Tbf, tons of nes and snes/Sega games were crazy hard. It hid how short they were. Like, Altered Beast is a game that no one ever beat on the Sega without using like a game genie. The entire game is only like 15 or 20 minutes long, though. Tmnt and battle battletoads were just super popular games you couldn't beat.
Battletoads has nothing on Ghosts 'n Goblins! I can at least play Battletoads until the stupid vehicle jumping section. I don't think I've ever even made it more than like 3 checkpoints into Ghosts 'n Goblins