Way Back When's Day - Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (1989)

Alex Kidd has a few games, but I grew up with the Sega Mega Drive and the Sega Dreamcast, so I'm only familiar with his adventure to an enchanted castle in order to find his lost father Thor.

Alex's punches ARE really strong... so who knows?

Yes Thor.
No relation to this guy though...

Y'know... for a character with such an established first and last name, you think they'd at least use his dad's full name somewhere in this game, but since the entire story is explained with like... one or two pages of text, maybe they didn't have room.




The level design is very simple and reminds me of most early Genesis games of note in that the main character only has one or two actions that make up the entirety of the game-play and the challenge is slowly ramped up by careful level design, rather than introducing new mechanics. In this case, he can punch and jump. When you let go of the jump button, his leg extends in a kick which can be used as an aerial punch or, if done right, can be used to take out enemies from above by dropping your heel into them as well.

Unlike Sonic the Hedgehog, Alex Kidd really has no backup system for health and can be quite unforgiving to a new player. I think the original creators intended this to be played on an arcade system for coins, which explains the need for a quick intro and such unforgiving gameplay. It would lend itself to emptying childrens pockets of pennies rather effectively. Thankfully they went with a home console release instead, which I believe is why there is a continue game choice hidden in the options menu of the start screen. It's not infinite though. I'm guessing it was initially tied to coins.
(Wish I'd found that menu item as a child... xD)

The aesthetics are very colorful and, in traditional Japanese game style, some of the enemies are a little bit... odd. We start in a city so there are cars at ground level and... what look like birds, but with aeroplane propellers instead of a beak, flying around. Then underground there are some strange black robot looking things that hop along as well. The only thing they really share in common is they're all single hit kills for both the player and the particular enemy as well.

Typical Japanese enemy choices

Jan-Ken-GO! ... Awww, I lost :/

A strange part of the game is that, despite being quite a simple game, it has an inventory for items that you can win by gambling on the outcome of a game of Rock Paper Scissors. Most of these gambling areas can be found in the doorways of buildings, but some are caves and in the underwater level they can be found inside coral. Early in the game, there is very little incentive to actually use these gambling areas as you spend a certain amount of cash to play and you gamble the loss of a life as well if you lose.

The ring is also quite useful :3

There are two items you want to make sure you acquire a few of before you get too far into the game though. There's the necklace, which allows you to see what your enemy is thinking when deciding on which hand signal to use in Rock Paper Scissors. This is essential if you want to avoid losing lives to chance since all of the bosses just play a game of Rock Paper Scissors with you. The first boss will ask to go a second round if she loses, but you can say no, however the final boss not only continues to play three rounds without a choice, he also attacks you after the match as you would expect from a final boss. The second is the helicopter thingy. There is an aerial stage late in the game, but they only give you a single helicopter to start with. Any time you run into something or take damage, you're ejected from the helicopter, so it's a good idea to build up a few backups to pull out in an emergency before you get there, since the amount of money they cost ramps up each time you bet.

Also this guy, who appears outta nowhere :/

With a few rare exceptions, the enemies in the later stages seem to fall into two main templates. Either very simple enemies with very simple back and forth movement that seem to be designed to take advantage of your mistakes or enemies that would normally be very simple if not for a new movement mechanic. There are wind up mice that can walk along ceilings and walls, eagles that bob up and down along their flight path, turtles that stop when you get nearby and shoot up towards the surface of the water, rocks that roll down the vertical levels and a wizard that teleports behind you.

The only unique boss-like battle encounter in the game, besides the final boss

The final boss, however, stumped me for a while. I'd have no problem with the Rock paper scissors rounds as I always saved a necklace to make it easier for myself, but when that is done with, he attacks you with a more traditional boss battle. As far as I'm aware, that is the first time you're presented with a boss battle and there's next to no indication of what you are supposed to do to beat him. He throws fists at you. That's it.

Eventually, I had to look up the solution on YouTube and it turns out you're supposed to jump on the fists to freeze the boss and then go quickly punch him and retreat to safety. Even once I figured out what I had to do, the fists would randomly unfreeze if I jumped at the wrong time and the margin for error in standing too close to the boss is only a few pixels wide... I suppose boss battles are supposed to be difficult, but this just seemed like bad character/level design. I'm not even sure if it was done on purpose, or if they just found that players had difficulty beating the boss and assumed it was due to the battle difficulty instead of confusion/ambiguity.

I set out to start this game on friday last week, but even with the steam version's ability to save anywhere you want and load back up from that point, it still took me over three days to get past the entire game. It was a mixed bag of enjoyment and frustration to finish, but at least I completed it and saved my dad... right?

What? ._. Do you know what I went through to rescue you?

Nope. Turns out he was the king and just having a nice holiday here... I'm out.
All that build up and no payoff :/

Games Library Completion: 3 / 397 games

My games library spreadsheet

Let me know what you'd like me to play next! :D