Trivia / Alex Kidd

• Ascended Fan Fic: The Miracle World DX remake started as a fan project which was later pitched to Sega.
• Dueling Works: Alex Kidd was Sega's attempt at a true mascot to compete with Super Mario Bros., but always seemed to be stuck in Nintendo's shadow. While the Alex Kidd games are decent platformers, their gameplay is considered more challenging than the more approachable Mario. It wasn't until the critical acclaim of Super Mario Bros. 3 that Sega realized their approach wasn't working, and this — combined with the Genesis finding success with a more mature audience — caused them to leave Alex Kidd behind and pursue a different approach.
• Franchise Killer: While Enchanted Castle was moderately successful in Japan, its terrible reception in the US and Europe helped kill off the series. In a bizarre twist of fate, most of the development team on Enchanted Castle would go on to create Alex Kidd's successor as Sega mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog and it would be 30 years until Alex would get another game in the form of a remake of Alex Kidd in Miracle World.
• No Export for You: BMX Trial was only released in Japan, and in an inversion, Shinobi World was not released in Japan despite being developed by Sega's Japanese branch.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Alex Kidd in Miracle World was created as a Dragon Ball game, but was redesigned as a competitor to Super Mario Bros. after Sega lost the license to the series. Though a majority of features were changed (Goku's Power Pole became Alex's punch), a few similarities to Dragon Ball remain, as pointed out in this French YouTube video.
  • The first boss in Alex Kidd in Shinobi World was essentially Mario as a samurai. He was even named "Mari-oh". His design and name was changed prior to release to avoid copyright issues.
  • Alex Kidd in Shinobi World was originally just going to be a cutesy spin-off of Shinobi called Shinobi Kid, but Alex was shoe-horned in so he could piggy-back off the popularity of Shinobi as his own license was on the out.
    • Had this plan worked, Sega had tentative plans to put Alex in games that parody other Sega franchises, with Golden Axe and Phantasy Star supposedly being at the top of the list.

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