873rd played so far
Genre: Platform
Platform: Master System
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Rather than discussing yet another platformer, can I say how much I enjoy this style of box art? You see the blue lined graph paper on a couple of boxes and the fun art on top of something serious looks quite good and sort of talks about a serious object like a computer being used for something fun. It somehow hits the right buttons for me and even though it doesn’t say a lot about the game, it’s enough to get you a little bit excited.
Of course, that doesn’t quite apply anymore to a 30 year old game, but where the box art still feels different, I’m afraid the game itself would not be.
Our Thoughts
On some level, Alex Kidd starts off feeling like a reverse Kid Icarus – you descend down a ravine, with some limited jumping but mostly when you get further down, you can’t get back up. The platforming is tricky enough, but the first level is also packed enough with enemies that give no quarter – the hitboxes are large enough that it is hard to avoid them, and the controls floaty enough that you need to really plan ahead and be careful. You can get some weapons to defeat them to replace your martial (and because of hitboxes dangerous) punch, but anything better, including anything ranged, gets lost on death.
It’s very much an 80s difficult platformer, with liberal checkpointing but not enough lives to really get into it. I made it to the bottom of the ravine a few times, but the timing gets even more ridiculous there and I swear there were some parts that were impossible. It’s a difficult game, probably innovative enough for its day – it certainly feels like there’s a lot going on in here – but also too hard to keep going with.