The game itself is barely a couple of hours. It's very, very short.

I wonder, if the intro made such an impression on you, why didn't you finish it?

I also didn't finish it.

The game is hard and requires more patience than usual to figure it out.

Definitely a short, and not hard at all, game.

I beat it without difficulty when I was single-digit aged.

It's absolutely worth it, and better late than never.

As a general rule: Try not to take your subjective experience and imply that it’s either the universal experience or objectively true.

Maybe you're just a good gamer. I was absolutely stumped.

It was on par with games at the time though.

I'm in the same boat. I could not figure out how to get past the second screen. But I still remember those few minutes very clearly these decades later.

Do you mean how to get past the beast?

I had some trouble with the slugs but I don't think I ever got past the lion.

Ah, yes. Hard to time the jumps over the slugs. It helps that the beast trips and falls just as it's about to catch you. After that, you get "saved by the bell", so to speak ;)

I believe jumping over those slugs is possibly the hardest part of the whole game, it must be timed precisely and you're still learning to how to play.

It's not a lion, by the way ;) It's an alien beast, without a mane and looks like a cross between a gorilla and some giant black panther.