Alex Kidd BMX Trial

Genre: Racing Developer: Sega Ent. Publisher: Sega Ent. Players: 1 Released: 1987

Alex Kidd had a five-year run as Sega’s mascot, an honor he shared with Fantasy Zone‘s Opa-Opa before both would be ousted by Sonic the Hedgehog. If he weren’t shoehorned into Shinobi Kid, I’d dare say that Alex Kidd wouldn’t have a single truly good game to his name. Between the slippery control, janken matches, and subpar level design; it’s a wonder why Sega thought him fitting of its empire in the first place. He’s taken me on too many middling escapades, and while I don’t consider myself a hater, I am not a fan. Yet, here I am, giant Alex Kidd BMX Trial box in hand, and just see money which would have been far better spent on literally any other Alex Kidd game – yes, even High Tech World – if I were so determined to throw cash at the Alex Kidd franchise for some reason.

I have Alex Kidd BMX Trial because with only four Master System paddle games released, I figured it would be fun to collect them all. BMX Trial is one of two game and paddle controller bundles, the other being Woody Pop: Shinjinrui no Block Kuzugi. The box for BMX Trial is nearly twice the size of Woody Pop’s, as Alex Kidd shipped on a one megabit cartridge while the former got the lowly Sega My Card treatment. If you wanted a paddle controller, you would have to pick one in a kind of Sophie’s choice with your wallet. Neither game is what I’d call a good game, but at least Woody Pop in more in line with what you’d want to play with your new packed-in paddle controller.

Woody Pop would also last you a lot longer. Alex Kidd BMX Trial can be completed in well under two minutes. Of course, that won’t happen right away (unless you cheat and look up the best route), as initially, it’s just a struggle to survive the race. The goal is to reach the Radaxian Castle, and Alex can ride his bike through five different levels: Blackwood Forest, Cactus Desert, South Seas, Pyramid River, and Radaxian. Along the way, he’ll encounter exits to the next stage, and with a bit of luck, he can navigate his way to Radaxian before he loses all of his energy. Crashing into a obstacle, falling into water, bumping over a rock, or having any of the infinite riders slap you upside the head will hurt Alex. He can run over small objects (still taking damage), but anything else will knock him off his bike. Alex will rub his head for a moment then gets back on, so long as he has enough energy left to continue riding. It would be a cute detail were it not for the fact that Alex’s vitality meter also depletes from the passage of time, losing one of his ten hit points every eight seconds.

This would lead matheletes out there to think the game only lasts 80 seconds at most, and that would be correct were Alex not able to pop a wheelie on specially labeled “WHEELIE” strips, which will produce a random item at some point ahead. Onigiri, the Japanese rice balls iconic to the franchise, will restore five points while a cap (a hat – why?) will restore two bars. Alex can also get a game over from taking more than 24 in-game hours to reach his castle, and while that’s not likely to happen, he can find clock items that will roll the timer back a couple of hours (re: two minutes). The best item by far is the sky jet, which will turn his BMX bike into a rocket cycle which will send him above the ground and let him bypass everything below. Unfortunately, the level design is poor, and it’s not uncommon to have items appear just beyond a JUMP ramp, right behind an exit, or heading toward water which needs to be avoided. You have to both trigger the WHEELIE pad and make sure the path ahead, which you cannot see will allow you to grab whichever item which spawns.

The two water based levels do not have WHEELIE pads, so when Alex is traveling through the South Seas or Pyramid River, he needs to have enough vitality going in to make it to the exit or else. Haphazard level design feels like the hallmark of most Alex Kidd games, and BMX Trial puts on an absolute clinic with its arbitrary exits and scattered JUMP pads, some which will dunk you in the water before you had a chance to see ahead. Being a vertically-scrolling racer on a horizontal screen doesn’t help, either. The game is heavy on trial-and-error and memorization to get you through, with each stage containing multiple exits to any number of tracks. The first stage, Blackwood Forest, has exits to Cactus Desert, South Seas, and Pyramid River within, and the only way to know which lookalike exit goes where is to by accessing them and seeing for yourself. I still can’t get over how the first (and not the only) exit on the South Seas course will take you back to the South Seas, wasting precious seconds and energy just to make that loop.

The other riders are relentless and many will pummel poor Alex whenever given the chance. This is particularly a nuisance at the start of the race since Alex needs to build up speed for a couple of seconds while the CPU riders just zoom out from behind without warning. Does Alex just have to sit there and take it? Technically no, but in practice, yes. Alex can knock out opponents while riding along a WHEELIE pad, which is much too brief, and he can brake and swerve his bike into an enemy ahead of him. This is novel if useless mechanic requiring the player to release the button to engage the brake and quickly swivel the paddle to the side to make Alex skid into the rider; however, with the vitality meter being as fragile as it is coupled with the risk in still getting injured by the contact with the enemy, you’re just better off avoiding the rider entirely. Alex moves much faster than the other riders, and as the game is not a winner-take-all race to the finish, he has nothing to gain by slowing down to dispatch one of an infinite amount of pests in his way. The game appears to be built around this skidding concept – Alex showcases the maneuver on the title screen and during each level intermission – but the danger and delay it incurs makes it something you’ll never want to try when aiming to complete the race.

For a one-megabit cartridge, Alex Kidd BMX Trial looks OK albeit rather janky. The water in Pyramid River has a crude flowing animation, but there’s no flowing physics applied when riding through the water, and the river is mysteriously still in between the larger pyramids which gives the level an incomplete feel. Meanwhile, the South Seas is dead quiet with no water animation, which is surprising given the number of whirlpools which litter that course. The sand in Cactus Desert also has no impact on Alex’s riding speed, and it’s a careless yellow blanket with a scattering of teepees, cacti, and bits of fencing. There are some wide rivers running through the desert, and the player will need to guide Alex to a narrow bridge or hit the correct JUMP pads to clear them while searching for the scene exit. The best level by far is the opener, as Blackwood Forest has speckled roadways flanked by attractive looking grass, flowers, and trees. The four paths sometimes intersect, and you’ll have to jump over three rivers before you have access to your first scene exit. By contrast, Radaxian is by far the ugliest course, full of endless drab gray highway roads broken up by dithered green grass and hideous-looking water. It makes you wonder why Alex ever wanted to go home.

Radaxian makes me think Sega just had a small budget to get BMX Trial out for the paddle controller’s bundle and called it a day midway through development due to time or budget constraints. The only thing special about Radaxian is that it’s the only level with its own theme – the water stages share a song as do the two land courses. The cartridge also surprisingly supports the FM Sound Unit, and while none of the songs are particularly memorable, they at least do generally sound better thanks to the FM add-on. The only song I prefer in PSG is the Radaxian theme since the accompanying lead melody is much too muted in the FM version. In either case, you’re only hearing these songs for maybe a minute a best before switching to a new course and background music, so you’ll get little chance to enjoy or tire of them during play.

Alex Kidd BMX Trial is simply too brief of a game to recommend. Initial impressions are awful, and the game is a mess in a lot of ways, but ultimately I’m just disappointed by the cartridge. I walk away thinking this could have been a real gem and a great example of what kinds of unique gameplay experiences a paddle controller can offer. Alex controls great with lots of degrees of movements, and the swerving concept is legitimately interesting. It just needs to be in a better game than what Sega chose to bundle with the paddle controller. Alex Kidd BMX Trial could have been a fun precursor to the likes of Road Rash. Instead, it falls short of the bar, which for Alex Kidd is already pretty low.