I beat Splatterhouse on Hard last night. It felt good to revisit the familiar locales and enemies, even in gimped-down form vs. their bloody arcade counterparts.
Hard mode is underwhelming, honestly. All the mode changes is that it doubles all enemy health. That's fine, I suppose, though it takes a bit of the fun out of whacking a green mud-man if he doesn't splat in one hit like the rest of 'em.
I wish they would have been more creative with Hard, like putting the slimy face-slugs back into Stage 2 like they were in the arcade. Or slight enemy placement tweaks. With the default difficulty being a bit too easy, the Arcade Splatterhouse still wins out as the best version, mechanically speaking (to say nothing of its obviously-better visuals).