groove 2 has Bloodrush, which on hard is a 9. Not quite so hard to pass, but a long string of crossover 16ths at during the slow section and more crossovers at full speed later in the song guarantee that unless you've really practiced, you won't get a good score, even if you've done well on 10s and 11s.
    • Determinator Expert. 16th-note triplets at ~170BPM for a solid 5 seconds. The song is rated a 12, but if That One Run was extended to the entire song, it would be more like a 15. (For reference, official ITG songs only go up to 13.)
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