#2 Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

 God look at him. He's one of those guys that actually SAYS "You mad bro?"

 Don't let this mildly interesting scene fool you. Alex Kidd is a blight on our heritage.

When you love a game company that has fallen through the cracks, become defunct, gotten a bad rap, or dropped out of a market, especially the console market, it can really help the apologetics of your blind faith to have good reason to love its franchises. If the franchises a publisher releases are of high quality your allegiance has an aesthetic basis for argument. 

For the sake of the Sega faithful therefore…. I say we destroy every copy and ROM of any Alex Kidd game ever made.

It’s not even that they are bad games as games go, when we take into account the sum of all games.  It’s what Alex Kidd claims to represent that makes him a heretic.

 When Sega released the Master System to a worldwide market it faced a problem, especially in the North American market. Not only did Nintendo have exclusive licensing agreements with many important publishers, they also had a growing repertoire of original characters and franchises to pull from that were already wildly popular in both Japan and the States. Not the least of these was Mario, and Mario needed to be answered on the field of marketing battle…. But he never was - certainly not by this big eared twerp. Alex Kidd would never even come close to the plumber’s popularity and by the time the Genesis dropped Sega was already well aware of his short comings. This was his swan song. Mario would not get a real answer from Sega until 1991, from you know who.

The franchise, in my opinion, has always had problems of not being very interesting despite trying way too hard, among other issues. For this review we will focus only on its last installment, the Genesis launch title, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle.

The first question I had is why was this a launch title at all? Sega had pretty much already decided to take its new product in a different direction, appealing to an older demographic and focusing on celebrity endorsements and arcade ports. None of these things lasted consistently but in 1988 / 1989 that was Sega’s mentality. My guess is they needed to pad out the library at launch. Essentially every console launch does this. Alex Kidd was an easy in. He started his life on the Master System which, while poorly received in the states, did well in Brazil, Europe, and to an extent even Japan. Alex Kidd was a welcome launch title in those regions and frankly Sega needed the quantity to sell consoles and software at launch day to prove this console would have US support. It was not all that hard a move to slap a North American clamshell around Alex. The fact that I am probably spot on about the decision process here would not upset me were it not for the fact that they had this mentality with Alex Kidd but not later European and Japanese releases that might have actually fared well here.

But I digress. For good or ill, Enchanted Castle came with the coming of the Genesis, “In the beginning” so to speak. As such I must now attempt to explain what is wrong with Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle. This is not as easy a task as it should be because what is wrong with him has just as much to do with what is right with him as it does his flaws. Ultimately it comes down to a few major points:

1.     

         This does not feel like a first party game. It feels like a very low budget 3^rd party game. It feels like shovelware. It controls like a wisdom tree platformer, all of his games do. This would not be so bad and in fact some shovelware has enough camp value to be forgivable. For shovelware, Alex Kidd is quite good. In that regard it would be a respectable game, were that the case. But it’s not shovelware. It’s not an obscure 3^rd party game developed in a Taiwanese sweatshop. It’s a 1^st party title and not only a 1^st party title, but a 1^st party title staring the hairy little bastard who has the audacity to claim mascot status for both console and company, at least at the time. There is no excuse for this.

The basis for this comparison is in the weird physics. Mario gained momentum and it felt natural. Alex feels like he has wax on his shoes. He slips and slides everywhere. He jumps like a crack head on the moon. It just doesn’t feel tightly made.  The environments seem minimalistic as well. They are bright and colorful but lack detail that even these early launch titles tended to possess.

2.       The gimmicks that should have made the game interesting come off as useless first, annoying second, and cheap in the finale.

Namely items.  One of the first things that looked interesting about this game was a large inventory of interesting looking gear you could acquire. I’ll get into the how in a second.

The problem is none of it is all that useful with very few exceptions.  I will tell you this right now – get the bracelet ASAP. Get several. Before the game ends get the pogo stick. Everything else is basically useless crap. The motorcycle has a level you can use it on effectively but it’s not very fun and the level is actually more interesting without it. The helicopter is an even worse offender as it’s downright annoying to control. It requires constantly tapping C in very rapid succession which would be less of a problem if not pressing it resulted in a slow and steady descend rather than dropping like a rock in water. There is also a cape that makes you temporarily invincible but the cost of it doesn’t make it very useful in most instances. There is a cane to make you levitate which may be helpful at some points but not really necessary, and the necklace…Just…Give me a minute I’m working up to that little gem. 

 Each item represents a broken fragment of my shattered life.

All you really need is the magic bracelet which makes your attack projectile. This is essential because one hit will kill you. The pogo stick allows you to jump very high which will make some puzzles later in the game easier.

Now… Regardless of absolutely ANY redeeming quality this game could have, here is the nail in the coffin that dooms it to my own personal hell for all eternity:

3.  

           Every freaking boss in the game….are you sitting down for this? Every single *^^%^$ one…is fought….by playing rock paper scissors. I don’t mean that like people do when they talk about Pokémon or Fire Emblem with elements that counter each other and such. I mean you literally pick rock, paper, or scissors. Alex makes the symbol with his hand. The “boss” does the same. And in that instant you win or you die.

Completely unacceptable. There is no cutesy backstory in the world that would ever make this ok.

You do this in other places too. It’s how you acquire items. And I’m ok with gambling for items. That is fine. You pay a bit of gold to play and if you win rock paper scissors you get the item. This isn’t all that creative but it’s acceptable. A boss that kills you if you don’t win a game of chance is not. The necklace allegedly allows you to read their minds but what you find out in trying this is that they are still very indecisive. What’s worse to me though than the fact that it’s basically pure luck if you actually finish the game or not, is the fact that they robbed you of fun. Look at the boss fights in the first two Super Mario Bros., both of which were out by now. How could Sega have looked at those and then decided instead a game of freaking rock paper scissors’ was an acceptable alternative?

 Clearly not. I have to play this piece of crap.

There is one final thing I want to point out. The title would seem to suggest the game takes place entirely in an Enchanted Castle. In fact the castle is only the final level of the game, but the funny thing is it really SHOULD have been the whole game. The platforming levels before it were as bland as bland can be. The only redeeming factor this game has, in fact the only part of the game that feels like it has any design effort put into it at all, is the final level in the castle in which Mega man style scrolling screens reveal individual rooms each with a kind of platforming puzzle to solve. This was the only part that was any fun at all and should have been the basis for the entire game not merely the unappealing climax. Just when the puzzles are starting to get really interesting, you have reached the end, it’s over, and your treated to – you guessed it – more rock paper scissors’ action!

***SPOILIER WARNING***

The black blocks make you bounce. The puzzles in the last level remind me of modern retro games like Super Meat Boy. If only the whole game had consisted of these one screen puzzles. 

 ***SPOILIER WARNING***

As a final slap in the face to the player, the game ends with you discovering that your father, who you have come all this way to rescue, was never really captured to begin with and was screwing with you for shits and giggles this whole time. So…you give him a hug. I kid you not. That’s it. That is how they ended this franchise and with the exception of a couple of cameos Alex Kidd would never be heard from again.

GOOD RIDDANCE!

This game is best for people who hate themselves and want to feel like they are already dead. I can’t really recommend it to anyone except those wanting every taste of Sega history. The most insulting part isn’t even that the game is that horrid or unplayable, it’s that the whole franchise was supposed to be Sega’s flagship, and it’s now our greatest embarrassment.