Alex Kidd in Impossible World
There’s no shortage of old games that are known primarily for their difficulty. The word “difficult” brings to mind images of Battletoads, or Ninja Gaiden, or Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Even some of the more prominent series like Mega Man and Castlevania are associated with their difficulty as much as with their actual quality. But Alex Kidd in Miracle World is supposed to be different, right? Alex is the de facto Master System mascot and this is a staple of the console. And despite being a game that lots of people are familiar with, difficulty is seemingly never discussed when it comes to Alex Kidd. Well why the heck not? It’s frickin hard!
This is one of those games where you die instantly if your left toenail brushes up against literally any obstacle, and Alex slides around like he’s on skates the whole time. These two factors combined turned much of Alex Kidd into an endurance challenge more than one that requires any precise platforming or movement. You start off with three lives and no continues, though you can get extra lives and there is a secret code that allows you to continue if you have $400 remaining, so in practice you’ll get maybe more like 15 lives. But still, with the aforementioned frailty of Alex, your lives are precious resources here that you won’t want to squander.
I do love the graphics in this game, it’s the perfect simple 8-bit that isn’t overly complicated but it has the wonderful Master System colors. It’s great. I also give bonus points for the game insisting that Alex’s punch is actually an ancient martial art called “shellcore.” Before playing it myself, I always thought the janken boss fights were pretty cool. It’s a fun subversion of a normal boss fight that is both silly and memorable. And I still think that’s true, but knowing how valuable those lives are does make it immensely annoying to lose one of them on rock paper scissors.
There’s no clock in this game, which gives you the chance to take your time and line up each jump carefully. This was the key to success for me. There are also not really any normal enemies that are particularly threatening like a Hammer Bro or anything like that; most have simple patterns and you can take your time avoiding or dealing with them too. Again, there’s not really any Mega Man style platforming happening here. The bosses are all easy once you see what they do, though the first one or two encounters with some of them are tricky since you’ll probably die before you really see what their pattern is. The vehicle sections aren’t particularly tough either. But unless you are really on a heater, you’re going to slip up and die here and there. And the (immediately fatal) mistakes will start to add up over the course of the game.
The exception to all of this is the final castle. My my my. This was brutal. Suddenly this game is asking for a lot of perilous jumps into tight windows, and the infamous room where you swim through the maze of spikes is tough. This is really why the game is so tricky. All the levels up to this point are just a slow drain on your reserve of extra lives and you need to keep as many as you can until this point where the hard stuff happens. Losing a life on a game of janken doesn’t really hurt you right then and there (mostly), but it’s one less crack at the spike room later on in the game and that’s why it stings.
On top of the final castle, the puzzle at the end with the crown is a real pain in the ass. Yes, you do get the stone tablet that tells you the order, but since the order is both vertical and right-to-left it will take you a few tries to get it right. Just a sour note to end the game on and I can’t imagine finally getting to the end only to lose your last life on what is essentially a guessing game even if you use the clue given to you.
Circling back to the idea that this game doesn’t have a reputation for being hard, I do think there is somewhat of a tendency for the collective consciousness to reduce an older game into the binary “Hard” or “Good.” Kid Icarus is considered hard. Metroid is considered good. Zelda 2 is considered hard, Zelda 1 is considered good. But the binary is largely incorrect, because Kid Icarus and Zelda 2 are also good, and Zelda 1 is actually really hard! Obviously, reducing every game down to one defining trait is not going to provide sufficient coverage but I do think that this is more or less what happens in mainstream NES discourse. And likewise with the Master System, where Alex Kidd is generally summarized as “good.” But I also found it really damn hard, especially near the end.
I think it was a decently fun game and is better than most 8-bit platformers (most 8-bit platformers are terrible), but I also think Wonder Boy 1 is both a better comp to Mario and a better game.