Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle is a 16-bit direct sequel to Alex Kidd in Miracle World on Sega's 8-bit console, Master System. Alex Kidd, which is often seen as Sega's mascot between Sonic and Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone, already had a fair share of spin-offs, so this one is his first and only true sequel. Yep, still a platformer, still has janken boss battles. This one was developed exclusively for Sega Mega Drive by Sega of Japan and had only 2 Megabit of cartridge. It came to US in 1989 being one of the launch titles for a system.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "ALEXKIDD_U.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "AK_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
In this game our hero Alex Kidd, who looks a lot like a monkey with those ears, has to deal with the remaining cliffhanger from original game: Finding his missing father, Thor. The news that Alex heard is that he was held as prisoner by Ashra, mean ruler of Paperock kingdom, who looks like a Kintaro wanna-be from Mortal Kombat.
So Alex, being a cool monkey, goes solo to save him, into kingdom where even shops require janken matches, all over the 11 levels, until he arrives to Sky Castle which is the last, 11th level. Which, by the way, is much bigger and more interesting layout-wise than previous levels combined, which makes previous ones feel lacking.
It does have one heck of an ending though. It's quite, well, interesting. I liked it.
This also has options menu to check out. There is usual sound test. You can practise janken battles, but you don't get token to see what opponent is choosing in mind at the moment so it's not cool. You can also reverse controls, as in change jump and punch actions around, not that you need it at all on emulation. There is also a lame difficulty, which only changes your starting lives amount. Manuals say that they also how "mean" enemies are, but I noticed no difference. Actually, lives info got into Space Harrier 2 original manual too, which was released at same time into US, translators were probably rushing at that time to check on things. Nope, difficulty didn't work this way in SH2.
Most importantly, however, is a Continue selection in option menu. I really don't know why they shoved it here instead of making it a choice on game over screen. Because after you get a game over you can just go into options and choose to continue. It will cost you of 1000 Baums, in-game currency. No worries, no micro-transactions, it's an old game. It puts you back into same stage, even same checkpoint. And the in-game currency is so common that at least on Normal difficulty you should be get enough of coins to continue every single time. Which even outs a high difficulty, which is likely due to slippery controls.
And yep, it's not a very good platformer at it's core. The controls are just way too slippery in this one. Jump height depends on walk speed. Though, you can get used to them. To attack enemies you can either punch or jump kick. Punch requires you to be quite close to enemy, getting dangerously personal. Jump kick works by releasing the jump button, so it's kinda strange. While you do it the Kidd will be having his kick pointing forward, so most of people who start playing this game assume that it's as sucky as punch. But actually jumping kick is quite forgiving attack, as it actually hits enemies below you as well, just don't hit them with your back half! But not for chest and blocks, they get destroyed only the moment when you release jump button.
But from good side, this platformer has inventory system, where you can equip or unequip powerups that you collected. You got fireball-enabling bracelet which is a must in this game, tokens that allow you to see what opponent is thinking during janken match. Even got vehicle type of items. Like pogo-stick which is just plain fun. Or helicopter, though sadly takes so much button-mashing effort to keep it in air that it might be an excuse to sell turbo controllers. And bike, althrough this one has rarely any places to use effectively. Like, maybe one level. And then when you die you lose only items that you had equiped, so you want to unequip them when you think that you are entering situation where you are very likely to die. This gives some interesting depth to the game.
Plus, exploring is pretty fun, getting all those chests, once you finally get controls down. Plus it has interesting feature where destructable blocks actually fly away, killing everything in their way, when punched. I still think that they could design layout of levels to make more of use of it. But what is there is already cool.
But while you may become used with platforming part and start to have fun, there is another part remaining: Janken-po! It's a rock, scrissor, paper game and it's used for both shops and boss battles! Yep, luck based game for boss battles. At least you don't die when you do it in shops. Seriously, they could at least left it out of shops, just let us buy the thing.
But then again, they say that patterns of boss ones don't change from the point that game is started up. But then, it's still stupid, being pure memorization excuse. Almost! You can also use a token which allows to see what enemies think so it's more of a game of you having to be ready to select the correct hand pose until the last moment when countdown stops, reacting to boss's thoughts. And since tokens are common enough, it evens it out. Also, the in-game currency is so common, getting item often still feels cheap even when you lose few times before winning. Yep, janken matches is still awful defining feature for a mascot, but at least you can make it non-issue.
The balance is still kinda screwy.
Also, yea, the game does look kinda pretty simple. Most would say that graphics are bad, and that's quite true from technical side. That's because the game was being made while Sega's 16-bit machine hardware was still in development, so no one knew how much it can handle. Plus, only 2 Megabit ROM. Cue almost no parallax, one-color blue sky background, simple animation, making it look more like game for some sort of Sega Mark 4 / Master System+. But I still like the cute art style, it's simple and nice. You get variety of environments, each with it's own catchy music.
Overall, it's quite sucky game at first, but you can get over issues and enjoy it, none the less. I liked it after beating it. Still, it barely crawls over from "No" to "Yes" recomendation and even then I am in doubt.
Edit: Decided to change to negative. This game has too much going against it, now that I've reread it.
