I guess it depends on how you define "harder". Challenging, frustrating, ability to complete, ability to stay alive. Take a role-playing game that is coming up later in the list. You could get to the final boss, and if you died on your last life, it was start all over again. For other games, if you ran out of quarters and couldn't "continue" (or didn't want to spend more money on it), you were shit out of luck, and had to start from scratch next time.
I think that is what Kwiji is talking about as it relates to 'harder'... harder to complete.
It's just the evolution of gaming, and something that today's younins probably don't have an appreciation for.