Past meets present: Alex Kidd in Miracle World

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

At the time of Alex Kidd’s introduction into the world of Sega, the developer was known far more for its arcade output than anything else. That was just the way of things in the first half of the 1980s, however: Nintendo was also known more for its arcade releases than anything else until the Famicom was a hit that allowed them to shift to the living room. Why let others reap all the benefits of a Donkey Kong port when you can just sell the console it lives on yourself, you know?

The introduction of Super Mario Bros. helped take Nintendo and the Famicom to the next level. Understandably, when Sega came out with its Mark III home console in Japan — the basis for what would be known elsewhere as the Sega Master System — and Mario was a hit, the bosses wanted something that would be just as popular in order to drive Sega’s own home business. The designer of 1986’s Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Kotaro Hayashida, has admitted in interviews that the game was an attempt to create something that would resonate with audiences the same way that Super Mario Bros. had.

“Well, it started about one year after Sega had split its development sections into two, arcade and console,” Hayashida told sega.jp back in 2002 (translation by Shmuplations). “Super Mario Bros. was already a big hit by then, and the Famicom was building a rock-solid foundation as a game console. Sega had just put out the new Sega Mark III, and they tasked us in the Second Development unit to create something that would sell as well as Mario. And so we set out to develop a new action game.”

While the Second Development team at Sega wanted to make something as popular as Mario, they also wanted to try to differentiate from it. In some ways, this was a strength — Alex Kidd rode around in vehicles sometimes, and his offense was punch-based, while his projectile attack was very different from Mario’s fireballs. In other ways, well. Hayashida is blunt about some choices. “…we also reversed the jump and attack buttons from Mario. At the time we thought we were doing something ‘different’… but we were mistaken. Now when I look back on it, it’s just nonsense. And it’s harder to play that way. (laughs)”

The reversed buttons — the left jumps, the right attacks — are a nightmare if you’re used to things being the other way around, and why wouldn’t you be at this point? A decade before Super Mario 64 convinced developers of how players should expect to hold the Nintendo 64’s three-pronged controller, Super Mario Bros. had gotten audiences used to a specific button arrangement on the two-button NES pad. Once you rewire your brain in the present for Alex Kidd’s setup, though, it’s not really an issue. Luckily you don’t even need to do that in modern re-releases of the game, like the Switch’s Sega Ages edition from 2019 — you can use the Y and B buttons in a way that makes more traditional sense to your fingers and brain in 2026, rather than a reversed B and A setup.

Here’s the basic setup of Alex Kidd in Miracle World: Kidd is a martial artist from the planet Aries, dressed in a red jumpsuit, who for some reason on the North American cover is drawn like he’s a small blonde child wearing red overalls. Kidd sets out to save King Thunder and his kingdom from Janken the Great, who is named thus because the early boss fights in this game are with his henchman, whom you play rock-paper-scissors against — Janken is the Japanese name for that game. It is precisely as odd as it sounds, but in a good way. It can be frustrating to lose a game of rock-paper-scissors to a boss, but luckily each of the three henchmen is named after either rock, paper, or scissors, and have repeatable patterns stemming from utilizing the weakness to their namesake first, i.e. Stone Head kicks things off with scissors, so use rock against him. You will face this trio more than once, but the second time has its own tell, too, in that you use their namesake against them first. So it’s not impossible to figure out by any means, you just have to pay attention and get that first guess right, because if you don’t the repeatable patterns won’t be used. Oh, and there’s a “Telepathy Ball” item that lets you see what your opponents are thinking, too, which you should save for the later matches where it’s a little tougher to guess what’s coming.

Rather than jumping on enemies’ heads, Alex Kidd uses a special punch he’s trained himself for that allows him to punch through rocks. If you can punch through a rock, you can also punch monsters in the face. Beyond this punch, there are also a number of powers you can find or buy in shops along the way, and then use at your discretion, which differentiates Alex Kidd from Super Mario Bros. in a non-aggravating way. The Power Bracelet lets you fire off a projectile that can wipe out entire rows of rocks and blocks in front of you at once, which can be useful for defeating enemies at a distance or just for clearing a path that otherwise might be difficult or tedious to clean up with one punch at a time. There are two magic capsules, with A creating a bunch of smaller copies of Alex Kidd to help him fight enemies, and B creates a barrier around Kidd — the downside to the latter is that he can’t punch foes or rocks while he’s protecting himself, but it’s useful for walking over spikes, for instance. Teleport Powder does no such thing, but it does allow for Alex Kidd to be temporarily invincible against enemy attacks (but not spikes!) while still being able to fight. That one is helpful against the bosses which you will eventually have to punch instead of just beat in rock-paper-scissors.

Alex Kidd also rides in various vehicles, which can either be found or purchased from shops using the game’s currency, baum. The motorbike can jump and drive straight through rocks, allowing you to quickly get through some stages or just run over enemies in your path. The Peticopter is a small helicopter-like vehicle that Alex Kidd pedals to move: this feels a lot like trying to play Flappy Bird, in that you’re pressing the button or releasing it to float up and down, respectively, and if you touch anything the copter falters and you’re back on your feet again. And then there’s the boat, which is basically just the motorbike but on the water, in terms of what it does and how you lose it. Figuring out when you should deploy these vehicles that you have stored up in your inventory is part of the fun and strategy of the game, and luckily the stages where you’re expected to use them tend to have plenty of bags of cash floating around or hiding in blocks for you to collect, helping you make up for spending money for these vehicles in the first place.

These vehicles help break up the game and how you approach it, and that they are optional is also a nice touch — if you fall into the water in a Peticopter level where you could be flying above it, for instance, you now have to navigate underwater by swimming, which has its own distinct feeling since Alex Kidd is constantly trying to float to the surface, meaning you need to control his ascent and descent there as a default instead of ever just kind of floating in place. Be warned, though, that even though you can buy vehicles, you will want to keep an eye on your available cash reserves, at least if you’re playing an older version of the game. In order to continue after running out of the ones the game provides, there is a button combination to press to gain another continue — the catch is that it costs you 400 baum to do this. The Sega Ages version of the game removes the secret and just lets you continue without having to know the code.

You will need to continue at some point, because Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a tough game. All of its little quirks and depth can be learned and mined, but a single hit kills you. In Super Mario Bros., this is only true if you don’t have a mushroom or flower powering you up; hell, even in Ghosts ‘n Goblins you get hit twice before dying. Vehicles at least serve this purpose, in that they are a free hit where you lose them instead of a life, but you don’t have vehicles against bosses, and some of the later stages are much longer than the early ones, as well as more fiendishly designed and stuffed with increased danger.

There was basically never a universe where Alex Kidd in Miracle World was going to be this widely popular game in the way that Super Mario Bros. was — while Super Mario Bros. is plenty difficult, it also has that arcade-style ramp up where by the time it gets too tough, you’re already completely sucked in and ready to pop another quarter in. And you didn’t even need quarters for that at home, just the desire to give it another go. Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a lot of fun, but you have to discover the fun in a different, less obvious way, too. None of this is a negative, to be clear. It’s just that it’s pretty easy to see why Sonic the Hedgehog managed to pull Sega even with Mario and Nintendo, albeit briefly, where Alex Kidd did not. “This game is for sickos and everyone should like it but does not” is basically Sega in a nutshell, though, so really, Alex Kidd still feels right at home despite being basically forgotten about for decades.

What’s also a little curious about Alex Kidd’s whole deal is that Sega was not committed to the idea of his games being any one thing. Miracle World was the only one of Alex Kidd’s games to play this way for a few years, when the lone Sega Genesis release, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, came out in 1989. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars released in arcades first, and included a timer and co-op. Alex Kidd: High-Tech World is the Super Mario Bros. 2 of the series, in that it was a different game first — an adaptation of the manga Princess Anmitsu — and had no connection to other characters or locations from the series to that point. And then there is Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, a crossover with Shinobi that features Alex Kidd but plays much more like Shinobi. Hey, they’re both series about martial artists, it’s fine. I like to imagine that it became an Alex Kidd game because someone at Sega saw the original spin-off project title, Shinobi Kid, up on a whiteboard, and then walked up and added another “d” to the end to cheers and applause.

The Sega Ages release is the way to go with Alex Kidd in the present, if you want to play a slightly modified version of the original. It has new pieces of art that introduce each level, adds an FM Synth soundtrack option as an alternative to the original PSG one, and a mode where you are able to rewind five seconds back. For those of you who turned up your nose at having to remember rock-paper-scissors patterns or think having to replay those fights would be a nightmare, the rewind mode is for you. And if you want something completely remade for modern times, there is Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, but be warned: the positive reviews were a normal amount of positive, while the negative ones were brutal. The controls were a constant source of complaint, and overall the project was negatively received enough that I did not bother picking it up and playing it to verify any of the claims. Hey, there are only so many hours in a day, I already had the Sega Ages re-release, and there are other Alex Kidds to experience, anyway.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World is very much a game that feels like it’s from 1986, which can be a positive or a negative depending on who you are and what you like out of games. It has its rough edges, sure, but there is a fun, very Sega game here that is worth experiencing just to get a sense of those early console days of the company. There is a bit of a feeling out process here, of throwing a lot at the wall and seeing what sticks, and the answer ended up being “very little” in a number of ways. Again, though, isn’t that very Sega, too? Listen, it wasn’t the more outlandish Genesis titles that had it neck-and-neck with the Super Nintendo, and the quality of the libraries of the Saturn and Dreamcast had less than nothing to do with how many of those consoles were sold. Alex Kidd in Miracle World has its flaws, but they are no reason to ignore it, especially now when the Sega Ages release can help you smooth over some of that without taking away from what the game was and is.

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