My experience with Alex Kidd is Miracle World and Shinobi World with a teeny bit of some Genesis game where he was in a house, it sucked. I just didn't want to go into all the detail as I can't be certain not owning everything but that post celery made still fits with how i was thinking Alex was likely to be like across the board between the good and bad games, and even the good games with bad balancing moments. Mario maybe all in all easier, but perhaps it's not so much if you think about it but it's because it ramps up everything harder stage by stage world by world, it's not a yo-yo with extremes.