SM does have longer ball times. When I finally got mine I made it to the mini-wizard mode the first 2 games I played. Now, I had played SM many many times as quite a few of my friends have one. Within a week (50ish games) I had made it to SuperHero mode twice. I opened up the outlanes completely, changed a few game-play settings and increased the Tilt sensitivity. Only made it to SuperHero once since then (3 months). So you can make it harder.

SM is a great game with great theme integration and great sound-bytes. My only complaint is the movie-grab video (I have an original) but whatever (if you've seen the movies you know what it is anyway). Can't go wrong with SM and if you get bored it is an easy resell.