As retro games continue to become more and more accessible thanks to emulation, it's time to reflect on some classics that it feels like everyone owns, and has probably even played, but the vast majority of people haven't actually finished. Some of these are due to intense difficulty, while others are because of how universal the games are. One game on this list is here purely because it was given out for free to a ton of people, so many that it's a recognizable name in gaming, even though most people wouldn't have played more than a few levels. To be considered a classic game, I put the mark as at least 10 years old. Although several games are much older, one game is not quite at the 10-year mark, but fits this list too well not to include.

5 Hexic HD

Basically an Xbox 360 pack-in game

Hexic HD is an HD version of the puzzle game, where you have to rotate hexagonal pieces to make color combinations, like Bejeweled but with different shapes. It's a game that a large chunk of gamers will likely recognize, as it came installed on certain versions of the Xbox 360, and was available for free, and is still free on Xbox. Because of its inclusion, and the popularity of the Xbox 360 at launch, millions of gamers own Hexic HD and many of them probably booted it up a few times. But how many people actually played through all the levels of Hexic HD? While not a perfect measurement, TrueAchievements lists Hexic HD as being played by just over 480,000 people, but only 4,484 people have earned all achievements, which is less than 1%. Getting all the achievements is necessarily a true measurement of how many people beat the game, and TrueAchievements only tracks people who have signed up for an account, but it seems like a ton of people have played Hexic HD, and very few have completed it.

4 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

The game was deemed too difficult for western audiences

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, which was released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 but was deemed too difficult for the rest of the world, is probably the classic Mario platform with the lowest completion rate. While it took a few years to release in the United States and other regions outside of Japan, it was included in Super Mario All-Stars on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and later rereleased on multiple Nintendo consoles. Its inclusion in that bundle means most people who own an SNES own Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, but it seems unlikely most of them will beat it. It's far harder than the other games, featuring tough challenges, warp pipes that send you back multiple levels, introduced poisoned mushrooms to the Mario universe, and even had random gusts of wind just to make you feel bad. I'm sure tons of people played Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, but quickly put it down in favor of a more forgiving Mario platformer.

3 Darkest Dungeon

An indie darling with a low completion rate

Darkest Dungeon will be 10-years-old in January 2026, but this indie breakout success has one of the lowest rates of being beaten that I have seen for a game this wildly popular. It's sold over 6 million copies of the base game (via Game World Observer), with a pretty substantial Steam community thanks to spending a year in early access. It has over 130,000 Steam reviews, which is a ton for any game to have. Despite this massive success, the Steam achievement for beating the game on the default difficulty is at 4.2%, with the achievement for beating it on any difficulty sitting at 4.4%. It's not that shocking, considering it's a brutal game about exploring punishing dungeons and dealing with permadeath for your recruited party members. I have played it for over 40 hours myself and never managed to roll credits, thanks to its punishing gameplay, but considering what a massive success Darkest Dungeon is, it's surprising that so few people have actually beaten it.

2 Super Meat Boy

Another incredibly difficult indie darling

Super Meat Boy is another massive indie success, a game and character recognizable by most gamers who aren't casual fans. It exploded as part of the Xbox 360 Arcade game service, which highlighted smaller, downloadable games at a time when that wasn't yet the norm. Super Meat Boy is an extremely difficult 2D platformer that features a near-instant restart, making it a bit less frustrating to die over and over again. It also has over 300 levels, which get harder as the game goes on, so while Super Meat Boy has gotten as close to being a household name as any video game character not named Mario can get, it seems unlikely that most people beat it. It has over 130,000 tracked players on TrueAchievements, and just over 17,000 of them have completed the main story, which doesn't even include every level in Super Meat Boy. It's just too dang hard.

1 The Legend of Zelda

The original The Legend of Zelda is just tough enough for people to not finish it

The Legend of Zelda for the NES might feel like a strange inclusion on the list, but when viewed from a 2025 lens, it makes more sense. The Legend of Zelda is pretty self-directed, with no objective markers or anything, and that level of self-direction is something that will prevent modern gamers from finishing it if they choose to check it out. With games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom reaching an even bigger audience, with the former selling over 30 million copies and the latter selling over 20 million copies, there is a chance some people decided to check out the original, especially since it's playable on Switch. I suspect the percentage of people who have beaten that game after starting it has continuously dropped since it was originally released in 1987 in North America.

Plenty of classics that have gone unbeaten

The focus of this list was major games that saw wild success, but have actually been beaten by most people who bought them. Importantly, though, if you check out achievement unlock data across the three platforms that offer them, Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation, you will quickly notice that most people who play a game don't actually roll credits. This isn't that surprising, since games can often take dozens of hours to beat, but it's especially surprising when it's a critically acclaimed game that has sold a ton of copies.