I’m really glad to hear that the new MEGA65 core is working well! Regarding Port 1, I think you may be right — I’ll look into fixing that.
As for the game itself, I’ll admit that making it fairly challenging was a deliberate choice. I wanted it to feel like a real 1980s arcade game. That said, the patterns can definitely be learned with repeated play, so the more you play, the more manageable it becomes ;)