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Segaiden #38: Super Tennis and Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-15 12:49:35
Imported:
2024-04
Tags:

Content

I was a little nervous going into this one, because I know Alex Kidd in Miracle World has become one of those touchstones for cultural differences: No one in America likes it, while several European countries have collectively voted Alex Kidd as their mayor or chancellor or whatever they call their supreme rulers over there. What I'm saying is that Miracle World either connected with some sort of deep-seated cultural urge that Americans don't share, or else a whole lot of European kids played it while they were still young and impressionable because it came built into the Master System II hardware. Probably the former. Yeah, that's gotta be it.

Anyway, Alex Kidd in Miracle World stands right at the cusp of being a really great game, and it could pretty easily be tweaked to appeal to modern gaming tastes! Of course, that's not how it went. Instead, we got a 1:1 remake with nicer graphics and music, a thing that worked with Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap because The Dragon's Trap has always ruled, whereas Alex Kidd... really needs to be tweaked to appeal to modern gaming tastes. Ah well. Maybe in another 35 years or so.

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Punch-monkey love: Super Tennis & Alex Kidd in Miracle World | Segaiden #038

For our two final American Master System releases of 1986, we have a game that looks remarkably derivative of an early Nintendo NES title (and rightly so) and a game that often gets compared to a major NES hit (but really is something much stranger and more ambitious). Yes, there's no denying that Super Tennis—no, not the Super NES one—looks almost exactly like Black Box Tennis for NES, all the way down the character sprites. But, you know, steal from the best, right? That philosophy seemingly looms over Alex Kidd in Miracle World as well: A game that Sega clearly designed as the answer to Super Mario Bros., what with it being a character platformer where you break blocks and all. Except the similarities really end there, and Miracle World ultimately embraces an entirely different design philosophy. If it weren't for the hostile control physics (and the reversed input button layout, ugh), it might be revered more widely for its ambitions today—at least, revered by people who didn't grow up with a copy of the game preloaded onto their Master System II console, where it at least had un-reversed controls. Anyway, weird game, and extremely difficult bordering on unfair, but not the clone that outsider observers treat it as. Production notes: Why watch when you can read? Check out the massive hardcover print editions of NES Works, Super NES Works, and Virtual Boy works, available now at Limited Run Games (https://limitedrungames.com/collections/books)! Look forward to SG-1000 Works: Segaiden Vol. I, due summer 2023. Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more! Most Master System footage captured from U.S. carts running through an adapter on Sega Mark III hardware with FM Sound Unit and RGB bypass modification by iFixRetro. Most arcade and Master System Light Phaser footage captured from MiSTer, with thanks to MiSTerAddOns. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister.

Comments

PT

I do wonder if games like Alex Kidd have a following because for specific generations in specific markets, this was the type of game that they had. Lots of platformers for personal computers with odd graphics, strange physics and deeply unforgiving gameplay. Or to reference western gaming, early DOS/PC gaming with Commander Keen or the 2D Duke Nukem games. Lots of folks grew up with that stuff, so it's comfort food for them regardless if someone like me thinks they look dated, noisy and frustrating to play. Or considering that you can go back to Super Mario Bros. today and possibly say to yourself, "This is still pretty fun, if more unforgiving than I remember." I don't know if I could say the same for Alex Kidd. It just looks like a game of its time, and not in a flattering way.

B
>>101955786

This sums up how I felt playing some of the foundational Namco titles for the first time a couple years back. While I respect the hell out of Tower of Druaga and Dragon Buster and can see how they would have been incredibly impactful in the day, they're just not fun today, whereas something like Xevious still holds up.

TheyCallMeSleeper

The thing that I think does Miracle World in, and keeps it from being the classic it came so close to being, is that it's an example of "Sega hard" gone wrong. Both Sega and Nintendo definitely developed their early home games with an arcade mentality, but Nintendo was quicker to dilute that with a sense of balance for the home scene, because--and this is just my observation--their foot was not so firmly planted in arcades as Sega's was (outside of Vs cabinets and PlayChoice-10s, Nintendo was more or less out of it after Mario Bros). A lot of Sega's console games really feel like they were still designed with arcades in mind, and it's a vibe I get from the whole Alex Kidd series, especially in the level design and unforgiving deaths. That said, Miracle World would have been a more fitting coin-op debut for Alex than The Lost Stars. Playing that thing on the Astro City Mini gave me more moments of feeling frustrated with its design than Miracle World ever did.