Alex Kidd In Miracle World was a Sega Master System game released in 1986 to little fanfare. Let me set the stage. The NES was picking up steam in the US. And the Master System was barely a blip on the radar. At the time, Sega was looking for a mascot to compete with Mario and they came up with Alex Kidd – a weird kid who looked sort of like a monkey. It didn't really catch the world on fire.
The Alex Kidd series carried on for several years, spawning a bunch of sequels on the Master System and the Genesis, and none of them were exactly cool. And yet, in 2021 some developer decided that the first game in the series needed an HD remake, and Sega signed off. There's a very slim percentage of gamers who this remake would appeal to. I just happen to be one of them. I personally loved the Sega vs Nintendo "console wars." I never really picked a side, though. To me, it was an awesome rivalry and both were stepping up their game to pump out some amazing games. While the US as a whole tends to have a universal love for the NES, I actually have a ton of nostalgia for the Master System. While it was lacking big first parties like Mario, Metroid, Zelda and the likes, it delivered some incredible arcade experiences for the time. Its games were bright and beautiful. Growing up, I was the only kid I knew that even owned a Master System. I did know one other kid who had a Power Base Converter, but I don't think he even owned any SMS games. On the flip, I loved marching down to the local toy store to pick up bargain bin SMS games. I even picked up an adapter to play them on my Game Gear. Gamers in the US really slept on the SMS at the time, but they were missing out on amazing arcade conversions like R-Type and Shinobi. I felt like I was in an exclusive club. Which brings us to Alex Kidd. My particular Master System model was picked from one of those very clearance bins. I think I nabbed it for $50. Think about that – a console new at the store for $50. I used some Christmas or Birthday money to buy it, I don't remember. But I remember I loved it. And I had a pretty impressive collection for a time when we couldn't buy old games on the internet. And that particular Master System revision came bundled with Alex Kidd In Miracle World built right into the system. That's incredible thinking back. Pack-in games are a special thing in gaming. And they're lost to time. It's not really a thing now. Sure, sometimes you see bundles with added games. But back in the day, we'd get a console and the first game we had was the one in the box. We'd play it for weeks and months. Everyone would play it, because it was in the box. Now, that's not really a thing. I mean, back when I bought my Xbox One, it was a Minecraft bundle and that was cool. But now, really, everything is like you buy the console and you play the free-to-play games or you plop down another $60 for a new game. It's just different than the days of Super Mario Bros, Super Mario World, Sonic The Hedgehog and Tetris. Anyway, my point is that I have a real genuine nostalgia for the Sega Master System. While Sega keeps pumping out re-releases of Genesis games, I always wish for a SMS collection. I'd love to see Phantasy Star and Wonder Boy and Ys all packaged together. Can you even imagine? So yeah, I picked up Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX. It looks a bit like the work Lizardcube did on their Wonder Boy III remake. I kind of HAD to get it. Though, let's be honest – Alex Kidd is nowhere as cool as Wonder Boy. The thing is this, Alex Kidd In Miracle World was never a great game. I have nostalgia for it, sure. But it's BECAUSE it was the pack-in with my SMS. I played it because what else would I play at first? So I like it. I remember it. It means something to me. But it was never great. What I remember most is slippery, floaty movement, bad hitboxes, bad level design and rock-paper-scissor. None of that has changed in the remake, but it also has. Thanks to some quality of life improvements. I won't pretend that I'm so hardcore that I needed to play this game as a purist. After promptly reminding myself just how brutal it was, I had no qualms about turning on the options to (A) enable unlimited lives, (B) fix the slippery/floaty movement, and (C) fix up the hit detection. But no matter how nostalgic and charming a pig might be, lipstick can only go so far. There's no doubt that I made it much further in the DX remake than I'd ever had the patience for in the original Master System release. But man, this game is long. And actually now it's even longer as the DX version is actually an expanded edition with extra levels thrown in to pad it out. On top of all that, it turns out that even with the tweaks to controls and accessibility, this game is still super hard. Plus, you still have to play rock-paper-scissor, or janken in Japanese. That last point is sort of moot, though. I mean, the internet exists so you can just look up the order that the bosses are going throw at you. It'd be nice to have some change here, I think. I don't know, make it interesting. Maybe some visual cues or something? Maybe just change the janken to actual boss fights? Anything. But purists would be annoyed, so I guess I get that. It was a poor choice of game play then, and it remains a poor choice. Interestingly, the actual boss fights are fun. There's some real boss fights that don't involve janken and those are way better with legit attack patterns and little puzzles to figure out. There should have been more of that. Ultimately, though I lost steam somewhere in the big castle level. Some folks seem to claim this is the best level in the game because of how large and complex it was. For me, it was just frustrating. I kept getting to what should be the end and greeted with the messaged that "I still have things to do." I don't know what. I found the hammer, I freed my imprisoned brother. So I don't know. I just kept walking in circles, backtracking, trying different things. But eh, I got to a point of losing interest. But hey, my nostalgia itch was scratched. Honestly, I don't think the Alex Kidd series is great. I did play the Genesis quasi-sequel to this one and it was way worse. Shinobi World looked like a fun parody thing, but I never actually played it. So really, Miracle World is 100% about my nostalgia. Playing it just takes me way back to elementary school when I was playing my Master System on a 13" CRT. It was a simpler time for sure. To think, this was a time when I already had a NES and a Genesis, and yet the bright colorful graphics on my Master System were still impressing me. It almost didn't matter that Alex Kidd was such an annoying game to actually play. It was a neat and rare thing to explore as a kid obsessed with gaming. None of my friends even knew who Alex Kidd was, so I guess I felt like I was in on Sega's secret club. Or whatever.
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