I’ve been determined to finally beat Zelda II and determine that I would do it without save states and without a guide.
I know Zelda II is considered a black sheep somewhat but I really think in some ways it’s more fun than the original although I’d still pick Zelda 1 over II.
There was a lot of that in that era. Arcade games had financial incentive to be hard as players would tolerate to eat as many quarters as possible. The home ports carried this difficulty over, and many console originals picked up on it. (See Battletoads.)
For the home market, there was an incentive to make the game hard to beat before you had to return it to Blockbuster.
Battle toads can eat a schlong. Actually good games like kid icarus, etc were just as hard but actually fun to play.