Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX

 This post was originally posted on the 3rd of January, 2023 in this Twitter thread.

Steam | Nintendo | PlayStation | Xbox

I tried out the original Master System version years ago and it didn't really grab my attention.  

A couple of days ago I saw the remake was on sale (and it actually still is as I'm typing this) so I decided to check it out.

Alex feels a little weird to control. The closest thing I could compare him to is Luigi in SMB2, 'cause he's fairly slippery. 

Your primary way of attacking is with a really stubby punch.

The punch gets the job done well for most things, although hitting stuff in the air is generally pretty awkward. 

There is a power-up that you can get which allows you to shoot (something?) from your fist, although it doesn't transfer between levels.

Probably the most annoying part about the game is how it only takes 1 hit for Alex to lose a life. On the bright side though, the checkpoints are extremely frequent.

In the remake there's 3 handicap options you can enable to make the game easier, although I never really tried any of them so I can't really say much about them. 

Playing Rock Papper Scissors against most of the bosses felt kinda silly.

The RPS segments didn't give me that much trouble. Most of the bosses had pretty easily discernable patters. Even if you do lose to a boss in RPS, they keep the same exact pattern every time you fight them, so at most each RPS segment should only take 2 attempts.

Since I didn't play through the original, I can't really compare and contrast it much with the remake, but from the bits I've seen online, it's seems pretty faithful to the original from a gameplay standpoint (except for the save feature and optional handicaps).

The original Master System version is straight up just an unlockable though in case you really wanna play it. You have to beat the game though to unlock it.

What I can confidently comment on though is the graphics and audio, since you can toggle between the new and old graphics/audio whenever you want to while mid-gameplay. 

The audio seems to pretty much just be an improvement, although I didn't pay too much attention to it.

The graphics were pretty good as well, however there's some issues with the sizes of some characters. 

Most notably, Alex looks way shorter compared to the original, and the bosses look way wider. Alex looking shorter didn't actually give me much trouble.

The bosses being wider did give me a little trouble though. Sometimes it looked like my attacks were just phasing right through the bosses.

The level design was surprisingly good in a lot of areas. It was a tad bothersome in some others though.  Overall, they made really great use of Alex's jump.

Last thing I wanna mention, there was this one underwater section with spikes which gave me a ton of trouble, because I thought you were just supposed to somehow weave through the spikes.

 

 

It turns out that you're allowed to just touch the bottoms of the spikes which made things way easier. That section really got on my nerves since it was near the end of a level, and I ended up playing through most of that level like 5+ times 'cause I kept getting game overs. 

I guess the Infinite Lives handicap would've helped me a ton there.

Anyways, overall I'd say Alex Kidd In Miracle World DX is good. Nothing outside of some of the level design, and maybe the graphics, stood out to me as particularly outstanding.

 

| 2023 Media Page | 

Rayman 2 Forever->