History Main / ThatOneAchievement

Sites like [[https://www.trueachievements.com/ True Achievements]], as well as the global achievement stats pages on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}, can show you which achievements are likely candidates for this trope. If an achievement has a significantly lower percentage of players who have it than any other achievements for a particular game, you're likely looking at this trope.

** Nearly as difficult as "Saint" is "7 Day Survivor", where the game requires you survive for seven game days in Infinity mode. This is incredibly difficult because: one game day is 2 real-time hours. Your health drains every 1 minute and forty seconds. There are limited health items, no saving (not even with SaveGameLimits), no continues, 14 real hours all in one shot. To make matters worse, since you can't save this meant running your Xbox 360 that entire time. In the early days of the 360, this ran a very real chance of giving you the Red Ring of Death (i.e. the Xbox 360 fries itself and no longer works). This game was released just near the end of the original one-year warranty for launch day consoles. Have fun.

* "Nice Shootin’, Tex!" in ''VideoGame/GhostbustersTheVideoGame''. You have to complete the game with less than $100,000 in property damage. To give a better perspective of how difficult this achievement is, the second level of the game is in Times Square. Hit a police car with your beam, that's $35,000. Hit a bus? '''$80,000.'''
** Thanks to Atari shutting down the servers for the PC and [=PS3=] versions, the 10 online achievements/trophies are [[TemporaryOnlineContent unobtainable]] in those versions.
* When players started complaining that "Insane" difficulty in ''VideoGame/AlienSwarm'' was too easy, the developers added "Brutal," a difficulty level so hard even ''they'' couldn't beat it. They also added two achievements--one for beating a level in Brutal with friendly fire damage set to max, and one for beating the entire campaign in Brutal. As of this writing, they've respectively been earned by 0.9% and 0.6% of players on Steam. (The least-earned achievement, at 0.3%, is for killing 100,000 aliens, but that's not a matter of difficulty so much as grinding.)

* Matador in ''VideoGame/EnslavedOdysseyToTheWest'', which requires you to defeat a BullfightBoss without once getting hit by its charge attack. Two things qualify it; one, it's a PuzzleBoss which you cannot defeat until a set amount of time has passed, and two, unlike most {{Bullfight Boss}}es, this one actually can course correct.
** Also, Tech Curator. Tech orbs are these glowing red orbs that you use to upgrade your equipment. They are literally everywhere. So it isn't difficult to get 70%-90% of these without really trying. For Tech Curator, you need to get {{Hundred Percent Completion}} on these. Many of them are scattered across large areas, behind objects, hidden in the scenery, etcetera. Combines {{Last Lousy Point}} and {{Guide Dang It}} in every possible way. Oh, and there are some in chase sections. Good Hunting!

*** Let's not forget the one achievement that needs you to defeat a boss before it uses a certain attack. It basically turns ''the entire battle'' into one big LuckBasedMission. That boss being the WarmupBoss, though, means that with the right weapon you can beat it within the first few seconds, and even if you fail, it's one of the shortest levels in the game anyway.
* ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' gives you "Stormbringer", a trophy/achievement for S-ranking all levels on Revengeance difficulty. This wouldn't be so bad, if not for the fact that a ''very, very large'' amount of the ranked fights in the game are hidden, some very nefariously. It's not so much a matter of getting S-ranks in the fights as it is actually finding the damn things. Oh, and if you miss one or get even an A-rank on one and you reach a checkpoint? You have to restart the entire mission and do all the previous fights all over again! Have fun.

*** WB announced they'll be shutting down the servers for ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamOrigins'' at the end of 2016. That means that all the online achievements will be now [[TemporaryOnlineContent unobtainable]].

* While ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4: Special Edition'' has a number of challenging/time consuming achievements (mostly involving beating various difficulties with S ranks on all missions) the most potentially horrible one is ''Untouchable''. How does it work? You need to beat the final boss of the Bloody Palace, Dante, with a ''NoDamageRun''. This wouldn't be so bad, but if you get hit once while fighting him, you have to start all over again. A good run in the Bloody Palace takes about an hour and a half. And Dante is already ThatOneBoss. Unless you can scum him out or are profoundly skilled this will be a nightmare.
** There's also ''Down a Notch''. Each major boss has an achievement which requires you to beat them with an SSS ranking on Son of Sparda difficulty or higher. For some bosses it's easy to do; for others it's a challenge, since it's not enough to just get the SSS rank during the fight; you need to still have the ranking as the boss dies. It essentially means you need to defeat each boss quickly, stylishly, and not get hit once your combo has started. What makes ''Down a Notch'' so much harder than the other similar achievements? It's the achievement for Dante, who as mentioned above, is ThatOneBoss and is difficult to hit and avoid being hit by.

* ''VideoGame/Primordia2012'' has the "Know-it-all" achievement. Gameplay-wise, touching Memorious's information kiosk at all is completely optional, as it is possible to assemble the Council Code without Memorious's part; it also doesn't help that the word chain leading to it is considered the hardest puzzle in the entire game. The achievement requires looking at ''every single entry'' in the kiosk - both with and without Memorious's monocle. To make matters worse, the achievement was bugged in the initial release, where a couple of entries refused to trigger when their keywords were typed in, thus rendering the goal unreachable until a patch fixed the issue.
** Slightly less difficult, but still frustrating, is "We're all in this together", which requires getting all possible robots to appear in the "good" ending. Whether or not each of them follows Horatio depends on the solutions to specific puzzles, meaning that the player has to meet the criteria for getting every character on a single playthrough. This involves [[EarnYourHappyEnding a lot of work]].

** And then there's an achievement called "Achievement" with the description of "[[CaptainObvious This is an achievement]]". You get it simply by triggering an option in the Extras menu.
*** Ultra Deluxe has a similar achievement called "Test Achievement please ignore". [[spoiler:The narrator scolds the developers for leaving this achievement in the game, then creates a lever that actually gives you this achievement as part of his pitch for ''The Stanley Parable 2'', which [[SubvertedTrope doesn't give you the achievement.]] But after completing the epilogue you can pull the same lever again, [[DoubleSubversion which does give you the achievement]], surprising the narrator as he was not expecting this to happen.]]

* ''VideoGame/SilenceTheWhisperedWorld2'' has an achievement called ''Shut up clown!'', which is annoying to get because the description is completely misleading. The description for it says "Listen to Kyra" (or in the original German, "Listen to everything Kyra has to say"), so you'd think you get it by hearing a certain amount of Kyra's dialogue lines, right? Nope. In fact, Kyra doesn't have to speak at all for this achievement. In order to get it, at the part where Kyra gets turned to stone, you need to repeatedly examine Kyra until Sadwick repeats his dialogue, and do this after every step in the puzzle to turn her back to normal. This achievement is so misleading and precise that many players of the game are convinced it's bugged.
** ''Fine Listener'' from the same game, because this one ''is'' actually bugged. You get it by finishing the game without skipping any dialogue, but there's a bug in the game where sometimes it'll believe you skipped dialoge even when you didn't. Thankfully, there's a way to "cheat" to get this achievement by altering your save file.

* This page was inspired by the many fruitless attempts to beat the Score Attack mode in ''VideoGame/BlazBlueContinuumShift'', not so much to unlock the Unlimited characters as to get the two achievements for doing so. Score Attack in the original ''VideoGame/{{BlazBlue|Calamity Trigger}}'' was no picnic either, but in CS the CPU's difficulty level is turned up past "Hell" and into "Sadist". Inescapable combos, impossibly fast reaction times, no continues, and four [[SNKBoss SNK boss]]es in a row as the final bosses combine for a hellish experience.

* ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' Has "Tower Master"[[labelnote:*]]Complete all 300 Tower missions[[/labelnote]], "Ladder Master" [[labelnote:*]]Complete Arcade Ladder on the highest difficulty without using a Continue[[/labelnote]], "You Found Me"[[labelnote:*]]Fight Hidden Kombatant 1 in Arcade mode, which requires you to never lose a single round until the final boss, then beat him with two Flawless Victories in a row ''and'' finish him with a Fatality[[/labelnote]], "Luck Be A Lady"[[labelnote:*]]Get 3 dragon coins on the slots in Test Your Luck[[/labelnote]], and "Outstanding". The first 3, all involve plenty of [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard cheating AI's]], with skill only '''MOSTLY''' helping. Then there's, Luck Be A Lady, which is every bit of a LuckBasedMission as you'd expect. Finally Outstanding requires winning 10 online matches in a row. While there is/was an [[NotTheIntendedUse exploit]], the frequent hotfixing makes that sort of thing unreliable.

* WWE 2K14 gives us "Rest In Peace." Trying to take on [[SNKBoss Defeat The Streak-mode Undertaker]] with just about anyone on the roster is a large enough feat in itself, but in order to get this achievement, you have to unlock all the Wrestlemania Rewind photos from beating him in Defeat the Streak mode. This requires beating him a grand total of ten times with ten different wrestlers. As a refresher, Undertaker counters nearly every strike you throw at him, has severely buffed resistance against all attacks, can sometimes teleport behind you and do his finisher after you execute yours in the ring, and can even ''counter your pin attempts'' into a Chokeslam for Retro 'Taker or the Hell's Gate submission hold for Modern 'Taker.
** Also related to the "Defeat the Streak Mode" is the "Epic Match" Achievement, in which you must kick out of Taker's pin attempts 5 times. This is a lot harder than you think, as Undertaker will usually only attempt to pin you when his victory is almost guaranteed (such as after a [[SignatureMove Chokeslam, Last Ride,]] [[FinishingMove Suicide Dive, or a Tombstone Piledriver.]])

** "In The Pink" requires you to get 400 Seraph crystals to fully complete the challenge. Seraph crystals can be obtained by defeating a raid boss only in [[HarderThanHard Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode]] which can get risky especially if you don't have any slag weapon. It can be obtained from the Tiny Tina's Lootsplosion Machine in Flamerock Refuge in the Tiny Tina DLC even in Normal and True Ultimate Vault Mode but requires too much luck.
*** Also, there's even a challenge named "Shady Dealings" which requires to purchase items with Seraph Cyrstals. You must do 15 times.

* Inspired by "Little Rocket Man," ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' has "Rare Specimen", gotten by sending the hidden hat to Xen. You need to find a hidden prop you might not even know exists, carry it through enemies and hazards that can easily have it lost, and drop it somewhere specific (in this case, the teleporter to Xen). Fortunately you don't need to carry it through the entire game, as it's found in the same chapter it needs to be dropped, but you do need to carry it through the teleporter puzzle, which is finicky enough without having your movement slowed and sight blocked by a huge purple hat. And to complicate it even further? [[spoiler: There's a ''fake hat''.]] The Steam release makes it even ''more'' difficult by putting the hat near the beginning of the game -- specifically, right after the Resonance Cascade. If you thought moving it through the last level was hard, try carrying it through all of the ones beforehand.
** And for those who thought Rare Specimen was too easy, the full release of ''Black Mesa'' topped it with the addition of "The Rarest Specimen", which requires you to bring the hat not only through the Xen portal with you, but ''all the way through Xen and into the chamber of the Nihilanth!'' ''Black Mesa's'' version of Xen is ''considerably'' [[AdaptationExpansion expanded]] over ''Half-Life's'' original version, and this includes carrying it through the much longer and more hectic fight against the Gonarch.

* ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' has 'Scavenger Hunt' which requires you to complete the game in [[HarderThanHard 1999 mode]] without using the Dollar Bill vending machines (which sell Health, Salts, and weapon ammo). With combat considerably tougher than other difficulties, that limitation ''hurts''. [[GoodBadBugs But the achievement is glitched]], so it'll be awarded upon completing the game on any difficulty without using the Dollar Bill vending machines.
** And then there's the [=DLC=] ''Clash in the Clouds'', which requires you to complete all 60 "Blue Ribbon Challenges", most of which can be considered "That One Achievements" on their own. Some of the hardest Blue Ribbon challenges include defeating The Siren (ThatOneBoss) before she can resurrect a dead body which is already on the field (hint: get rid of the bodies), defeating a Handyman before any other opponent (frequently ruined when ''The Handyman'' throws a {{Mook}} at you), and the Defeating all enemies with only a Shotgun (when you spawn on the other side of the map from your enemies and half of them are Snipers).

* In the past, the ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' games had the "Seriously" achievements (which necessitated grinding to get a lot of kills - 10,000 in the first game, 100,000 in the second). "Seriously 3.0" necessitates getting to Level 100 and obtaining every Onyx (special) medal - that means playing somewhere in the neighbourhood of '''18,000 matches''' to get all of them (which includes, but isn't limited to, getting 6000 executions, 4000 headshots, playing 2500 "perfect games", getting 5000 assists, 6000 kills with each weapon, etc). This can be mitigated (somewhat) by setting up private matches with bots, but it's still going to take weeks to get this legally.

* ''VideoGame/PacMan Championship Edition 2'' has "Adventure 4", which on Steam, as of October 2020, has the lowest percentage of players who have the achievement at 2.9% (at one point it was at 1.1%). What is the achievement's conditions, exactly? Clear [[FinalBoss Area 6-15]] in Adventure Mode. Getting to 6-15 in the first place requires you to earn all other stars in Adventure mode. Each non-boss stage has 3 stars to collect, and only by clearing the stage on Pro difficulty can all of them be collected, and while any stage on Pro is hard enough, you have to complete ''all'' of them on that difficulty! Meanwhile, each boss stage has 6 stars to collect, all 6 requiring collecting ''every'' OneUp and doing a no-death run in one shot. \\
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At least the achievement with the next-lowest Steam clear rate, "Score Attack > Extreme 4", only requires beating any one stage on Extreme with an S rank. The clear rate for it is still quite low at 3.1% as of October 2020.

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'' on Steam, getting the achievements for ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'', ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2 Sonic 2]]'' and ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'' is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. The achievement for completing all the challenges (Clean Sweep) is likewise impossible because one challenge (Faster!) requires having ''Sonic 1''.
** Clean Sweep is also impossible if any of the required games are unavailable in your region. For example, ''VideoGame/{{Flicky}}'' and ''VideoGame/ShadowDancer'' can't be bought in Germany.

* This is starting to crop up in ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. Several of the "Kill" accolades involve defeating up to 1,000 members of each enemy faction; the problem is that while some are very easy due to the existence of Fleet actions, where the ground is covered in hundreds of enemies at a time, several of the factions only appear in 2 or 3 missions. The best mission to hunt Nausicaans only has 25 enemies, and it's the only mission you can choose, meaning it has to be replayed about 40 times! This isn't even getting into cases where the enemies appear to be a member of the faction, but won't actually count towards the Accolade (looking at you, Kuvah'magh mission). Combine this with the fact that most players have a... distaste for ground combat, and you hear a lot of complaints. On the "Space" side of the accolades, there's the "Breen Capital Punishment" one, which requires you to, naturally, defeat 3 Breen Capital ships. The problem here is that the ships spawn very, very rarely, and typically wander through the maps far outside the mission area in each Daily's location. Keep in mind these are SPACE missions, which means that it's hard to tell exactly where you are in the map (Space is mostly empty, after all.) and so you could easily waste a lot of time wandering around looking for something that's not there. Since, unlike the other missions, this one can only be done once a day, this is the worst combination of LuckBasedMission and forced waiting in the game. The only upside is that missions are instanced, so there's no chance of anyone interfering in the kills.
** In another Creator/CrypticStudios game based on the same engine, ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'', there are 100, 1000 and 5000 kill achievements. Some are extremely easy to do (VIPER) as you encounter them throughout your heroic career from 1-40 and/or are regular end game enemies. All it takes is a bit of grinding. Other groups which no longer appear, even in Alerts (the Westside gangs with the exception of the Red Banner, who does show up in Alerts) can take much longer to grind. Nothing, however, prepares someone for 5000 Empyrean Constructs kills. Not seen in missions nor in Alerts, they are barely grouped together and at best, Lemuria (the map where you find them) will contain around 25 in the entire map.

** Herald of the Titans requires that players defeat [[{{Superboss}} Algalon the Observer]] in Ulduar ''without any gear that is higher level than what is available in the '''10 man''' version of Ulduar''. Not only is this quite difficult on its own, but it's also impossible to outgear, and virtually impossible to find people who are willing to do it.
*** In theory, level 85s could have gone back and done it with the basic crafted gear, but unlike a lot of other achievements, Blizzard preserved this one by making it unobtainable by level 81+ characters.
** Cataclysm also gives us an achievement so insanely difficult to obtain, guilds have been pulling their hair out over it for months: "I Can't Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am". The criteria? Beat [[{{Superboss}} Sinestra.]] On your first try. [[NoCasualtiesRun With not a single death at any point in the battle.]] If someone has earned this, props are very much deserved.
*** Like the Algalon achievement, it would be much easier to accomplish during the next expansion with level 86+ characters, but unlike "Herald of the Titans", Blizzard blocked this by [[TemporaryOnlineContent removing the achievement]], and making it a Feat of Strength for the people who completed it during Cataclysm.

** ''Wrath of the Lich King's'' "Frostbitten", earned by finding and killing every rare spawn on Northrend, is a rare instance of an achievement that manages to infuriate both the people doing it ''and'' some people who aren't. For those looking to earn it, it's a pain in the neck because it requires you to hunt down and kill specific mobs that have respawn timers ranging from hours to ''days'', and only one player can claim the kill for each spawn. In addition to this, however, no less than three of the achievement's required mobs are rare beasts with unique looks that are extremely sought after by hunters looking to tame them, with [[PantheraAwesome Loque'nahak]] in particular possessing both a unique model and being the ''only'' Spirit Beast in the game when it was introduced. Due to this, "Frostbitten" isn't particularly well-liked among hunters in general.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'' have certain Epic Medals which the player can receive on certain conditions. The medal that fits this trope most: the illusive "Raisenai Heroes" medal - for [[OneManArmy killing virtually the entire enemy team of 15 (just having 14 kills is enough for the said medal) in a single battle.]]

** "Increase the Timer to 180 seconds" on ''Goin' Nuts''. At the beginning of a ball, the timer begins at 10 seconds suspended, and you're given a 3-ball multiball. Completing a set of 3 targets of the same color adds 3 seconds, and once you're down to two balls, they add 2 seconds. When you're down to one ball, however, this timer starts ticking down in real time, and the flippers freeze once the timer hits zero, ending the ball. Also, targets no longer add time. Even if you never lose a ball in the meantime, you still have to complete a set of 3 same-color targets ''57 times'' in one go to get this Table Goal. Losing one ball will increase that number up to 85 times in one go.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'':
** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog4'': Untouchable. Making it through the final BossRush stage plus defeating ThatOneBoss at the end [[NoDamageRun without taking ANY damage]]. God help you if you get hit by [[spoiler:Eggman's [[TakingYouWithMe suicide attack.]]]]
** ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'': All of the hot dog vendor achievements count, but Hard Boiled takes the already NintendoHard MarathonLevel Eggmanland and forces you to complete it three times with a decreasing time limit. The actual time isn't much of a problem compared to the fact that [[NoDeathRun losing a life forces you to start all over]], in a level that force-fed you extra lives just to make it manageable.
** ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'': Can't Touch This. Making it through the FinalBoss (also ThatOneBoss) [[NoDamageRun without taking any damage]]. This is made ''significantly'' worse by the fact that [[spoiler: you're Super Sonic, and therefore, invincible during the last boss. Taking a hit doesn't HURT you, it just slows you down, so there's no real indication that you're "taking damage".]] There's also "Greased Lightning", earned by beating Green Hill Act 1 in under a minute. Not only does a typical player usually end up with at least about 1:30.00, but since the physics of this game aren't the same as the original Sonic the Hedgehog, be prepared to start over and over and over from missing one jump due to either a glitch, or the game's movements not responding until half a second after the button input. "Red Ring Collector" can also be a real pain in the neck to earn, as some of the Red Star Rings are ''ridiculously'' hard to get (the first one in City Escape Act 2 comes to mind).
** Following the tradition of ''Sonic'' games giving achievements for not taking a hit during a boss battle, we have the 2011 re-release of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD'', in which you can get the "Heavy Metal" achievement for beating Metal Sonic without being hit once. Good luck.
** The 2012 rerelease of ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' has "Emblem Mania" and "You Are The Legend", unlocked by collecting all 180 emblems and getting A-ranks in all stages, respectively. Good luck with that. (It's also impossible to collect all the emblems without buying the game's DownloadableContent, so be prepared to cough up your money.)
** The [=PlayStation 3=], Xbox 360 and Steam releases of ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure DX'' (in the latter's case, achievements were added some time after the game was originally released) has "Metal Sonic" and "The Perfect Adventurer", both obtained by collecting all 130 emblems, and "Mission All Acomplished", obtained by completing all 60 missions. Even though there are less emblems, it's harder to collect all of them, as some of them are obtained in Adventure Fields (and there is an achievement for getting just those emblems). Plus, some missions can become insanely hard, requiring you to perform actions within Action Stages and not just in the Adventure Fields (and some missions can only be completed with a specific character).
** Also there's "Metal Sonic Master", unlocked by getting Level A on all Action Stages using Metal Sonic. This is essentially playing through all of Sonic's stages three more times. Had trouble getting Level A on all of Sonic's stages? Well, get ready to do it all over again!
* ''Franchise/MegaMan'':
** ''VideoGame/MegaMan9'' has the infamous ''Mr. Perfect'' achievement. It's malevolent in both concept and execution: [[NoDamageRun Beat the entire game without taking a single hit.]] While the eight Robot Master stages can eventually be conquered with enough practice and memorization (you can also save after each successful run), the true terror lies in the Wily stages, where you must beat the four toughest levels in the game back-to-back with no saves. All without getting scratched. Wily 4 in particular is ''spectacularly'' cruel, housing both the series' traditional BossRush against the eight Robot Masters and the [[MarathonBoss three-phase]] final battle against Wily, all of which have [[AIRoulette random attack patterns]] for the most part. Make one mistake ([[LuckBasedMission or just get unlucky]]), and you have no choice but to restart from the beginning of Wily 1. Luckily, getting 200 gamerscore doesn't require getting this achievement. While ''VideoGame/MegaMan10'' brought this achievement back and made it required for a Platinum Trophy or 200 gamerscore, its inclusion of an Easy Mode, which has the ability to save between Wily stages, alleviates a significant portion of the challenge.
** To unlock two minigames in ''VideoGame/MegaManZero3'', you're required to not only beat every level with a [[RankInflation S rank]], but to do it with a perfect 100 score. This means you must complete every subobjective, beat levels quickly, kill a minimum amount of enemies and take no more than a small amount of damage. Luckily you're allowed to save and use the Ultimate difficulty, but it's still a taxing challenge.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMeatBoy'' has the "Girl Boy" achievement. To get this, you have to complete every Cotton Alley (which is a [[BrutalBonusLevel Brutal Bonus Chapter]] and can take more than a thousand tries to complete it) level in a row without dying. Then there's "Impossible Boy," which requires you to beat every [[DarkWorld Dark Cotton Alley]] level in a row without dying. The Dark variations of levels are much harder than the Light World ones. '''0.6%''' of all ''Super Meat Boy'' players have these two achievements.
** For those who don't know the game: this is a game that is only for [[NintendoHard challenge gamers in first place]], and the levels in question are much more difficult than the normal game. Only 1.1% of players even manage to beat the dark world of Cotton Alley at all, let alone without dying.
** ''Super Meat Boy'' has a challenge like this for every section of the game; almost all of them are extremely rare achievements, with only ''Wood Boy'' (beating every level of the first zone of the game without dying, in one go) having above a 1.1% completion rate. As you have to do this for literally every one of the worlds in the game, it is an extraordinarily difficult achievement. Indeed, ''Super Meat Boy'' is full of achievements like this; of the game's 48 achievements, only 5 of them have above a 10% completion rate, and only 10 (including those 5) above 5%. The achievement for just ''beating the game'' (and only the light world version of the game at that) is achieved by a mere 5.4% of players; it goes downhill from there.
* ''VideoGame/TheyBleedPixels'' has quite a few of these. 'Elder God' requires that you S Rank every level, which requires memorization and a full understanding of the game's combat system. There's also 'The Girl Who Would Not Die', which asks that you beat every level without dying (not in a row, thankfully): in [[NintendoHard this game]], that's asking a lot. On a more mundane note, there's 'The Lance', which requires you to kill four Blade Imps with one drop attack. Considering how quick they move and jump around, it's more luck than anything.

* In ''VideoGame/JakIIRenegade'' in the [[CompilationRerelease Jak and Daxter Collection]], "The Collectationator!" is a really nasty one, as it requires you to collect all 286 of the game's Precursor Orbs. This means that you not only have to complete a host of sidequests, many of which could qualify as ThatOneSidequest with a helping of LuckBasedMission for dessert, but you also have to find the 94 orbs just sitting out in the open in the various areas around the city. There's no way in-game to tell exactly which of these 94 orbs you haven't found yet, so you may need to revisit every area, some of which are a real GuideDangIt to revisit. Worst of all, 7 of these orbs are in the last area of the game (and some are fairly well hidden), and once you beat the last boss you can never return to the area. So, if you've suffered through all the ring challenges, races, gun courses, and scavenger hunts, but you missed that one stinking orb hidden in the ruined tank near the [[spoiler: Metal Head Nest]]? Better start the whole game over again if you want that last trophy.
* ''VideoGame/AliceMadnessReturns'' has the bothersome "Seasoned Campaigner", which requires that you pepper all the snouts in the game. Some of them are well-hidden, and though there is an indicator of how many you've found in a chapter, and things only get worse if you miss one during your first playthrough. Though there is an indicator showing how many snouts remain in each chapter, there is no way of knowing which snouts in a chapter you have already peppered (and for extra tedium, the snouts you've already triggered reappear when you play a level again, so simply hunting for the ones you missed becomes even more of a chore.
** "That's Using Your Head" is another painful one. You have to complete the Off With Her Head 2 portion of Chapter 5 in under 6 minutes. Not only is it an UnexpectedGameplayChange with lots of perfectly angled shots required, but the cannons are finicky, and the "ball" you control handles like a severed head (because that's basically what it is). Fortunately, the 6 minute time limit is rather generous, so you have some leeway for mistakes.

* In ''[[VideoGame/EarthwormJim Earthworm Jim HD]]'' there's an achievement for going through the whole game on the hardest difficulty setting without dying, as well as beating it on the same setting in under 50 minutes.
* ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', the Steam version.
** The "I LOVE PUNCHING!" achievement requires completing all stages of the target mini-game in Basic Braining, which is frustratingly difficult.
** "Figgy Piggy" requires collecting all the figments. They are absolutely frustrating to find. There are hundreds of them scattered across several worlds, and even worse, they're ''partially invisible and 2-D''. In a 3-D platformer with very vibrant environments.
** And finally, both of those are required for the "Math Is Hard" achievement. Getting to rank 101 requires both of the achievements above, plus sorting all the emotional baggage, removing all the mental cobwebs, completing the scavenger hunt, and finding all the PSI challenge markers and cards. These tasks are somewhat tough, but not that difficult compared to the two above.
* ''VideoGame/Psychonauts2'' has "Nest Egg", which requires you to completely fill your astral wallet by getting the purse expansion. That is, 5000 Psitanium. You won't come anywhere close to that by playing the game normally, especially when you first get the chance to unlock the purse expansion over other useful items. Even if you 100% the game, and get the "Psimultanium" pin (which doubles the drop rate of Psitanium) you can very reasonably still have about 2000 Psitanium to grind for, making the achievement very taxing to do.
* ''VideoGame/{{Limbo}}'' has the "No Point In Dying" achievement. [[EverythingTryingToKillYou You have to survive the whole game in one sitting...]] [[OneHitPointWonder with 5 or less deaths.]]
* The VideoGame/{{Lego Adaptation Game}}s have their share of these achievements:
** ''LEGO The Lord of the Rings'' has "We cannot linger", which requires you to beat The Mines of Moria in under 15 minutes. The levels in this game are long enough, but when you're given a time limit for this achievement that long, you know this level is bad. And it's got ''two'' boss battles, a horde of Orcs, and plenty of contraption-assembling that will take a long time under normal circumstances.
** ''LEGO Star Wars II'' has the achievements for beating the vehicle levels without dying. The standard levels can be fudged by being the invincible force ghost characters, but the vehicle ones are pure skill.
** ''LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean'' has "The worst pirate I've ever seen", which requires you to beat Port Royal, the first level in the game, with zero studs collected. It's more intimidating than it looks, as getting studs is unavoidable. The good news is you just need to have zero studs at the end of the level, but that requires you to get killed by enemies repeatedly and not keep picking up the dropped studs upon death.
** ''LEGO Marvel Super Heroes'' has "I'm always angry!", which requires you (as Bruce Banner) to transform into the Hulk 50 times. Not difficult, but ''extremely'' tedious, as the transformation animation takes several seconds, and holding down the button to transform won't work; you have to press and hold the button every time, for every transformation sequence, 50 times.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie Video Game'' has the achievements "I Could Sing This Song For Hours" and "No Way, This Is My Jam". Basically, you play a DDR-esque mini-game in two separate levels where you press buttons in time with the music, and you have to get nothing but AWESOME! ratings throughout the entire song. Did we mention that the mini-game takes place about halfway through each level with no skipping and you only get one chance on it each time you play that level? And that if your button press is off by a millisecond it won't count? Made slightly easier by the fact that when playing in Free Play, you can restart it as many times as needed and can quit at any time, but the achievements themselves are still frustratingly difficult.
** As noted under Rhythm, even ''Lego VideoGame/RockBand'' is not immune, having "The Final Countdown", an achievement exponentially harder than even That One Achievement in the first two core games.
* ''VideoGame/CaveStory'':
** The achievement for getting the Alien Medal, which is given if Ironhead is defeated without taking ''any'' damage at all. Ironhead is one of the easiest bosses, but all the crap flying around makes getting this medal an exercise in frustration and repeated reloading.
** The Steam version gives you an achievement for finishing the game on Hard. Hard plays exactly the same as Normal, except for one crushing factor: all but one of the health-extending Life Capsules are completely removed from the game, effectively making you a OneHitPointWonder.[[note]]You can still get the one that the dog gives you in the Plantation, but if you manage to get that far, chances are that you're probably stellar enough at the game that you don't even need it.[[/note]] With your max health being in the single digits at all times, it doesn't take long before everything that can hurt you is a OneHitKill, making a NoDamageRun entirely mandatory. [[spoiler:And before you ask: no, getting the DownerEnding does '''not''' count as finishing the game!]]
** The Steam version also has achievements for speedrunning the additional Boss Attack, Wind Fortress, and Sanctuary Time Attack. However, the times demanded of the player for the S-Ranks are incredibly strict, meaning the only people getting those achievements at all are highly dedicated speedrunners. Making things even worse for people attempting the Sanctuary is that every single time you die, you are sent back to the starting room and must choose all your weapons then pick up the 2 heart containers again, all of which have painfully slow text prompts. Dying repeatedly to the instant death spike segment at the start? Resetting every time you take a hit from a falling chunk of temple? Better have nerves of steel and a lot of spare time!
* ''VideoGame/SlyCooperThievesInTime'' has "Navigate like Drake", which requires you to view every map in every episode. Sounds easy enough, right? But here's the catch: this also includes each area exclusive to missions. Have fun replaying every single level and checking the map each time. And none of this is tracked, either.
** Honorable mention goes to "Apollo Wins", which requires you to beat [[ThatOneLevel The Murray Games]] without messing up just once.
* ''VideoGame/MirrorsEdge'' has some particularly nasty achievements, such as the ten achievements for beating the target speedrun time on each level (most levels take at least five to ten minutes, and you get a slim margin of error), but That One Achievement status goes to the Superstar achievement for attaining a Time Trial star rating of 90. There are 96 stars (99 on the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 version), so this does mean you can leave two levels and 3-star everything else, or 2 star a bunch of levels, but no matter how you cut it, you will be getting three stars on the vast majority of the levels. Hope you like replaying time trials over and over until you finally shave off enough milliseconds for that 3-star run!
* ''[[{{VideoGame/DuckTales}} DuckTales Remastered]]'' has "Look Ma! No Spats!", which requires going to the Amazon, then pogo-jumping from one end of the underground area to the other, ending by climbing the rope back to the surface. Except that the snakes and spiders make it nearly impossible, and you also have to master button-tapping to end Scrooge's pogo-jumping shortly to avoid touching the thorns on the ceiling, while keeping him pogo-jumping to avoid landing on the ground on his feet.
* ''VideoGame/TheAngryVideoGameNerdAdventures'' has "Complete Badass" and "Bow before the God of Video Games!"; The two achievements are for beating [[PrecisionFStrike Fucking]] Impossible mode and Yolo mode, respectively, but those two modes are much easier said than done. In f'ing impossible mode, you only get five lives, one hit kills you, and there are no checkpoints at all. Yolo mode, however... You get only one life, and only one hit point. Get hit even ''once'' at any time, and it's back to the tutorial level.
* ''VideoGame/PauseAhead'' has "Untouchable", which you get for completing the game in one go with no deaths. Bear in mind, this game is a NintendoHard DeathCourse all the way through that uses DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist just to make it manageable.
** Just as unforgiving (if not even ''more'' so) is the innocuously-named "Trinket Collector". You get this one for collecting every trinket in one run. The issue here is that these trinkets only show up in speedrun mode, often in ridiculously out-of-the-way spots that you'd never think to search in, and in order for the achievement to count you also need to speedrun the whole game in '''five minutes''' on top of collecting these trinkets. Sure, the game might be short, but five minutes is a tall order even without the trinkets, never mind with them.
* ''VideoGame/RaymanLegends'' has "Sooo Rich!" and "Truly Awesome!" ("Millionaire" and "Aweso me!" ''[sic]'' in the PS Vita version.) They require obtaining 1 million Lums (to unlock the final character) and reaching level 11 Awesomeness, respectively. These both require ridiculous amounts of grinding to obtain. If you fully completed the game (beat every level, obtained every cup, rescued all the Teensies, and scratched all the Lucky Tickets), you'll be at about 500,000 Lums and level 10 Awesomeness. The final level of Awesomeness requires 2,000 points in the PlayEveryDay Challenge Mode to reach from level 10. The second-best prize in challenges, a gold cup, is worth only 10 points, and getting a diamond cup (50 points) on a challenge is nearly impossible without cheating. If you get gold cups on every single challenge, you'll earn 20 points a day, and 20 extra per week, which adds up to about 160 points a week. At this rate, it'll take you over '''three months''' to earn it, after beating the game 100%, assuming that you get gold cups every single day and week.
* The UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} UpdatedRerelease of ''VideoGame/TheFloorIsJelly'':
** The "Speedrun" achievement requires you to beat the game within an extremely tight ''30 minutes''. For comparison, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoYYI8zK-14 currently fastest speedrun so far]] beat the game in ''over 22 minutes''. You'll practically need to memorise the puzzle solutions in the Wetlands stage, the erratic placement of [[spoiler:the deadly glitch blocks]] in the DiscOneFinalDungeon, and have tons of luck with [[spoiler:the glitchy physics]] in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon.
** The "Minimalist" achievement requires you to beat the game within 920 jumps, and you ''can't check to see how many times you've jumped so far''. To elaborate, you'll often need to jump several times in one place to get a high enough bounce, and then there's all the times you'll need to WallJump.
** And then there's "&@♥@@p§☺A!○◘@)(@)_---A" and "U KNO WUT I LUV", both with completely unknown requirements. Good luck trying to obtain them without [[GuideDangIt resorting to an online guide]].
* ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight'' has a few that are tediously hard and are best approached with SaveScumming.
** Each campaign's "Hurry Up!" achievement requires you to complete it in under 90 minutes. In addition to speed-running each level, you still have to collect enough money to buy your character's "subweapons"[[note]]relics for Shovel, arcana for Plague, curios for Specter, and heirlooms for King,[[/note]] along with health/mana upgrades and other various odds and ends. The extra cherry on top is every character aside from Specter needing to dodge the random map encounters while moving between stages, which becomes a big hassle by the time you move to the DefinitelyFinalDungeon.
** "Impossible!" and "Perfect Platformer" mesh well, the first requiring no deaths in a playthrough and the second requiring no deaths to bottomless pits in ''Shovel of Hope''. All it takes is one misstep to restart the entire level over again. And then there are the random map encounters where dying will automatically be recorded to your save, unlike normal stages where they only count if you finish first.
** "Untouched" requires you to complete a level against a member of the Order (or in King Knight's case, a Joustus Judge stage) without taking any damage. Even against who is typically the easiest member, King Knight, all it takes is a single mistake to force a complete restart of the level.
* Unlocking the Shrapnel Bomb in ''Super House of Dead Ninjas'' requires you to reach the first boss without killing a single enemy. This is a game that asks you to kill about a dozen enemies before you leave the ''tutorial'' area, and even if you skip it by blowing up the wall at its start, placing that bomb wrong can kill something. And after you're out of there, if you take a hit, the Crimson Ninja does a spinning kick as she gets up, which is likely to kill something. Oh, and ''breaking a set of spikes'' (which you'll do automatically with the spinning kick if you get killed by them) counts as a kill. Have fun trying desperately to avoid so much as brushing up against anything for 100 floors.
* ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia Classic'' has the Survivor achievement for completing [[FinalDeathMode Survival Mode]], where if you die even once it's back to square one.
* ''VideoGame/SpoilerAlert'' has the Mariachi Champ achievement, which requires you to get Gold Star rank (go through the level without doing any time paradoxes) on all 10 levels in the Mariachi World. The "final" level requires very precise jumps, where jumping even one second too late creates a time paradox. Be prepared to restart over and over again.
* ''VideoGame/{{Mega Man|Classic}} Legacy Collection'' has two related to challenges:
** "All Appearing Blocks" has you facing [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin every single appearing block section]] throughout the first six ''Mega Man'' games that the collection covers, one after the other. The hard part is that you don't have any items besides Rush Coil in the appropriate sections to help you bypass them easily. Item-2? No chance. Rush Jet? Forget it.
** The "Unstoppable" achievement, which puts you in a massive BossRush against every Robot Master from all six games... [[NoGearLevel with only your Mega Buster]]. Good luck trying to take down [[ThatOneBoss Elec Man, Ice Man, and Shadow Man among others]]. Fortunately, if you die, you just restart at the current Robot Master... except however, DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist is completely averted; [[FromBadToWorse the whole thing is on a]] '''[[TimedMission time limit]]''', something the ''Mega Man'' franchise rarely uses. Run out of time, and you have to ''start all over and your effort is for naught''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Dustforce}}'' feels like it's parodying this: it only ''has'' one achievement, but you unlock it by getting a perfect SS+ rank on every level. Only 0.3% of Steam players have it.
* ''VideoGame/BionicCommando Rearmed'': "Elite Commando", for beating the game on [[HarderThanHard Super Hard]] difficulty, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, and "A Real Challenge", for completing all of the Challenge Rooms, the later ones of which require incredible precision and reflexes.
* ''VideoGame/RabiRibi'' is as hard as you think a BulletHell Metroidvania might be. This also makes the harder achievements agonizingly difficult on the last, hardest HarderThanHard difficulty: Bunny Extinction. Completing the entire game, Main story and post-game content, on the hardest difficulty easy enough for you? Now defeat every boss in a row with the same difficulty! The final achievement of this caliber requires you to beat the game in less than an hour, challenging even speedrunners playing [[EasierThanEasy Casual Mode]].
** The speedrunning achievements are easier than they seem because you can do them on new game plus, thus being able to just rush to the bosses. Bunny Extinction True Boss Rush definitely qualifies though. Besides that, there are two more achievements that stand out in terms of difficulty:
*** Dodgemaster Rumi: Getting hit three times or less and beating a level 50+ Rumi. The level requirement means you can't cheese it by using low difficulties, and Rumi's fight is not only hard, but very long. Check the Marathon Boss page for details, but in short she has several different phases, some of them going into awkward air battles, sometimes prevents you from dealing more than scratch damage for a while, and has so many different attacks you'll be seeing new ones even after dozens of tries. Many people gave up on completing the game because of this achievement.
*** The Delusional Wonderland: Defeat Lv 500+ Special Irisu. (without New Game+). Irisu SP is the hardest of this game's superbosses, and the level requirement plus disallowing NG+ makes it impossible to cheese this achievement. You'll simply have to grind out an insanely difficult fight until you win.
* ''VideoGame/NightInTheWoods'' has "Seriously?" for acquiring every single notebook sketch. However, finding them requires talking to absolutely everyone on every single day, partaking of every single sidequest as soon as it is available, and combing every inch of Possum Springs for background elements to examine, several of which are as far from "obvious" as you can hope to get. The trophy description itself says the ''developers'' have never gotten that achievement.
* ''VideoGame/LittleNightmares'' has "Hard to the Core", which on top of not having a proper description on the achievement page (it just reads "What makes you so different?") requires you to complete the whole game in under an hour without dying. The only caveats you have are you don't have to do it in one sitting, and that dying only counts when you [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou actually die]].

* The "Gold Standard" trophy in ''VideoGame/GranTurismo 5''. Finishing all of the races? OK, but boring since it also includes the endurances. Getting gold on all license tests? Hard-as-hell. Getting gold on all Special Events? All ok until Grand Tour, which starts to get difficult. Then we have the Sebastien Loeb Challenge. The Toscana Time Trial is not difficult, But Eiger Nordwand is tough and Chamonix is hell. And there's the Sebastian Vettel X Challenge. Good luck trying to get gold on it, because the only way of doing it is reaching level 40 and buy the car to train on the tracks.(You can also get the car by reaching one of your B-Spec Drivers to level 30)

*** This achievement returns yet again in ''Forza Motorsport 7'', in the form of the "Underdog" achievement. Thankfully, it can be done in a private lobby where you can manipulate the grid order and simply let whoever starts in 24th win.

* ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin: V Version'' has one for beating ''25'' different songs on the [[HarderThanHard infamously difficult Oni difficulty]]. Even if switching between normal and Shin-Uchi mode lets you get 2 crowns for each song, just clearing one of them is hard enough.

* Oddly enough, Room With A View on ''VideoGame/HatsuneMikuProjectDiva X''. It requires you to complete certain requests, which tend to be on the more difficult side. The last one in particular is a pain, since it requires you to perform the Ultimate Exquisite Rampage medley on Extreme. Not only does it live up to its name by consisting of (mostly) the hardest parts of the five hardest songs in the series, but you need to get a punishingly high score as well.

** The mobile and UsefulNotes/PlaystationVita versions have "Enlightened", a LuckBasedMission to obtain one of every plant in the Zen Garden, which are given as random drops by killed zombies. While the randomness is mitigated by the fact that specific plants will only drop on the stage where they were unlocked for normal gameplay during the first Adventure Mode run, try not to get bored grinding Survival Mode (where the drop density is highest) while hoping for that last lousy plant to drop.

** The "Air Hockey Champion" (defeat 3 opponents) and "Air Hockey Master" (defeat all 5 opponents) achievements, on the UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} version. The player competes in air hockey against each of the five boyfriends, using the mouse to move their striker around, and the first to get a total of 7 points wins the game. The problem came about because the Steam version of the mini-game tended to lag ''horrendously''!! Searching the Steam forums leads to several threads of players asking what to do about the lag. And there was an image unlocked by defeating three opponents in both mini-games, meaning the lag caused the Achievement for obtaining all the images in the gallery another amount of frustration.

* ''ThatoneAchievement/{{Pokemon}}''

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros''
** ''Brawl'' has its fair share of difficult challenges, the worst of which include clearing the BossRush on [[HarderThanHard Intense]], clearing [[MultiMookMelee 100-Man Brawl]] with all characters, and probably worst of all, trying to get a set amount of kills on Cruel Brawl. (Actually the last one can be done fairly easily with Jigglypuff as long as you time your floating right: just float a little off stage, go underneath the stage and cling on to the other side; hopefully some of the Mooks fell off trying to attack you.) Luckily, there's the Hammers that auto-clear a challenge for you, but they don't work on some of the achievements (in the US version, that is). After that, there is also the insane amount of time you'll be spending trying to get [[LastLousyPoint every sticker in the game.]] There are seven hundred, and they only appear by random drop.
** ''Melee'' had one trophy ([[spoiler:Diskun]]) received by obtaining every possible bonus you could at the end of a match. While about 90 percent or so were easy to get either through skill or sheer luck, there was one bonus called "Lethal Weapon" which involves you using a character's ''entire'' move set on an opponent ''without'' using consecutive moves, which means all of the basic moves, special moves, throws, and everything else in that character's arsenal had to connect with an opponent. This is especially difficult with using directional moves since the attacks have properties that restrict buffering additional attacks in weird ways, so you might do another forward attack when you try to do an upward attack, or something like that. The best part about this, is you have to connect all of these moves on ''one'' opponent ''without'' defeating them. Have fun trying this, and be proud if you ever achieve this bonus.
*** The NoDamageRun bonus, which will frustrate many people. You have to get through either Classic, Adventure, or All-Star mode ''without taking a single point of damage.'' The easiest way to do this is to set the difficulty to the easiest level, and go to All-Star mode, considering that any other way classifies as a SelfImposedChallenge.
*** Beating the 15 minute melee with endless polygon fighters can qualify for this, even ''with'' the Donkey Kong earthquake trick, mainly because it can be very exhausting without a [[GameBreaker turbo controller.]]
*** Beating Very Hard Mode in All-Star Mode to get the bonus and get the Mew Trophy at the same time, which is just as hard as it sounds. Hope you have ''a lot of coins'' handy, because you're going to need them considering this proves TheComputerIsACheatingBastard on epic levels.
** Surprisingly, the main unlock condition for a ''fighter'' can be this. To unlock R.O.B. in ''Brawl'', the player has to collect 250 trophies. They can't be duplicates, they have to be unique ones too. ''Brawl'' has a total of 544 trophies in the game. You have to collect almost half of the trophies in order to unlock R.O.B. This is an extremely tedious method. Some of the trophies are even unobtainable since it requires R.O.B. to be unlocked in the first place, such as the ones for Boss Battles or All-Star Mode. There's only a few ways to get trophies, with the best method being Coin Launchers, but trophies spawn on occasion, or by snagging enemy trophies in The Subspace Emissary, but good luck obtaining trophy stands. You're better off playing 160 Brawl Matches or clearing The Subspace Bomb Factory Part 2 to unlock R.O.B.
** In the fourth game's Classic Mode, there's the Challenge for beating Classic Mode on Intensity setting 9.0, the highest. In addition to every enemy - from the random first encounter up to [[DualBoss Master Hand & Crazy Hand]] and the TrueFinalBoss [[MarathonBoss Master Core]] - fighting, hitting, and [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard cheating]] their hardest, a single loss means you're screwed. Why? Because [[ContinuingIsPainful in addition to deducting from your coin reward and taking away some of your earned prizes, selecting Continue automatically reduces the Intensity by 0.5 with no way to raise it again]]. And with each run-through of Intensity 9.0 costing 2200 Gold per go, it will cost you if you do badly. Also, you can't use a Golden Hammer on this one. Have fun.
*** The 3DS version of the challenge is a little more forgiving, as it allows you to customize your character. In the Wii U version, for one challenge, customization has to be turned off. The Wii U version also adds in [[spoiler:Master Fortress]], which adds yet another section onto the madness. Hope you like getting blasted into a deadly wall by those damn [[DemonicSpiders laser flowers]] after enduring all that madness!
** There's the challenge for obtaining all custom outfits, headgear, and special moves, which will likely be one of the last challenges you beat. 12 custom outfits and 48 custom headgear might seem like a lot, but that's nothing compared to the special moves. Every character except Palutena and the Mii Fighters have eight alternate special moves, so that comes to a grand total of '''376 moves'''. There's no guarantee you'll get a new move when you earn an item, so this one's all up to luck and lots of grinding.
** The challenges for [[SNKBoss Cruel Smash]]. The enemies' AI is at maximum level, they're as durable as normal fighters, and their attacks deal about four times as much knockback. An uncharged smash attack from them is a guaranteed KO at just 30% for most fighters. If you thought you could beat them [[AIBreaker by jumping off the stage, where they would follow you to their death]]... [[ArtificialBrilliance they don't do that in this game.]] They'll huddle by the ledge, waiting for you to come back so they can gang up on you. Just getting ''one'' KO in Cruel Smash is cause for celebration. In the 3DS version, you just need two and four [=KOs=]... but in the UsefulNotes/WiiU version, you have to: earn four [=KOs=] as Pit, who lacks a counter, survive for one minute as Luigi (''far'' more difficult than it sounds), and the worst, earn '''''eight''''' [=KOs=], one of which specifically requires Lucina (and ''will'' happen at the same time, likely). You can't use a Golden Hammer on the one that requires Lucina. It all comes down to luck and spamming counters. But mostly luck.
** So you managed to beat Classic Mode on Intensity 9.0 without customizing your character? Great, now try clearing that exact same Intensity '''without losing a single life'''. At Intensity 9.0 the CPU's defense and offense is nearly perfect. You literally have to be packing the absolute best attack, defense, and speed modifiers in order to get through the challenge and even then there's still the Fighting Mii Team, which has limited knock-back now due to the difficulty, and after all that you have Master Hand, Crazy Hand, and all five parts of Master Core, which you have to be absolutely perfect in defense in order to not be softened up by any of the four forms in order to not lose a life. Oh, and you could get your butt handed to you by a metal or giant opponent who randomly shows up due to the 'intruder alert' mechanic of Classic Mode that was only '''just''' introduced.
** Try beating All-Star Mode (with any fighter and specifically as Zero Suit Samus and Captain Falcon) '''without healing.''' You have to go through seven rounds in a row, with six to seven fighters per round, all without losing a single life. Although All-Star Mode reduces the amount of knockback you take from attacks (but ''not'' projectiles and stage hazards), you'll easily be in the hundreds of damage by the end. Normally, you will ''need'' those healing items. Attempting this one on any difficulty above Easy is just asking for endless pain.
** Beating All-Star Mode on Hard as Duck Hunt is one of those challenges that seems easy, but ends up resulting in too much effort and pain for something so easy-sounding unless you've mastered the character. Hard difficulty makes the fighters much more aggressive from the very first fight: they won't hesitate to throw you around or gang up on you, and they can dodge and shield like pros. Your limited healing items will ''really'' start to bite when you end up having over 100% damage but don't want to waste an item. Now try to do that with a character who has few good launching moves and has smash attacks (about the only good source of knockback) that are ''extraordinarily'' difficult to use.
** Smash Tour has a few challenges dedicated to it, but recovering the stat boosts a Metroid stole from you may be one of the more annoying challenges in the mode, let alone the ''game''. First of all, it is entirely random whether a Metroid will even show up or not. Even if it does, the Metroid has to bump into you. It will then teleport to another part of the map, so you have to bump into it again to receive the stat boosts it stole from you. This is easier said than done because you'll fail the challenge if the Metroid bumps into another opponent, even if you get the stat boosts from them. It's also possible that the Metroid will bump into you to steal your stat boosts, and an opponent will bump into it to steal them from you. It all comes down to extreme luck if the Metroid appears and if you get it to bump into you twice. Oh, and the lower the row of the challenges are, the easier it's supposed to be. This challenge, in particular, is the 3rd row from the ''bottom''. Yikes.
** Classic on 9.9 in ''Ultimate'' is just as tricky as in ''For [=3DS=] and Wii U'', albeit for different reasons. Unlike the previous games, you can't simply set the Intensity to 9.9, you must ''earn'' your way to 9.9 from 5.0 through successive Nice Plays, which get progressively tougher to accomplish as the AI scales up in difficulty. The boss battles of each route are also tougher than in previous games, as they are character-dependent and are surprisingly strong and sturdy. Combine all of this with the fact that you only get one life per stage and using a Continue below 9.9 locks you out of getting 9.9 in the first place, and you're in for an incredibly daunting challenge.
** One Smash challenge involves getting 3 meteor [=KOs=] within 3 minutes during a match against ''4 Level 9 [=CPUs=]''. Not only is landing even one meteor KO difficult for a new player to do (since most moves that do so have to be sweetspotted), but having to land three of them in such a short timeframe against a lot of highly aggressive and competent computer players (which also like to GangUpOnTheHuman) can become pure agony very fast. Even if you are good at landing meteor smashes, the computers tend to congregate around the ledge, making landing most meteor smashes even more difficult. Abusing Bayonetta's down smash (which has the largest meteor hitbox in the game and also punishes this CPU behavior) is about the only way most people who aren't pro ''Smash'' players can get this one, and it cannot be bypassed with a Golden Hammer.
** One of the Spirit Board Challenges requires you to challenge and defeat ten Legend Class Spirits. Not only are Legend Spirits quite rare, many of them are especially difficult without fight-specific cheese strategies (many of which qualify for ThatOneLevel). Thankfully, ''obtaining'' the Spirit itself is not part of the Challenge, merely defeating them is enough.
** If you don't intend on using a Golden Hammer to clear it, playing 200 Quick Battles in the Online page is a huge grind and especially bad for people who don't have reliable internet for online play.
** Winning against an Advanced class 3 times without using a spirit team is pure hell. Without a primary spirit, you are ''extremely'' underpowered, and spirit items will barely help you, considering a single weak attack from the enemy would be able to do over 30% while a smash attack won't even do about 10%. Another thing is that this has to be done in the Spirit Board mode, meaning you get no benefits from the Adventure Mode Skill tree and you only get one try per encounter (three as of Version 2.0.0).
** Doing the entire final stage in World of Light [[NoDamageRun without being KOed once]] is absolute hell. [[spoiler:This means you have to lose no character against Galeem and Dharkon or on the RiseToTheChallenge and BossRush immediately before. In addition, the fight itself is considered as ThatOneBoss. This is because you have to dodge a lot of attacks coming at once, some of them being very hard to avoid especially on Hard mode. While Critical Health Healing or Great Autoheal coupled with a very powerful spirit make this easier, it can still be a frustrating nightmare trying not to lose any particular fighter, especially considering Galeem has an Off Waves-esque attack that can do a lot of knockback, that needs incredible timing to dodge, and appears in random patterns. However, it's possible to simply turn down the difficulty setting just for this one level, as this doesn't invalidate the challenge.]] [[spoiler:However, this was made less of a hassle in the 4.0.0 Update when Nintendo added a Very Easy option for playing World of Light.]]

* The "Coal" achievement in ''VideoGame/LuckBeALandlord'' requires you to get two Coal symbols to turn into Diamonds before your fourth payment. Coal turns into Diamond after 20 spins, you make the fourth payment after 21 spins, and Coal doesn't give you any coins. The only "strategy" to win is to restart over and over until Coal randomly shows up as a choice for your first symbol, then hope that it shows up again as the second symbol, ''then'' hope you get a symbol worth at least two coins in the next two spins.

* The "Coal" achievement in ''VideoGame/LuckBeALandlord'' requires you to get two Coal symbols to turn into Diamonds before your second payment. Coal turns into Diamond after 20 spins, and you make the second payment after 21 spins, so the only "strategy" to win is to restart over and over until Coal randomly shows up as a choice for your first symbol, then hope that it shows up again as the second symbol, ''then'' hope that a symbol worth more than coin shows up before your first payment.

*** The 3DS version of the challenge is a little more forgiving, as it allows you to customize your character. In the Wii U version, customization has to be turned off. The Wii U version also adds in [[spoiler:Master Fortress]], which adds yet another section onto the madness. Hope you like getting blasted into a deadly wall by those damn [[DemonicSpiders laser flowers]] after enduring all that madness!

* The "Coal" achievement in ''VideoGame/LuckBeALandlord'' requires you to get two Coal symbols to turn into Diamonds before your second payment. Coal turns into Diamond after 20 spins, and you make the second payment after 21 spins, so the only "strategy" to win is to restart over and over until Coal shows up as the first symbol, then hope that it shows up again as the second symbol.

** ''The Master Chief Collection'' for the Xbox One introduces perhaps the pinnacle of impossible ''Halo'' achievements: LASO Master for 50 gamerscore, earned by beating the LASO playlists for ''Halo [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved CE]]'', ''[[VideoGame/{{Halo 2}} 2]]'', ''[[VideoGame/{{Halo 3}} 3]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/{{Halo 4}} 4]]''. For those who do not know what LASO is, it stands for Legendary All, Skulls On. Legendary difficulty on its own is already a challenge (with ''Halo 2'' and ''4'' universally regarded as among the most difficult on Legendary, with ''Halo CE'' up there too), but throw in skulls that restart the ENTIRE level if you die on solo, prevent shields from recharging unless enemies are melee'd, double grenades thrown by enemies, buff enemy health and rank considerably, halve ammo in picked up weapons and so forth, and what ensues is an exercise in frustration. To get an idea of how difficult this achievement is to get, ''The Master Chief Collection'' was out for over a month as of December 2014. On True Achievements.com, out of 55,000 tracked gamers, only ''12'' had gotten the achievement, while other achievements in the collection already had scores of 12,000-50,000 gamers.

** The majority of the achievements for ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'' are easy enough to get, but there are two which are absolutely brutal. The first is "Great Dane" for getting every dog tag. Getting the dog tags themselves is simple enough, just requiring you to stick up certain guards throughout the game, but this is no mere collectible achievement; the dog tags are actually spread over every difficulty, and you have to complete the game on each difficulty for the tags to be officially collected. Whilst you only have to get the dog tags on the Plant chapter despite what the description says, that still means a grand total of five playthroughs to do, and yes, you'll have to beat the bosses on every one of them. Have fun getting killed by those bosses over and over on Hard and Expert! However, "Great Dane" pales in comparison to the aptly named "Virtually Impossible" for completing every single VR mission. There are hundreds of these, split into several characters, and they start off ridiculously easy; simple sneaking missions, target practice and elimination missions. By the time you've got to the final category, [=MGS1=] Snake, you'll need to have some serious skills, as every single mission is a bastard to beat, especially that bloody Zako Survival mission.
** Getting the Kerotan emblem in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'' involves you trying to find and shoot ''all'' of the Kerotans (the frog toys scattered all over the jungle, except in the 3DS port, in which they are replaced with Yoshi toys). It is very easy to miss some of them, ''especially'' during the motorcycle chase sequence.
** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'': "Sounds of the Battlefield" requires you to get every song in the game for your iPod. The "Snake Eater" song requires you to get all 40 Emblems in the game, which range from the difficult ("Big Boss" requires that you beat the game on [[HarderThanHard The Boss Extreme]] difficulty [[NoDamageRun without dying]], getting caught, [[PacifistRun killing anyone]], and without using recovery and special items, [[{{Speedrun}} all in under 5 hours]], making it That One Achievement within That One Achievement), to the [[ViolationOfCommonSense unintuitive]] ("Puma" asks you to get ''more'' than 75 alerts, 250 kills, and 25 continues), to the weird ("Gecko" requires you to press against walls for an hour total, "Tortoise" wants an hour inside the drum and/or cardboard box, and "Giant Panda" requires you to spend 30 or more hours in-game before you complete it).

** Surprisingly, the main unlock condition for a "fighter" can be this. To unlock R.O.B. in "Brawl", the player has to collect 250 trophies. They can't be duplicates, they have to be unique ones too. "Brawl" has a total of 544 trophies in the game. You have to collect almost half of the trophies in order to unlock R.O.B. This is an extremely tedious method. Some of the trophies are even unobtainable since it requires R.O.B. to be unlocked in the first place, such as the ones for Boss Battles or All-Star Mode. There's only a few ways to get trophies, with the best method being Coin Launchers, but trophies spawn on occasion, or by snagging enemy trophies in The Subspace Emissary, but good luck obtaining trophy stands. You're better off playing 160 Brawl Matches or clearing The Subspace Bomb Factory Part 2 to unlock R.O.B.

* ''Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection'' has "Yatta!", which requires you to complete ''VideoGame/DrRobotniksMeanBeanMachine''. Two things are noticeable about this. First, all the other achievements are for much easier tasks like scoring 100,000 points on the first level of ''VideoGame/AlteredBeast'', so to have you complete one of the games is a sharp step up. The other thing is that, even if you use the level skip code to skip right to Robotnik, he is still a very tough opponent.

* ''VideoGame/MiddleEarthShadowOfWar'' has "Trolling," which requires you to kill a captain while riding an Olog. First, you have to find a captain that's close enough to a pack of Ologs (and they always run in packs). Then, you have to beat the captain within an inch of his life, without actually killing him, while avoiding unblockable Olog attacks and not killing ''them.'' Then, stun an olog and jump on, and hope his flailing can get the killing blow on the captain. It can be hair-rippingly frustrating, because it's easy to misjudge how much health is left and either kill the captain by accident, or not do enough damage with the Olog. Fortunately the captain just has to die while you're ''riding'' the Olog so if, say, he's weak to poison, [[OutsideTheBoxTactic you can poison him and then jump on the Olog while the poison does its work]]. But even this can be tricky to set up, because you have to find a captain who's weak to poison ''and'' close enough to Ologs to make it work.

** The fun continues for the Master of Rings achievement in ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'', which you'll need to reach the endgame of NG++ to complete. Every other achievement, including the spell achievements, can be obtained in one playthrough. (Although the spell achievements still require either covenant grinding or enemy farming, and ranking up enough in the Blades of the Darkmoon covenant can be considered That One Achievement all by itself.)

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'' on Steam, getting the achievements for ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'', ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2 Sonic 2]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog3AndKnuckles Sonic 3 & Knuckles]]'' is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. The achievement for completing all the challenges (Clean Sweep) is likewise impossible because one challenge (Faster!) requires having ''Sonic 1''.

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'' on Steam, getting the achievements for ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'', ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2 Sonic 2]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog3AndKnuckles Sonic 3 & Knuckles]]'' is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. Clean Sweep, the achievement for completing all the challenges, is likewise impossible because one challenge (Faster!) requires having ''Sonic 1''.

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'' on Steam, getting the achievements for the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games (with the exception of the ''VideoGame/SonicSpinball'' achievement Spin for the win) is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. Clean Sweep, the achievement for completing all the challenges, is likewise impossible because two of them require having ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'' and ''VideoGame/DoctorRobotniksMeanBeanMachine''.

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'' on Steam, getting the achievements for the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. Clean Sweep, the achievement for completing all the challenges, is likewise impossible because two of them require having ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'' and ''VideoGame/DoctorRobotniksMeanBeanMachine''.

* In ''Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics'', getting the achievements for the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games is impossible if you didn't buy them before Sega delisted them. This also makes the Clean Sweep achievement for completing all the challenges impossible, because two of the challenges require having ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1 Sonic 1]]'' and ''VideoGame/DoctorRobotniksMeanBeanMachine''.

* Sort of puzzle: quiz website Sporcle has Badges for completing certain tasks. Some are easy (playing a few games, linking your page to social networks), while others will need memorization and\or many tries (all 205 countries in the world, all of the periodic table), or spending too much time on the website (1000 overall games or on certain categories, * games per day, at least one game for * days).
** "Gambler" is a badge linked to two games - "The Uncheatable Game" and "Heads or Tails". You need 50% or better. The former is quite literally clicking on boxes and praying you don't click on the one that ends the game (which is randomized), while the latter is just you typing H or T at each box (again, it's randomized what the "correct" letter is). LuckBasedMission doesn't come much purer than this.

--> I need that achievement so I'm going to buy Ooby Dooby by Music/RoyOrbison to have a [[TheFifties 50s]] song in my library... wait, that doesn't count... [[PrecisionFStrike DAMMIT!]] I need to buy a Music/JohnnyCash song. I'll get [[SignatureSong Ring Of Fi]]... "Year: 1963"... Awww...

--> '''''Nice COUP''' You found the mercenary's card, possibly without cheating''

** ''Melee'' had one trophy ([[spoiler:[Diskun]]) received by obtaining every possible bonus you could at the end of a match. While about 90 percent or so were easy to get either through skill or sheer luck, there was one bonus called "Lethal Weapon" which involves you using a character's ''entire'' move set on an opponent ''without'' using consecutive moves, which means all of the basic moves, special moves, throws, and everything else in that character's arsenal had to connect with an opponent. This is especially difficult with using directional moves since the attacks have properties that restrict buffering additional attacks in weird ways, so you might do another forward attack when you try to do an upward attack, or something like that. The best part about this, is you have to connect all of these moves on ''one'' opponent ''without'' defeating them. Have fun trying this, and be proud if you ever achieve this bonus.

** ''Melee'' had one trophy ([[spoiler:[[UsefulNotes/FamicomDiskSystem Diskun]]]]) received by obtaining every possible bonus you could at the end of a match. While about 90 percent or so were easy to get either through skill or sheer luck, there was one bonus called "Lethal Weapon" which involves you using a character's ''entire'' move set on an opponent ''without'' using consecutive moves, which means all of the basic moves, special moves, throws, and everything else in that character's arsenal had to connect with an opponent. This is especially difficult with using directional moves since the attacks have properties that restrict buffering additional attacks in weird ways, so you might do another forward attack when you try to do an upward attack, or something like that. The best part about this, is you have to connect all of these moves on ''one'' opponent ''without'' defeating them. Have fun trying this, and be proud if you ever achieve this bonus.