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.