I still remember it so vividly: the day my mum took me to the store to pick up the Sega Master System II, my first ever console and a moment that inevitably influenced my gaming life for good, culminating in me. The console’s box design and game covers checkered in predominant white with black stripes and adorned with Times New Roman font. We sure have come a long way since then, but in the early 90s when Hypercolour t-shirts constituted taste, it was magic.

All my friends had NES’s – all of them – but there was something about Sega that struck me. Maybe it was the futuristic logo which has never aged, even now, or maybe it was the appeal of supporting the underdog. Perhaps it was even the built-in game, Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Regardless of what it was, there was certainly something special about it and I simply couldn’t wait to rush home to unbox it along with my first ever non-built-in game that accompanied it, Enduro Racer.

Glorious it was, curvaceously compact with a shiny charcoal finish and smelling like fresh plastic. Cables were connected and old CRT TV channels were manually configured, on it went and there it was, the most unforgettable theme song in my entire life. Enduro Racer and all its isometric angle cruelties which I would come to learn of later could wait its turn for now.

Photo from RetroJunk

Alex Kidd in Miracle World had several pivotal aspects. The awfully harsh difficulty scale. The skill required to swim against the flow while underwater, avoiding that Octopus boss’ tentacles in order to get close enough to punch him. The punishment and fear it conditioned into young impressional minds by morbidly offering special question-mark item boxes which were possessed – at random – by ghosts that would fly straight through every on-screen obstacle and kill you with a touch. The number of times I died and replayed straight away, watching that same title screen and hearing that same jingle. The shame I still feel in never finishing it, always losing the last Scissors-Paper-Rock boss fight without even a hint of the luxury afforded us today via modern-day FAQs or, dammit, even the internet. I must have played that game over 200 times and it always ended up (and immediately restarted) in frustration and that friggin’ theme song.

Now when I look back, 20 years later, the game wasn’t that great, even by 8-bit standards. It was always going to be remembered as a mediocre Mario rip-off, just with oversized-fists and big ears and a relentless level of difficulty. As for the Master System II itself, the console’s controller’s sharp edges used to give me blisters and you could only pause by pressing the big round white button located on the actual machine. And ever since then I’ve witnessed, as we all have, the rise and fall of Sega, with memorable characters and games coming and going and often fading into obscurity, with Alex making way to Sonic as Sega’s mascot and being promptly adandoned, but that bloody music, my God!

Still catchy and no longer rubbing in the fact that it was game over yet again, the theme song to Alex Kidd in Miracle World takes me back to a wonderful time of my youth and for that it’ll always hold a special place in my memory, bringing a smile to my face whenever my brain decides to turn back the clock, overlooking the trauma caused not only by the lack of save function with those old game cartridges, but also the painful injustice of predetermined Scissors-Paper-Rock contests resulting in two fingers stuck up at you followed swiftly – and memorably – by death.