@omdata: This comparison is apt, but it was also drawn during Friday's UPF in the chat - apparently BLLS had waaaay more planning/production going into it than this will, so they were apprehensive to name it the same thing. Similar concept though.
This is an interesting list, for sure. Definitely all valid, though.
A few counter-opinions and/or further thoughts for you:
#22 Final Fantasy - Yes, it was always this hard. The genuine intention is for the player to stay around the castle until at least level 5 or something, it's about an hour of grinding before the game can actually start. Also your choice of starting class can make this process easier (shorter) or harder (longer) with no clear ability to tell. Obtuse as hell - I'm sure the instruction manual helped somehow. Also, FF wouldn't exist without Dragon Quest (which itself wouldn't exist without Dungeons & Dragons or Ultima), arguably Dragon Quest is THE RPG if you're going to attempt that claim.
#27 Bubble Bobble - You rank this extremely highly given you probably played this solo. If you beat the final boss solo, you are literally locked out of the real ending and the game goads you to try again with a friend. Enjoy that BGM for another 6 hours!
#29 Super Mario Bros 2 - You didn't mention this specifically, and in fact it sounds like you're giving Nintendo a +1 for trying to be different, so I should probably point out that this isn't the original Mario Bros 2 - that was the game we know as The Lost Levels. The ins and outs of this have been reported on at legnth, here's Wired's take on it.
@spiketail: During the live broadcast, the stream hitched here and repeated the same 8 or so seconds until Jess force-refreshed and everything was fine after. Seems the hiccup made it into the VOD.
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