MUGSI/SOLAR: Its Nintendo Hard.
From TV Tropes:
The difficulty of these games usually stems from a combination of factors:
•
Lots of enemies (or lots of bullets) that are hard to hit or dodge.
• Surprise attacks that can only be avoided by
sheerest luck or memorizing their locations.
•
Malevolent Architecture that poses a constant danger of death even when the player proceeds as cautiously as possible.
• A hero who can survive very few hits — often dying from even the slightest scratch.
[b]• Lack of, or very few Check Points or Save Points.[/B}
• A limited number of lives and/or continues.
• No way to adjust the difficulty
• Losing all or most of your weapons/powerups when you die
•
Stiff, clunky, and perhaps somewhat unresponsive controls (but only when applied to the original 8-bit, 16-bit, and (to a small extent) 32-bit generations: in more modern games, it ceases to be expected and veers right into Fake Difficulty.)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard