Super Mario (The Lost Levels)
When it really comes down to it, Mario games in general haven't always had the highest difficulty curve tho I'd be lying if I said this game in particular didn't create a lot of frustration. The Lost Levels are both known as being an extension to the original Mario but with the addition of a pretty tough difficulty ceiling.
I do like tough games, and I like them when they're tough and fair. The Lost Levels from what I remember definitely had both. I've seen people play it nowadays and even tho they know Mario pretty well, they still struggle. But that's kind of the point I imagine. You'll get levels with enemies you're not prepared and platforming you haven't trained for. But at the end of the day, you still have a Mario game and it's a god damn good one.
Obviously if you compare this to other fairly difficult games, you'll find a lot of similarities. And even if we compare The Lost Levels to even the Super Mario 64 era and forward, the difficulty curve has lessened a bit, but not enough to consider the Mario games in general to be easy platformers or games for that matter. Of course, we know Nintendo. They like quality, and hell, quality is what we've gotten from them time and time again. I would just love to see a Mario game again where the sole intent was to be frustratingly difficult...but fair.
I digress. The Lost Levels are worth every second of your time and honestly, I'd pick this over the original any day. Again, there's something to be said about a game that sets out to be difficult and The Lost Levels take that and excel in it.
Plus, level design is top notch. Like I said before, there's some pretty difficult platforming and the game as a whole is just known as being very difficult. But I imagine if I tried it today, I'd probably still get my ass kicked. I wouldn't mind it.
Time to get you ass kicked.