No, easy should not be Barney's Hide and Seek. I mean, the way they could have made it easy is this: make the weapons use less energy, enemies have half the life, and do half damage, and replace death spikes by damage spikes. Boom, that would be easy.
We get thrown full refils after every mid boss, respawn points and then some, more lives and E-tanks than we need, and pits with floating platforms over them that negate all the challenge. There were a total of 3 tricky jumps in there, but I never had less than 8 lives, Etanks and W tanks in Wily's castle, and once I was done with the gauntlet, I was rewarded with an E tank, W tank, and full refill.
You know how we say easy a pie? Well this is pie for dummies.