Welcome to my very own ROM hack of Alex Kidd In Miracle World!

This was a hack I made originally in July 2021 and it was made completely unintentional as I was stuck in a Covid-19 lockdown and one thing led to another and that thing led me into Calindro’s AK editor. For nearly 3 years this old version was floating around the net when in May 2024 a dear friend of mine (J.RussellRetroGaming) expressed an interest in it and wanted to clean up the ROM and fix the various small bugs in it. I gave him permission to do so and it ended up being a much, tidier version of the game with some small cosmetic changes.

What’s in this Alex Kidd ROM hack:

1. You start with the default 3 lives

2. Inflation has hit Miracle World so shop items cost more and continues are automatic but will now cost you $1000 on account of there being a lot of money in the game and plenty of chances to collect it.

3. Colours have all been changed in every level except in three, (Radaxian Castle, Kingdom Of Nibana and Cragg Lake). 

4. Music is completely different with plenty of groovy tunes to hear, Lemmings served as a big influence on me for this game, it’s a mix of the standard Japanese beatboxing stuff vs the Matt Furniss C64 pulse wave stuff.

5. There are now 8 Janken matches to dance your way through instead of the usual 7, i’ve placed a third encounter from Gooseka in one of the levels unexpectedly just to piss people off.

6. Playing this with a Mega Drive controller will allow you to pause the game by using the start button.

7. Button layouts are swapped so the game’s controls will behave just like the 1990 Master System II built in version.

V1.3 Final BUG FIXES: (Thanks to Josh Russell)

1. Accidental transparent walls are now removed and replaced by solid ones stopping the player from respawning after death in areas like getting trapped in a wall.

2. All overscan border palettes match their stage colour palettes.

3. Title screen has been cleaned up by Josh.

4. Checksum fixed by Josh.

My Edits For V1.3 Final:

1. Stage 1 Mt. Eternal just before diving into the ocean had a dangerous section that caused a respawn in one of the cliff ponds with no escape after touching a flying monster bird. This section has now been changed with the removal of the two ghost blocks and the flying monster bird so death shouldn’t appear there so no chance of getting trapped in the pond. Even though there is a ladder there, I recommend not going for a swim in it. 

2. A last minute edit in Stage 10 ”The Janken’s Castle” I had a room with spikes on the floor to the left and to the right leaving the centre the only place to stand from falling from the ceiling. This proved to be a dangerous dick move as if the player hit either the left or the right floor spikes from a fall, a respawn after death from the ceiling would cause a loop of landing on the spikes until all your lives were lost all because the player hasn’t enough time to move out of the way of the spikes from a fall.  

3. Lastly, the scrolling text in the ending credits gives Josh more credit for all of his work as deserved. 

FINAL WORD:

I’m very happy with the way this hack turned out! This ROM hack took me 4 weeks to finish and I worked on it a little everyday while I was stuck in a severe Covid-19 lockdown and my wife was pregnant with my son at the time also.

The reason not all levels are extended with extra layouts is simply because of ROM size. During development, the editor kept prompting me to increase the ROM size first from 128K to 256K and then to 512K and once it asked me to increase it to 1 Megabyte I declined to and as a result of keeping the ROM within the 512K limit for 8-bit Master System ROMS, half the levels are left untouched and some music tracks had to be repeated on other levels of the game as putting a different music track on every single stage would exceed the 512K limit.

Stage 1: Mt Eternal is the longest level in the game and after this, the levels gradually get shorter until you reach the latter half of the game where the really long level layouts make a return to test your platforming skills.

Lastly: This one’s my baby! The only hack in my library fully made by myself and it came about by accident and not intentional. Every other hack on this website uploaded by me either has me in only a supporting role or added as a small contribution or nothing at all. This is a decent ROM hack and one of the better ones on offer out there so please enjoy it.

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