I admittedly have a soft spot for this game as I played it a lot on one of the PS2 Sega Genesis collections as a child. I still enjoy popping it in and seeing it to completion in about an hour or so every so often, but I'm willing to admit its flaws are hard to ignore. Alex is so slippery compared to how he handles in Miracle and Shinobi World, and it will throw you off no matter what. I also wish there would've been more proper bosses this time instead of rock-paper-scissors.

That being said, Enchanted Castle did try and up the ante a bit. For one thing, you're now able to stockpile items as well as equip/unequip them from the pause menu. It sucked to be stuck with just your bare fists after losing the bracelet in miracle world, especially if you were new to the game, but that's not as much of a problem here. There are also more secrets to find, and fortunately none of them are mandatory for progression this time (like the scroll in miracle world). It's just a shame the physics somehow got worse.

When I was a kid, my family would take summer trips to visit relatives in Lebanon. Computers and game consoles weren't too common over there at the time, so besides the odd day or two we would spend with my uncle (who had a home PC with internet access and games like Quake III), my brother and I were limited to playing on the one piece of videogame hardware my father brought back from America as a present for his nieces and nephews: a SEGA Genesis.

For some... inscrutable reason, my cousins loved Alex Kidd. I did not. My brother did not. We would be forced to take turns playing this awful game whenever someone lost a life, our cousins clapping and cheering at the rock-paper-scissors fights and goofy helicopter music. Blissful were the days that it was only me and my brother at our grandparents' house and we had the television all to ourselves so we could play anything but Alex Kidd. Just an absolutely terrible game.

This was the first Non Sonic Genesis Game I played as a Kid



I feel like if my friend Eat got married and had a kid he'll probably named it after this game.

Frustrante.

Voltei nesse título por pura nostalgia, afinal de contas foi o único jogo da série Alex Kidd que joguei na minha infância e eu nem sequer passava da segunda fase.

Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle é um platformer relativamente fácil até começar a fase final do castelo que é definitivamente SACANAGEM. O jogo apela em número de inimigos, passagens secretas, e armadilhas semi-impossíveis.

Uma forma de facilitar tudo isso são as recompensas e power-ups que você ganha durante alguns níveis. Isso seria perfeito se não dependesse do mais canalha RNG que já enfiaram num jogo, pois você só os ganha apostando dinheiro em partidas de Pedra, Papel, e Tesoura totalmente roubadas.

Fiz um favor à mim mesmo abusando de save states pra finalmente ver a tela final que devia pro meu eu de 8 anos de idade.

Nunca mais quero ver esse jogo na minha frente.

É uma extensão do jogo do Master System, se jogou aquele, já sabe o que vai ter nesse
Mas na real eu até curto este mais pela nostalgia do momento que eu joguei ele a primeira vez, na casa de um amigo, num lindo dia de chuva. O que há melhor pra se fazer?

O jogo anterior já tinha alguns itens para serem usados durante as fases, mas eram muito triviais e úteis em momentos específicos. Neste pelo menos há um menu mais coerente, e que fica acessível PELO CONTROLE, OBRIGADO, mostrando itens e veículos para usar em qualquer momento

Penas que você e o veículo são frágeis que nem uma bolha de sabão e morrem ao primeiro toque, perdendo o trem que estava usando

Ah e o final é bem ruim, não procure saber como é, baita perda de tempo

You know what, I am getting pretty fucking sick of this dumbass kid and his dumbass games. For every single installment so far (aside from that one BMX game I haven't played that no one cares about), they have either been terrible to painfully mediocre, making me question why I would even continue playing these games in the first place. Not that there is anything bad with being painfully mediocre, but it just seems like none of these games are getting any better, and are progressively getting weirder, and not in a good way. But hey, I won’t give up hope, as we still have several games left in this series, and this next one in particular was made for the Sega Genesis rather then the Master System, so that means it has to have some level of quality, right? Well, I shall see with Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle.

So, after playing through the game, I can say with confidence that this installment in the painfully mediocre Alex Kidd franchise is… also painfully mediocre, but despite that, I would also say that it is the best game in the series so far, even if it isn’t all that good. I will give the game credit for actually sticking to a gameplay style, unlike the last two who changed it up pretty jarringly, and it does add some new features that weren’t in the previous game (at least from what I remember), but aside from that, it is about what you would come to expect from this series at this point, and not in a good way.

The story is almost the same as most games of the time, if you replace the “girl” with “father” instead, the graphics are an improvement over all of the other games in the series, but that is to be expected when moving up to the Genesis, the music is… definitely music, the control is good enough, even if the startup movement speed is a little wonky, and the gameplay sticks to what was established in the first Alex Kidd game, for better or worse.

Like the original game, it is a 2D platformer, where you move through various levels, defeating enemies, gathering money and helpful items along the way, using vehicles in several instances to proceed forward, and taking on “bosses” along the way. All of it is executed very similarly to that of the original game, and as such, not too many elements are introduced to change up this formula, aside from maybe some new items that give you new different abilities, but that isn’t really much to talk about. Really, it all boils down to whether or not this game improves upon what the first game established, and from what I have experienced, I can say with confidence that it definitely does that… again, for better or worse.

First off, upon starting the game, you have plenty of options to change difficulty, test out some of the game’s gimmicks and so on, which is always appreciated for an older game like this. Secondly, the levels themselves, and what you do in them, are pretty much unchanged, but it does feel better to play more so then the original game, even if the level design and enemies themselves still feel pretty uninspired. You still get to enter plenty of shops and get plenty of items with the money that you acquire, which can help out a lot, but in order to get them you have to play… more rock-paper-scissors. Yes, this also makes a return from the original game, and believe it or not, it is somehow worse here. These matches are everywhere, in terms of when you enter shops (which are optional, but still), and at the end of a good chunk of levels, which wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t replace possibilities of actual boss fights. There is only one true boss fight in the game, that being the final one, and all he does is just throw flying fists at you, which are insanely easy to dodge, so there is no real presence of challenge when it comes to them. Again, I’m not saying rock-paper-scissors is bad, or that playing it in this game is bad, but when they take up most of the formidable foes, it gets annoying.

With that being said, there were some parts of the game that were improved on. There are no weird-ass puzzles that you have to solve in order to progress, no pointless stages that last about a couple seconds just to give you a piece of info that you don’t care about, and where the original game had a ton of those annoying dungeon levels that were filled with traps to fuck you over, this game only has one of those, that being the final level, which I can excuse considering how appropriate it is. It makes things feel more consistent in terms of content, while also not just completely abandoning elements that were present in the original (even if I would have preferred if they were removed).

That being said, this all still comes off as being incredibly bland. It may just be based on my tastes, and I am aware there wasn’t too many other options in 1989, but after going through four games in this series, almost all of them drastically different from one another, I still can’t find any reason to like Alex Kidd as a series, or even as a mascot. The games aren’t all that bad (aside from, you know, High Tech World), but they leave so little of an impact and add nothing unique to the genre aside from the rock-paper-scissors matches, that you wonder how Sega went for so long trying to use him as their icon, or even why they gave him so many games. Oh well, at least so far, I haven’t hated my time with them, with this game definitely being the best of the bunch, but still… it just isn’t grabbing me like I bet they were intending.

Overall, while being an improvement over the original game, as well as being the best in the series so far, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle still comes off as being yet another mediocre title in this mediocre series, which does seem like its trying to improve on itself to make for a more entertaining and quality experience, but it still manages to fall flat on its face. But hey, at least we have 1 and a half games left, as well as a remake way later down the line, so they must have gotten it right at some point…. please, for the love of god, get it right.

Game #215