Beating hard is possible, its more attrition than anything, play a level til you manage to beat it (you'll die a lot, but get bolts to buy stuff) and when you get enough bolts buy e tanks and any other stuff that will help, then when you beat the level, repeat the same level and get more bolts and more stuff, eventually you'll adjust to the difficulty. The main problem with hard mode isn't that its hard challenging, its hard cheap
I'm currently on wily stage 4 on my mr perfect run, doing 9 bosses without taking damage is fucking hard.