No, Pure wasn't harder to beat - it just takes longer due to medals being assigned to each and every race in all modes. The time trial golds were (thankfully) a challenge - whoever set those times had the good players in mind and I really appreciated that!

Interesting to hear the reasoning on the shorter tracks. From a technical point of view, I guess that makes sense, though it does seem strange sometimes that advances in the hardware seem to have brought more constraints rather than less. I guess with each new system, rather than just being able to build on what has already been achieved, you are starting from scratch again and having to build everything again.

Actually on that, I have always wondered about the screen in screen bits that were seen in the PS1 games (where you could see yourself racing as if on a huge screen in the background - like in Gare d'Europe). I've never seen that feature in any game on any system since (including the WO games). Was that a unique-to-PS1 feature?