Yes. Both Devil May Cry (original and 3) and Shinobi are incredibly hard games. You are also forgetting Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. That too was a controller breaking festival of pain.

Honestly if you play the games on the standard difficulty, easy or normal, you can beat them with little frusteration. At least little frusteration than the harder levels. Devil May Cry's true challenge shows itself in "Dante Must Die or DMD" mode. This is true for both the original DMC and DMC3. Devil may Cry 2 was a joke in challenge compared to its predecessors. These games take practice, knowledge of your oppnents, and precise skill with combos and item usage. The same is true for Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. I myself have beaten Shinobi on the normal and hard difficulty settings. I have gotten up to the last boss in "super" mode, or the hardest difficulty in that game. I have yet to finish the final boss in super mode. I have also only been able to beat Ninja Gaiden on any other mode than normal. And I own the Black version wich includes an even harder difficult that the hardest difficulty in the original version. Conquering these games on their hardest difficulties is very time consuming, but ultimately rewarding. I own so many video games myself I usually get distracted by another game rather than continue the fight against the hardest difficulites on other games.

Or I get completely fed up, and cheat my way to 100% completion.

Which ever works for you.

Brave or Grave

"Yo, how's it goin' with next week's story, huh?"