Alex Kidd: High-Tech World

The Good
The graphics are good. The game mechanics & controls are good. The game is not programmed sloppily. The controls are natural with normal Alex Kidd slipperiness & the collision detection is spot on.

The Bad
The adventure portion is quite difficult & cryptic. You have to collect several pieces of paper which is time consuming. This game suckers you into some cheap deaths to where you have to start all over again even if you're only missing the last piece. 1 cheap death is that you try on some armor & then get a game over because Alex can't move. In one room you have to name all of the girls in it & I could only find 3 hints for this, one of which is a repeat. You have to take a test from your tutor that I lucked through. If you fail either of these game over, start over!

There are tons of things in the game that go nowhere. Pointless rooms, pointless characters, pointless items. I could find nothing online suggesting that there is a point to any of it. This is probably because this Alex Kidd game was adapted from another game for the US so instead of making it meaningful Alex just walks into places & basically says to people, "I don't need anything from you." I guess that is realistic because not every person you know is going to be helpful to you on a given day but come on!

There are only two action stages, they are well done but extremely hard. You have 1 hit death & 1 life so you have to put in a password every time you die. The password is only good to start at the beginning of the first action stage. If you die in the second one you have to start back at the first. In the middle there is a town & almost everything you can buy is pointless. The one thing you buy that isn't pointless only gives you more money that you don't need. You could die a lot in the action stages trying to get this money.

This game has to be either a lazy translation or a cruel joke. Now this is where this game goes towards worst game of all time territory. In order to get to the 2nd action stage & to the ending you have to get a pass for a guard to allow you through. How do you get this? You go into the temple, that triggers a dialog box of Alex praying. You walk onto the same spot & it triggers the same box with the same text of Alex praying. You have to step on that spot a HUNDRED times in a row & close that dialog box a HUNDRED times in a row & a "god" will give you the pass for your persistent prayers. How would anyone know to do this back then!? While this game controls well to where it may not be the worst ever, this moment has got to be one of the worst things in gaming history. Regardless of if this had anything to do with religion the idea that you should have to repeat an identical dialog box ONE HUNDRED times to complete the game is despicable.

The Bottom Line
The first half is all a point & click style adventure game without the point & click. The entire game is timed. When you complete this portion you get a password keeping track of what time it is. There are only 2 platforming action stages in the game which are very difficult. If you want to play every bit of Alex Kidd there is to play & you are super awesome at not dying in 80s games those stages are worth it. This is most likely the worst game Sega has ever made & certainly is the most pointless & cruel.

Here is what makes this game bad from least to greatest. Pointless rooms & characters, useless items, intense & cryptic difficulty, cheap deaths & cheap tricks, 1 place to continue from in the game, useless money that you'll think is useful at first & die for, a short disappointing ending, repeating a dialog box 100 times to get a necessary item. It is all so pointless but you won't know it until you've worked really hard!