Played enough of this now to realize that this is not for me. There's a place for games made for mastering, but I very much don't enjoy a game that offer nothing but that. A short game made long through inordinate difficulty is just not my jam. Might return once I git gud™, we'll see.

Sidenote: as someone who's far too young to ever play Arcade games or NES-titles until literally now, and as someone who has a severely limited grasp on the history of game development at the time, I don't know just how uniform the high difficulties are between different games, nor exactly why. If someone more educated would happen to see this and would like to give an explanation, be so kind.