Back in the past there were hardly any computer games, and the ones we did have were very very expensive.
£40 + might sound about right now, but you have to remember that in 1990 a McDonald's hamburger was 59p and petrol was 49 per litre. £40 bought you a lot more stuff. As a result you'd only get maybe two new games a year, so they really had to last.
Owing to the relatively small amount of information that could be saved on a cartridge, most games only had a small handful of levels. So in order to extend their longevity, designed just made every game incredibly bloody difficult.
