Alex Kidd in Miracle World screenshot (Steam Deck)

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1. Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Sunday, 05-Jan-2025 13:46:40 JST Chris Trottier

   So, were you were a SEGA kid in the 1980s? Then you probably know the original Alex Kidd in Miracle World – maybe it even caused you to rage-quit a few times.

   Here’s the deal: back when Nintendo’s NES was printing money thanks to Super Mario Bros., every other platform needed its own Mario wannabe. For the Commodore 64, it was The Great Giana Sisters. For DOS, it was Commander Keen. For the SEGA Master System, it was Alex Kidd.

   Before Sonic the Hedgehog became SEGA’s mascot and finally sold consoles for the company, Alex Kidd filled that role. He was a bit of an oddity – something of a monkey boy with elf-like ears and a tail. SEGA released several Alex Kidd games (Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, Alex Kidd in High Tech World, etc.), but Miracle World was his magnum opus. Like Mario, that game was a brightly colored platformer where you jumped around collecting items.

   However, despite some aesthetic similarities, Alex Kidd played quite differently from Super Mario Bros. – he was more like Mario’s scrappy, unpolished cousin. Mario jumped on enemies. Alex Kidd punched them. Hard.

   Power-ups, like rings, enhanced your attacks, letting you punch from a distance. Occasionally, you’d get vehicles like a motorbike, though I always found the motorbike frustrating – it often caused more problems than it solved, especially in areas requiring precise jumps.

   One odd quirk was encountering “power-ups” that hid enemies you couldn’t punch out. The only way to deal with them was to outrun them until they disappeared off-screen. That always felt cheap to me. To be fair, even Mario wasn’t immune to this kind of trickery – Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese version, later released in North America as The Lost Levels) had a poison mushroom that could kill you. Still, it felt unfair.

   Unfortunately, Alex Kidd in Miracle World could never truly compete with Super Mario Bros. for a few reasons:

   1. Poor hit detection: The hitboxes were terrible. If you even got just a little close to an enemy, you’d die.
   2. Rock-paper-scissors: Every few levels, you had to play best-of-three games of rock-paper-scissors. Losing meant game over. Imagine playing for half an hour, only to lose everything because of a random chance minigame.

   Despite these flaws, we SEGA fans loved it – partly because it was fun, but mostly because admitting Mario was better felt like treason.

   Fast-forward to today. Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX dropped in 2021, and it’s everything we wanted back then. Gorgeous 2D visuals, toggleable with original graphics (now in widescreen!), and – hallelujah – fixed hitboxes. The rock-paper-scissors games with end bosses is still there, but losing doesn’t make you want to throw your controller into orbit. Infinite retries and lives make it approachable without gutting the challenge.

   Interestingly, SEGA didn’t develop or publish this remake. It was developed by Jankenteam and published by Merge Games. This surprised me because Alex Kidd in Miracle World is such an iconic Sega title. Based on the credits, the developers appear to be Brazilian, which makes sense—Brazil has a massive love for Sega and the Master System, even to this day.

   Would I recommend the original Alex Kidd in Miracle World? Only if you enjoy video game archeology or want to relive the trauma of poorly times punches. But the remake? Absolutely. It’s like seeing an old friend who finally got their act together. If Miracle World DX got released in 1986, we might’ve seen Alex Kidd punching Mario off his throne.

   So, go on – play the remake. It’s a miracle its awesomeness doesn’t punch you in the face.