Fans of the Sega Master System, rejoice! Both of you will get to relive your memories of a far simpler time when Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, a full remake of the 1986 original, comes out sometime next year on PC and “Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation consoles,” according to the reveal post on IGN. (IGN is doing its digital E3 replacement “IGN Expo” thing right now, which is why Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX was revealed there, and why the official trailer below is hosted on IGN’s YouTube channel. We live in strange times.)
IGN’s post probably uses the vague terminology seen above because by next year, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will be out, so this thing might be one of the first retro-revival titles available for the new generation. (Unless the PlayStation 5 ends up shipping with a built-in remaster of Battle Arena Toshinden or something, which would rule, so please do this.) It’s a pretty safe bet to assume that Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX will also show up on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but I can’t say for sure until they say for sure, hence this paragraph.
Based on the trailer, it really does look like they just took the original 1986 Sega Master System version of Miracle World and gave it the good ol’ Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap treatment, in that Miracle World DX is a full remake of the original, not just an up-scaled port run through some filters, with the option to switch back to the original art style at your leisure.
(It’s worth clarifying that Wonder Boy developer Lizardcube isn’t involved in this project. Miracle World DX is being developed by some company called Jankenteam that doesn’t appear to exist on the internet, and is published by Merge Games, according to IGN. Also sorry about the number of parentheticals in this post — I normally try to keep them to a minimum but apparently I’ve contracted some kind of grammar sickness.)
If you never played the original Alex Kidd in Miracle World, it’s mostly remembered as Sega’s first attempt at creating a mascot, and for being the built-in game on later models of the Sega Master System and Master System II. It’s not, however, remembered for being an especially good video game, which has a lot to do with why Alex Kidd never set the world on fire as a mascot. The platforming was clunky and the game’s boss fights were literally just rock/paper/scissors matches with different names for each of the moves, so choosing to bring this one back from the annals is perplexing.
According to IGN, Miracle World DX “adds new levels and story elements, alters boss fight systems, and adds brand new modes,” in addition to “combat, movement mechanics and menu systems” that have been “tweaked,” so it’s possible that Jankenteam has taken all the jank(… enteam) out of the original version and replaced it with something worth playing. It’s also weird to see the “DX” tag applied to a remake of a Sega game, since that was originally Nintendo’s thing during the Game Boy Color days, but there are more important things to care about right now. For instance: Why make that man’s overalls the same color as his skin, tricking me into thinking that there was a naked baker from a cartoon village in the header image of this post?
