Right. It's like saying "shooter X is no harder than shooter Y, it's just that shooter X has 10X more enemies and half as many powerups."
But it doesn't have half as many powerups, or 10 times as many enemies, so it's really not the same at all.
Increasing the number of required hits DOES make the game harder, even as it makes it more tedious. Why? Because you have to hit the enemy far more times, while managing not to get hit by the other enemies around you at the same time. That makes it harder. You may not have found it particularly hard, but that's still harder than the Japanese original.
As you said, the enemies taking 37 hits while being able to kill you in 3 hit? I would consider that raising the difficulty bar up a bit. That is also only my personal opinion though.
You would? So wrapping a rubber band around your controller's II button and walking away while your player hacks away at the enemy is difficult? I guess, if it's a long walk to the kitchen to make that sandwich.
They didn't alter the AI at all. Maybe my definition of "difficulty" is different than everyone else's, but difficult for me involves faster, smarter enemies, tricky platforming segments, puzzles, that sort of thing. Changing a number that alters the required number of hits to kill an enemy doesn't make a game any more difficult, unless other factors are also changed that put the player in immediate peril. Does it make it longer? Sure. Tedious? You bet. Difficult? Not in my book.
