Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

I guess some people are mistaking it for the Master System classic Alex Kidd in Miracle World [アレックスキッドのミラクルワールド], because this game is absolutely atrocious.

I'm a huge fan of Sega genesis games, however I can't for the life of me figure out what made this game so special back in the day that it was the official mascot of the console prior to the existence of sonic the hedgehog.

The biggest issue I have us how primitive the game play is even for the 80s, the platforming is beyond basic complete with uninspired animations of our titular hero whenever he moves or dies throughout each level. The main gimmick of the game is the rock paper scissors encounters which of course means that it's heavily reliant on rgn which makes each playthrough frustratingly unpredictable as you can die by complete chance in each of their encounters. I also don't care much for the presentation and art style of the game, yes, it's an early 16bit game, however even altered beast and most 8bit games looked better than this does with its desolate environments.

There's honestly not much more I can say here as aside from the unfair mechanics, the game is pretty straightforward with a boring story and weak presentation.

I’m attempting to play through all the classic mega drive/genesis games, I’m going through alphabetically which led me to this game, which I’d played once when I was about five, and never again since. I’ve kind of always enjoyed the aesthetic of Alex Kidd though and find it hard not to root for the platformer mascots who aren’t as popular. I’m also a huge fan of platform games so I was excited to finally tick this off my list.

Sad to say, this may be one of the worst platform games I’ve ever played. There is a lot of aesthetic fun to be had, but none of the levels seem to have any thought behind them whatsoever apart from the final level. The plot is confusing, one of the main mechanics is playing rock paper scissors and it’s often unclear what will and won’t kill you. Very difficult due to these issues if played on the original cartridge, and unbearably easy if you play on one of the sega collections that lets you rewind and retry.

Although this certainly isn’t one of the worst games ever, it doesn’t hold up. I’d like to say it’s ‘dated’ but I question the levels on enjoyment people would’ve had for this game in 1989.

1.5/5

I played this on the Sega Classics collection on Switch and to be honest, this may be one of the worst games I played in a while. To be honest the late 80s were kind of a rough period for gaming and 89 in particular was a pretty bad year for gaming, sure we got games like Sweet Home that influenced the survival horror genre and inspired Resident Evil, The first Mother game which spawned 2 great sequels, and some movie/cartoon spin off games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, and DuckTales, plus the first SimCity game, but while 89 might have tried to innovate, most of those games ended up being overly ambitious or being way improved on in sequels and aged poorly. I mean early Genesis/Master System games were pretty bad, especially after playing them on these retrospective collections, and it really wasn't until Sonic in 91 that Sega had anything worthwhile. This feels like one of those free online flash games that I played back in the early-mid 2000s, except many of those free flash games from the early days of Newgrounds and Miniclip were actually better than this game.

I don't even know where to start for starters, the game starts off with short levels that are each under 5 minutes, hell many can even be beaten in around a minute or 2. The goal is to reach the end of the level and collect some sort of rice ball, and there is basic platforming and enemies in each level. There are chests that contain collectible coins that really don't do too much, and there are boring rock paper scissor mini games that give you additional money, and that's about it. This feels like a poor man's Super Mario Bros 2 almost. The design is just so bland and this game is frustrating with terrible platforming and enemies that can kill you in one shot. The game only has like 15 levels and the final level is for some reason overly long and it feels like the developers half assed every level leading up to the final one. There are some annoying underwater levels and a flying level that are more frustrating due to controls. All the boss fights aside from the final boss are beaten through rock paper scissor fights, and the final boss in this is incredibly easy and boring. This game is just so generic and boring that if you aren't dying to the frustrating enemies and controls, you are probably wanting to turn this off due to boredom. The game is very short and can be beaten in around 1 hour, so at least there's that, but damn I'd rather be playing a free flash game than this, I've played better adult flash games even than this, Nintendo really were running laps around Sega until 91, and this is a game that's aged so horribly and is best left in the past with all the other forgotten Genesis exclusives.