If I could give a game zero stars on this website this would be it. It's hard for me to say that Alex Kidd is "a product of it's time" when it dropped in the mid 80s and there was already more than plenty of decent stuff by then.

Levels are a disorganized mess, Alex controls like he's wearing butter shoes to the point where its actually really fucking hard to have any degree of precision with him, one hit kills with nothing at all to remedy it, ontop of RNG being in blocks and the Janken matches you're faced with throughout the game.

How this game was a success and spawned a franchise is beyond me. It definitely has it's place in SEGA's history but it's no shock to me as to why they dropped Alex after Sonic came into the picture.

Whenever I think of SEGA games, there's a bit of a loop to most of them that makes you want to replay it. Either just getting better for higher ranks, or having a ton of fun. Alex Kidd severely lacks that appeal for me alongside the issues it has as a game that has aged poorly.

Genuinely, not worth your time.

Imagine after surviving the underwater spike room and the hundred other death traps, you and your weird jump physics and Luigi-like controls now have to do the whole game over because you lost best of 3 Rock Paper Scissors and what do you mean there's a secret Continue cheat if you have money) no one told me that. Oh, and if you got past that and slipped up on the final puzzle? Nah you're dead and if you're out of lives do it all again etc etc. One touch death and no continues system (shown in the game anyways you need a guide to know there's a dev method) just makes it needlessly unfair.

I like when it does goofy stuff like the vehicles, and Rock Paper Scissors was funny the first time but it feels like the game is just really into you starting over, especially in the first level and second to last level (the castle). I think this focus on rock paper scissors shenanigans and dying in one hit is part of why he never took off despite the better graphics and level variety than Mario, it was just too brutal.

(Played in Lost Judgement)

Look, rock paper scissors is NOT stupid, ok? It’s just different. An attempt to add some goofiness to the game. That kind of stuff is completely in-line with a Japanese company. Japanese tv series are filled with weirdness like that lol
Ok, to the game. It’s hard af.
It’s from the 8-bit era when they believed a game should tax you physically and mentally. It’s not like modern games that hold your hand like they are ICO and you are the helpless girl tagging along with him.
Like many Master System games, it’s considerably more colorful than a typical NES game. The SMS could display like, around 10 extra colors on screen as compared to the NES.
I bring that up because Alex Kidd always looked so crisp and clear compared to say, Super Mario Bros, the game he was made to compete with.
He got several sequels, but honestly none are as good as the first.
I’m glad to say my nostalgia glasses did not fail me. In fact, I’ve managed to get further now than I did as a kid.
Honestly, Alex Kidd just seems like a Hudson Soft character.
Anyways, go. Play. Enjoy your slice of the gaming pie

Before Sega became a powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with in the 90s, they were just a humble company with their own console in the 80s, the Sega Master System. And of course, if they had their own console, they needed their own mascot, and for a while, this mascot would be Alex Kidd, a weird monkey-like boy thing who got his own series of games from the mid 80s till the early 90s, where he would then swiftly be replaced by Sonic, and maybe brought back like 30 years later for a remake.

I myself am not as familiar with Alex Kidd as I am with Sonic, so I decided to give his first game, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, a shot, and after playing through it again, I thought it was... ok. It doesn't really do too much to stand out, aside from being weird in numerous ways, but it still manages to be ok enough for me.

The story is what you would expect for a video game around that time, with the little pictures in between levels being pretty nice to look at, the graphics are pretty nice looking, especially compared to what else was out in 1986 on something like the NES, the music (and by that, I mean like the three songs in the game) are ok, nothing really too special, the control is fine, although movement and jumping can be pretty weird, and the gameplay is serviceable, being your typical platformer where you punch things, get money, buy items, and conquer levels.

Of course, I wouldn't say that my time with the game was that noteworthy or memorable, with several issues I have to point out, such as the boss fights. Most of the time, you are forced to play rock paper scissors with these hand guardians or whatever, and while there is nothing wrong with it, it's still rock paper scissors, and there is nothing really exciting about it. The other times there actually are boss fights, they are WAY too easy, where most of the time you can just stand there and continuously keep punching towards the enemy until they die.

Alongside that, and this just may be my own personal feelings, but this game feels really weird to play. Something about the way you punch around through blocks, how the stages are built, how traps are used to stop you in your tracks, and again, the weird as hell jumping, doesn't really make it all too desirable to me. Maybe I would've liked it better if I played this much earlier in my life, but as it stands, it just didn't leave too much impact on me.

Overall, while I appreciate it for being a solid jumping point for Sega back in the day, the original Alex Kidd isn't really all that special in my eyes. Yes, it can be enjoyable, and the variety with different vehicles and fights is nice to see, but none of that helped keep my attention for too long.

Game #54

A completely medicore platformer that visually reminds me a lot of Fantasy Zone, released in arcades earlier the same year, but as a side-scrolling platformer released after Super Mario Bros. it falls completely short.

The movement feels overly floaty, the level design feels unmemorable and uninteresting to navigate, the music feels like it endlessly repeats itself and I found it really irritating, and the boss fights being complete random chance with their rock, paper, scissors gimmick feels repetitive and would be 10 times more annoying if not for save states on emulators.

I'd say skip this one, but if your really interested in SEGA's history before Sonic: sure, go for it but I dont think anyone would blame you for for stopping after a couple levels.

I feel like this game is a step up from most of what's been released up to this point, but it's still very flawed and kind of hard to enjoy at points. My biggest issue is how slippery controlling Alex can be. Precise platforming is extremely difficult to do, compared to something like Super Mario Bros, where it's much easier to make precise jumps. I just feel like I have much less control over where Alex is going, and I always slip off edges when I do land. Another issue that really bothers me is the Janken matches. I just think it's a terrible idea to make rock paper scissors be many of your boss fights. It hardly feels like I'm expressing any sort of skill when I win, and I usually lose out of pure unluckiness rather than lack of skill. Of course, having Alex die after the match is also pretty confusing and frustrating. I have a lot of smaller, more level-specific or mechanic-specific gripes, but those are the two most bothersome in my opinion, as they affect the game as a whole.

Besides those issues, I should commend the game for basically being the Super Mario Bros. of the console at this time. I just haven't really seen anything like this yet on the console and I really think Sega did well trying to make something similar to Mario (yet different in its own ways of course, just replicating the main gameplay). Overall I'd say I think this game is ok. It has it's moments but has plenty of flaws holding it back form being truly excellent in any way.

Decided to play this oldie. It was shockingly hard, though mostly due to one hit being death, and how slippery Alex is to control. He goes super fast when you initial move him, and keeps going for a while when you stop.

I do like the variety in gameplay, with the optional vehicle sections giving a change of pace somewhat frequently, and with them mostly just there to give you money. Very easy to lose the vehicle though. The rock-paper-scissors is pretty weird, and seems to exist just to waste time.

The levels also get shockingly fast and easy after the first castle. The last level though is still a doozy, especially with the traps.

The more I play these old games, the more I remember that they're designed to be a kids "one game" that they play repeatedly all day to make any progress with. And Alex Kidd in Miracle World definitely feels like that kind of game.

RG35XX

This game was one of those, that I played as a child, and just replaying it basically right before this review, I don't think I've ever beaten that one before, 'cause boy is this game unforgiving.
The hit boxes are sometimes totally weird and then there are these cool "?"-Boxes, that whenever you break them either have a cool power up.... Or a miniature death that is chasing you and will get you 99% of the time to insta kill you. Which is btw. everything in this game. Every thing insta kills you. Unlike Mario games or Sonic games, there is no way to withstand a single hit by an enemy.

I liked the Level design at first... But then the last levels came around. Suddenly you have to do annoying types of jumps (for example the one upwards, where you have to break blocks first) and suddenly there are rooms where you have to instantly react or die (for example the flooding room) and the last puzzle was just like... What??? And doing a single mistake (even by mistake) spawns one of those miniature deaths in. Nice!
It doesn't help, that the ending really feels unsatisfying after going through these last levels, as it is just a wall of text, telling you how Alex saved everyone. Not even a little cutscene showing this.

Nostalgia and first levels save the game, but the ending is just meh.

What an odd game this one is. And not like, "wow, it's so wacky and kooky!", I mean more like "I don't know the proper way to formulate my opinion on this thing."

It almost gets there, I mean, it has variety to spare. You make your way through vertical levels, horizontal ones, plus you've got some dungeons, and neat little powerups, and decent controls, and catchy music... So what is it about this game that doesn't stack up to something like Mario 1? I can't place my finger on it.

I think part of it is that very expectation of matching up to Mario 1's quality, which Alex Kidd isn't necessarily attempting to do. It's a slower take on the platformer genre, which emphasizes collecting things a lot more. You're gonna want to stop in your tracks frequently to break open those blocks and amass the cash for the powerups required. I don't usually mind systems like this, but I feel it repeteadly breaks the flow of the game here.

There's also the more subjective matter of the level design being nowhere near as memorable as the plumber contemporary, but there's also the most obvious complaint I could throw at this game, the boss fights. It's a Rock-Paper-Scissors game, everytime. Not a test of your skill, not a test of anything you have learned throughout, it's pure luck. And I feel that makes the game come off as somewhat unconfident in its own gameplay system, like there's a setup here, but no payoff.

There's something... mindless about the whole thing. A lot of effort was put in, but so little of it truly stuck the landing. Putting it another way perhaps, Alex Kidd is a game full of ideas, but very little of them actually connect in a cohesive way. There's a reason why this franchise didn't last.