It is often said (okay, not that often, but anyway…) that the nature of games is frustration; the desire to beat the bl**dy thing is what drives us to “one more go”. This is quite true, but the distinction that most miss is between frustration at a difficult task (and the elation of overcoming it) and a task made difficult by a poor interface - just because games are meant to be frustrating doesn’t mean that the rules of usability don’t apply.
The game in the cartoon (called Simon here in the UK) is a perfect example of “usable frustration”; the colours, sounds and positions match up each time, enabling the build up of motor memory; when the player is finally overwhelmed it is due to the complexity of the task they face, not how they have to carry it out. A more complex example is a certain sci-fi RTS game that, whilst one of my favourites, contains some highly annoying elements. The most annoying of these is that units with an area of effect are more than happy to blast their own troops if there is an enemy target around, so constant supervision is required if you don’t want your forces to kill each other. This might sound like a minor gripe, but it is only this game’s other advances in usability (aka controls) that lifted it above other games and, were they not there, an issue like this would sink the game despite probably thousands of dollars worth of beautiful graphics and wonderful sound effects.