This was obviously an attempt by Sega to create a Super Mario competitor, but I feel like they missed a lot of the stuff that made Mario such a hit; the controls are very slippery, Alex's punch has a fairly short range and the reversed attack and jump buttons are also really annoying (which was thankfully changed on the version built into the SMS II). The janken matches were also pretty annoying and are made worse if you don't have a crystal ball on hand.

Some of the level designs were fairly interesting and this was also one of the first platformers to have an item shop mechanic so it's got those going for it at least