RADAXIAN HIGH STREET ALEX KIDD RELIES ON PLENTY OF ITEMS DURING HIS QUEST TO DEFEAT JANKEN THE GREAT – SOME OF WHICH HE CAN FIND IN THE WORLD, WHILE OTHERS ARE AVAILABLE IN SHOPS. HERE’S THE COMPLETE CATALOGUE
REGULAR ITEMS ONIGIRI
Alex’s favourite food appears at the end of each stage and must be collected in order to finish. In some versions it’s a hamburger.
POWER BRACELET
Once activated, this bracelet allows Alex to fire off projectiles for the remainder of the stage, unless he loses a life or stumbles into water.
EXTRA LIFE
This one is pretty self-explanatory. It can be found in the wild and is the most expensive item in the game’s shops, selling for 500.
CANE OF FLIGHT
This shop-only item costs 120, and enables Alex to fly for a short period. Watch out, as there’s no warning when the effect ends.
TELEPORTATION POWDER
This useful item costs 100 and allows Alex to pass through enemies without harm for a short period. It doesn’t work on spikes or pits.
TELEPATHY BALL
This rare item lets Alex see what his opponent is planning in janken battles.
It’s only found in Mount Kave and the Radaxian Castle.
MAGIC CAPSULE A
This capsule spawns eight miniature Alex Kidds, which run forward and attack enemies. For 100, it’s a good way to beat tough foes.
MAGIC CAPSULE B
For 120, this capsule will shield you against enemy attacks for a limited time, but Alex can’t perform any attacks while it’s active.
SUKOPAKO MOTORCYCLE
This speedy vehicle costs 200, and ploughs through enemies and rocks alike. You have to use it in the stage you buy it, and it doesn’t reverse!
PETICOPTER
For 200, Alex can fly through the air by hitting the jump button repeatedly. He can also fire missiles to take out pesky enemies.
TREASURES SUN STONE MEDALLION
One of the two items Alex needs to access the final stage and one he cannot miss – it’s given to him before the game and can’t be lost.
MOONLIGHT STONE MEDALLION
The other item Alex needs to unlock the final room is gained after defeating Janken. Even if you deliberately avoid picking it up.
SIGNED LETTER
This letter is found in the Radaxian Castle. High Stone Of Nibana will only hand over the Hirotta Stone if you have this in your possession.
HIROTTA STONE
A stone tablet used to reveal the game’s final treasure. The mysterious symbols must be read from top to bottom, right to left.
GOLD CROWN
Janken has turned the citizens of Radaxian to stone, and this magical treasure can reverse that. Obtaining it is Alex’s ultimate goal.
encountered in the underwater stages is a highlight, both for its visual design and its attack pattern, while the Hopper stands out more for its oddness – though again, this is only to western audiences, as Japanese players would be familiar with the Daruma, a traditional Japanese doll that appears in many children’s games. “The Daruma was an ‘angry tomato’ to me,” notes Héctor. “The enemy of ‘Death’ to me was a kind of sea seal,”
The game’s soundtrack was composed by Tokuhiko Uwabo, whose previous works had included the Japan-only game Satellite 7 and the Master System versions of Choplifter and Fantasy Zone. He chose to create musical themes based on the action Alex was currently performing, and plenty of them are memorable – most notably the underwater and motorbike themes. However, the cheery main overworld theme, which also provides the basis for the title screen, level start and ending themes, is the one that has become most associated with Alex Kidd. As well as appearing in Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle, the theme follows him into his later appearances in games such as Segagaga and Sonic & All‑stars Racing Transformed.
Of course, the game design bringing all of these elements together is key, and on a superficial level it is much like Super Mario Bros – Alex runs and jumps through the environment, battling enemies and smashing blocks to get through each stage. Rather than jumping up to hit blocks from below, Alex uses a more conventional forward punch – and the blocks that he encounters are far easier to read. Star blocks will always contain money, skull blocks temporarily stun Alex, and question mark blocks broadly contain useful items but may contain a deadly ghost. The enemies, it must be said, are a little less sophisticated than those found in Super Mario Bros – while their behaviours are certainly solid, most of them have very fixed patterns of movement. Only the ghost and monkey base their attacks on Alex’s position, and there’s no secondary behaviours to note, like the clever way that Koopa shells are used.
What really sets Alex Kidd In Miracle World apart from its contemporaries is the ambition of the development team, which provided the game with enough depth to ensure that it remained relevant well beyond its initial release. “I begun playing videogames in 1991,” says Ramón Nafria, producer at Jankenteam. “Sonic was able to roll. Mario was able to convert into Super Mario and throw fireballs. Alex Kidd was able to shoot ‘kames’, ride a bike, a Peticopter, a boat, fly, and read the mind of the enemies,” he explains in reference to Alex Kidd’s versatility. “I think it is quite a technical feat for that time,” says José Sanz, game designer at Jankenteam. “Even today, as I investigate how the original team did [it] to apply it in the remake, I am very amazed at everything they did. Original battles against the bosses, the initial vertical phase, the vehicles, the shops and monetary system, the camera and style of ‘dungeons’ in castles.”
Indeed, collecting sacks of cash feels much less like collecting arbitrary tokens than it does in many other platform games, thanks to the inclusion of shops and a permanent inventory. Beyond that, the vehicles add some real variety to the gameplay that was hard to come by in 1986. “Again, this is an idea from Hayashida-san,” says Kodama. “’Hero crashes into bad guys on a motocycle!’ is something we saw from superhero shows. It is easy to imagine Alex Kidd has different rides like a hero. Other than that, inspiration could have come from gadget cars in Bond movies, or futuristic items in Doraemon.” Transitions feel natural, too – if you lose your vehicle over the water, you can still swim to the end of a stage.
Additionally, the incorporation of adventure elements help to distinguish the game. The way the map screen shows your progress through Miracle World is quite novel amongst console platformers of the time, as is the fact that the game doesn’t end with the defeat of the final boss, but the retrieval of the final quest item. The use of a small cast of characters with a significant amount of dialogue clues players into the existence of the secondary objectives that, while not strictly necessary, do help you to complete the game – if you don’t rescue Egle, you won’t get the letter to High Stone, who subsequently won’t give you the stone tablet containing the correct sequence of moves required to beat the final stage. Having said that, ambitious experimentation can lead to some failures, and the final stage is arguably one of them. There can’t have been many players outside Japan who would have guessed that the symbols on that stone tablet, much like vertically written Japanese text, were intended to be read from in columns from right-to-left.
Speaking of wayward experiments, one of the most commonly criticised aspects of the game is one of its most distinctive features – the use of rock paper scissors as a boss battle mechanic. It’s difficult to imagine the game without it, as the team leaned into the theme heavily. The main villain, Janken The Great, takes his name from the Japanese name for the game, and his three henchmen have heads resembling the game’s three hand symbols – an idea that Kodama credits to Hayashida. “The
style of ‘boss with three henchmen’ probably came from the animations like Time Bokan and Yatterman of Tatsunoko Production,” she explains. “In many of these anime, there were always three somehow boneheaded henchmen under the boss. This is the stereotype animation we saw when we were children. It is hard to hate them even as enemies.” However, while the character designs it inspired were memorable, Hayashida has expressed regret over the mechanic in retrospective interviews, saying that it “wasn’t a great fit for an action game” due to the reliance on memorisation over practised skills.
Alex Kidd In Miracle World was released in Japan in November 1986, with a North American release following soon after. In the US, the Computer Entertainer newsletter gave the game 3.5/4 for both graphics and gameplay, and stated that the game was “one of those delightful games with lots of surprises and things to discover”. Writing in Video Games & Computer Entertainment, reviewer Clayton Walnum noted the game’s similarity to Super Mario Bros but remarked that it was “far from a clone” and “about as addicting as games come”, praising its graphics, sound effects and challenge. As with many early Master System games, only retrospective reviews are available from UK publications. The Complete Guide To Consoles from CVG scored the game 87% in 1989, singing the praises of its “great graphics and sound, and, most importantly, thoroughly absorbing gameplay”. In 1991, Sega Pro’s very first issue gave Alex Kidd In Miracle World a score of 95% on the basis that it offered “so much to do and so many different ways of doing it”.
The game undoubtedly received a major boost from Sega’s decision to build the game into Master System consoles. “Alex Kidd, like many other people, was the first videogame I played,” says Héctor. “It was probably because it came preinstalled in the memory of the Sega Master System II, but the infinite hours I spent with my brother made me remember this game with special affection.” PAL Master System consoles had featured the game since late 1988, though it was one of a few options at that time – Master System Plus buyers would get Hang-on and Safari Hunt, and Super System bundles included Missile Defense 3-D. When the Master System II came along, Alex Kidd became the game of choice worldwide. All North American versions of the console include the game, but European models replaced Alex Kidd with Sonic The Hedgehog from late 1992. The built-in version made some minor changes, reversing the jump and punch buttons to the more conventional layout, and replacing Alex’s treasured onigiri with hamburgers for the western audience.
The development team went on to achieve further success together. “After Alex Kidd, I was involved in background design of Phantasy Star and Sonic. Those backgrounds were made
from the skills I learned from Alex Kidd,” says Kodama. Hayashida and Uwabo joined her on the Phantasy Star team, and created a classic RPG that stands as another of the Master System’s finest games. Also members of that team were Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, whom Kodama worked with on Sonic The Hedgehog – the character that would ultimately usurp Alex Kidd’s position as Sega’s mascot.
Unfortunately for Alex Kidd, while Sega promoted him as its star through the late Eighties, he never quite delivered as hoped. In part, that must be due to the inconsistency of his games. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars was a passable arcade platformer that lacked a lot of Miracle World’s notable features, and was only mildly well-received on the Master System.
Alex Kidd In High-tech World was a rebranded version of the anime tie-in Anmitsu Hime, a mediocre and obtuse action adventure game, while the top-down racer Alex Kidd: BMX Trial never made it out of Japan. The Mega Drive launch game Alex Kidd In The Enchanted
Castle was the closest we ever got to a true Miracle World sequel, but its simplified nature, loose controls and increased use of rock paper scissors battles meant that it wasn’t as well received. Only Alex Kidd In Shinobi World, a parody crossover with Sega’s famous ninja series, really hit the heights of the original game. For 30 years it seemed that Alex Kidd would be consigned to the history books, until the recent surprise announcement of the remake project Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX, developed by Jankenteam and published by Merge Games.
While fans have brought Alex Kidd back to the market, it’s only right that Rieko Kodama should have the final word – one that she would never imagine having back in 1986. “I felt it was a well-balanced package among game design, graphics and sound. However, I could not imagine it would go so deep into fans’ memories,” she says. It seems like she’s feeling the same excitement for the remake as the rest of us, too. “I am honoured to see the fans’ reactions. I heard that the members of the development team of Miracle World DX are also all-time fans of Alex Kidd. Their love moved them to present this remake to us in Sega. Although development just started, I am sure they will do their best with love. I wish all fans who want to go adventure with Alex Kidd can feel their spirit, and I am looking forward to see Alex making his new steps.”
But with Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX not due for release until 2021, there’s plenty of time for you to reacquaint yourself with the original, and appreciate it for what it is – a platform game that showcased just how high Sega’s developers could aim, regardless of the later misfortunes of its star character.