Radaxian Hero -
contest Janken's great players
and chop off their heads?
Additional Comments:
Before I talk about Miracle World, I suppose I should emphasize an initial guideline I personally hoped to abide by when I first started Beat All Games. Although I planned on picking games rather haphazardly - to a degree - I still planned on playing through individual series in sequential order. And, albeit, I've managed to do so for the most part, it can also be argued that I haven't. Obviously, with the Alex Kidd series I totally botched it since I started with the fourth title in the series. As far as other games - let's take the Mario series for example - this can be greatly argued, especially since I've already played SMRPG but have only played SMB as a predecessor - which I did after the fact - without even having played Mario Bros. or even Donkey Kong for that matter if you really want to get technical. Well, I'm looking at it from a series standpoint, not a franchise standpoint. SMB and SMRPG are not even remotely related when it comes down to the nitty-gritty - one's a side-scrolling platformer and one's an overhead RPG. To add, I've been itching to play Super Mario 64, but once again it can be questioned where it fits into the series. In my opinion, it doesn't, instead being the first game in a new series of Mario games: the first person platformers. But really, the main reason I haven't brought myself to play the game is because I really hate that game, but that's besides the point. Anyways, I've gotten way off topic and I probably should have made a separate post regarding my above thoughts. Oh well....
The point is, I went from a 16-bit Alex Kidd game to an 8-bit. Because of this, I developed a false sense of displeasure from this game, frustrated over the lack of abilities that I was originally presented with when I was first introduced to this series. Having played these two titles in the order that I have, Miracle World comes across as the unfortunate byproduct of shoving a game that was developed on a superior system into a crippling set of parameters of an inferior system - think Arcade to NES ports or NES to GameBoy ports, and you get the picture. It's not to say they're bad, but it can be tough to enjoy such titles for what they are. Of course, this isn't the reality of Miracle World, so it sucks that that's how it came across. If I had played the games in their correct sequential order, I probably would have viewed Miracle World as a clever little platformer utilizing some very interesting features on which Enchanted Castle was later built, re-visualizing these elements into their eventual 16-bit glory. And I probably would have had a lot more respect for Enchanted Castle as well when I first played it. But so it goes.
But all of that is nothing more than an occluded illusion of a bad game. Honestly, Miracle World is not a bad game. It really is quite innovative for its time especially with the use of the Sukopako Motorcycle and Peticopter. It amazed me that nearly everything present in Enchanted Castle was present here. However, there is one important element that Miracle World did right that for some unknown reason Enchanted Castle chose to ignore: cutscene text explaining what was going on. Now, I can be rather wishy-washy when it comes to storyline in platformers, but there are times when it serves its purpose and times when it's completely unnecessary, but typically, a single window of text between stages or through the use of an NPC that is basic and straight to the point works and is all you need. Miracle World did not go overboard with text, so the game never felt bogged down (although the text windows themselves run awfully slow), yet there was just enough to explain what the game was on about. The Janken battle text however, let's just say that after the first battle, it was needless.
And on the topic of Janken - ugh! But you know what? Now that I've played this game, the whole paper-rock-scissors thing finally makes sense. Without having prior game knowledge, it felt cheap and tacked on in Enchanted Castle. I mean, it still feels senseless and arbitrary, but at least I understand how this came to replace the boss battles - with bosses like Paper Head, Stone Head, Scissors Head and Janken himself, what do you expect?
I do have two major complaints though: the controls and the physics. First off, I can't stand games that reverse the jump and attack buttons. Granted, the game came out in '86, so the idea of standardized controls is pretty much moot, it's still subject to my ire. I fell victim to death far too often because of the controls. But then again, the lousy control configuration wasn't the only thing that brought on easily avoidable deaths. The physics are just as much to blame. Oh my god, and I thought after going back and replaying Super Mario Bros. after all these years that that game had some pretty shitty physics. The jump in this game is just all over the place. It feels like once I commit to a jump, the best I can do is close my eyes and hope for the best. With the combination of an atrocious jump and a backass controller setup, I found myself replaying the first stage an unprecedented amount of times - watching that stupid monkey-boy's spirit float off into the sky far too often. Now, I'm not the greatest of gamers by far, but I'm not some piss-ant novice either, but I felt that the amount of time I had to put into the first stage alone was completely unwarranted.
And I'm not complaining about loose jumping, I'm complaining about uncontrollable jumping. It's hard to accurately judge just how far Alex will jump. Most platformers, it's fairly easy to ascertain how much distance a jump will grant you. But with Miracle World, I was still struggling with managing jump distances by the last stage. But, you know, maybe it's just me. Perhaps if I sunk more time into this game as opposed to trying to crank out a victory run, I'd learn to fully grasp Alex's moveset, but frankly, with what I've experienced - no thanks.
Physics and controller setup aside, it's still an interestingly creative little platformer. Not the best by today's standards, but for its time, definitely worth noting and ranks up there with the best of its day. And finally, what's Miracle World without the fantastic Underwater theme? That's some pure win right there....
Nano-Win ??:
From what I've read, I'm under the impression that Sega swapped the Jump and Attack buttons at some point later on, possibly when they installed the game into the Master System itself for Rev. 2? Not sure. Anyways, I'm glad they saw the folly of their ways as well (just sucks that I played it with the original configuration).
Rating: 3 Suisui Boats out of 5
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