You probably meant 40 years ago lol. Show me recent masterpieces that make use of such mechanics.The core design tenet of repeating a simple action at an ever-increasing speed has been one Nintendo have executed literally since they began making games.
The whole 50+ Game & Watch line is this without much variance in complexity throughout.
This has been a legitimate game design archetype for over 40 years but now all of a sudden it's "bad design" because you happened to struggle with it? No.