What an odd game this one is. And not like, "wow, it's so wacky and kooky!", I mean more like "I don't know the proper way to formulate my opinion on this thing."
It almost gets there, I mean, it has variety to spare. You make your way through vertical levels, horizontal ones, plus you've got some dungeons, and neat little powerups, and decent controls, and catchy music... So what is it about this game that doesn't stack up to something like Mario 1? I can't place my finger on it.
I think part of it is that very expectation of matching up to Mario 1's quality, which Alex Kidd isn't necessarily attempting to do. It's a slower take on the platformer genre, which emphasizes collecting things a lot more. You're gonna want to stop in your tracks frequently to break open those blocks and amass the cash for the powerups required. I don't usually mind systems like this, but I feel it repeteadly breaks the flow of the game here.
There's also the more subjective matter of the level design being nowhere near as memorable as the plumber contemporary, but there's also the most obvious complaint I could throw at this game, the boss fights. It's a Rock-Paper-Scissors game, everytime. Not a test of your skill, not a test of anything you have learned throughout, it's pure luck. And I feel that makes the game come off as somewhat unconfident in its own gameplay system, like there's a setup here, but no payoff.
There's something... mindless about the whole thing. A lot of effort was put in, but so little of it truly stuck the landing. Putting it another way perhaps, Alex Kidd is a game full of ideas, but very little of them actually connect in a cohesive way. There's a reason why this franchise didn't last.
It almost gets there, I mean, it has variety to spare. You make your way through vertical levels, horizontal ones, plus you've got some dungeons, and neat little powerups, and decent controls, and catchy music... So what is it about this game that doesn't stack up to something like Mario 1? I can't place my finger on it.
I think part of it is that very expectation of matching up to Mario 1's quality, which Alex Kidd isn't necessarily attempting to do. It's a slower take on the platformer genre, which emphasizes collecting things a lot more. You're gonna want to stop in your tracks frequently to break open those blocks and amass the cash for the powerups required. I don't usually mind systems like this, but I feel it repeteadly breaks the flow of the game here.
There's also the more subjective matter of the level design being nowhere near as memorable as the plumber contemporary, but there's also the most obvious complaint I could throw at this game, the boss fights. It's a Rock-Paper-Scissors game, everytime. Not a test of your skill, not a test of anything you have learned throughout, it's pure luck. And I feel that makes the game come off as somewhat unconfident in its own gameplay system, like there's a setup here, but no payoff.
There's something... mindless about the whole thing. A lot of effort was put in, but so little of it truly stuck the landing. Putting it another way perhaps, Alex Kidd is a game full of ideas, but very little of them actually connect in a cohesive way. There's a reason why this franchise didn't last.