Sometimes to do a nintendo tape review you have to go forward in order to go backward in order to go forward again. So today I will talk about a game I played for a few minutes in the 80s at my friends house but didn’t get a chance to really “dig into” until 1990.
Rock, Paper, And Scissors has been played for many thousands of years since cavemen invented it. But the only way they knew how to play was to use real rocks for the Rock part, and each others heads for the Paper and Scissors parts. The game is still violent today, but for a small moment in time in the early 1990s I got to see what a world without violence attached to Rock, Papers, and Scissor would be like.
Read on to see why Alex Kidd is Very Special indeed…
In 1989 the Power Base Converter was released on Sega Genesis. You see, the Genesis was designed to be backward compatible with The Master System tapes but the tapes were different sizes. So sega released the Base Converter to plug into your Genesis so you could fit your master system tapes in there. When I traded my little black and white TV to Byron for his P.B.C. in 1990, I really got to sink my teeth into those tapes I had missed out on. (his parents made us trade back eventually saying i ripped him off but he is the one who asked ME. A raw deal in red heat indeed)
My favorites were Rocky, Double Dragon, and the game known as “Alex Kidd in The Miracle World.” and let me tell you, that name was not an accident. It is truly a miracle world. You see, the bosses in that game are fought with “rock paper and scissors” and you do not have to attack them at all!! They say something like “I am scissor head lets play” then you dance with them for a second before choosing what hand sign to use against them and if you use a stronger one you win. If you win two out of three the boss disappears into a friendly cloud, no fighting or hurt feelings at all. But if you lose you are put to death, though, which to a kid of my self esteem levels actually seemed pretty fair.
Also you could save up your money and buy a motorcycle which was awesome and you could go so fast but you would only own it for a few seconds because touching things wrong meant it disappeared so I would buy the motorcycle and feel extremely happy then lose it a few seconds later and feel the exact opposite emotion. It was the video game version of pretty much everything I tried to do in those days so it was fine.
The next year Ellis and me were walking to his house which was half a block from mine. We were going on an AWANA church day trip to a kind of local cave system that is famous in our town but when I say “system” i really mean “one cave that is just kind of a big awning made out of rock”. Like you couldnt “delve” into it just kind of walk about twenty feet back and still see the outside perfectly because the opening is so huge. So we were going to go on that trip because it was free and we were probably only going to have to pray at the beginning and when it was time to eat lunch. (I was right). They told us to wear shorts because we would also be playing softball in the field while we were there. I chose to wear those thin and satiny Umbro soccer shorts that were popular back then. They were loose fitting around the leg, I guess so you could run faster which was of interest to me. I always looked for the performance enhancers of the day like pump up shoe or thin shorts because I thought I would be more accepted. I felt really cool in them because popular kids wore them. In the end the shorts were a curse too. Just like the cool kids were.
While we were walking, Ellis said “I have an idea” and heres’ the thing about when Ellis says “I have an idea”: the idea is going to suck for you and be awesome for him. He could roll around in dog crap and come out smelling like a million bucks with a big grin on his face and everyone thinking he was cool as hell and I would somehow have the crap smeared on me even though I stood way back and said “this isn’t a good idea”
Well his idea was to take pepsi to drink on the bus with us except we would open the cans in his house and drink some first so he could pour some vodka in it from his dads’ liquor cabnet. I was never drunk before in my life and I was only 14 so I said no.
Later, on the bus after we drank our vodka pepsi’s, I was drunk and struggling to act normal even though my vision was swimming and my head felt cloudy. I think I did OK because no one seemed to notice and even now in my 40s’ my friends say “I can never tell when you’re drunk” and I bet that is because the first time I ever used alcohol I had to act perfect. If Pastor Roy found out he would make me pray in front of people by myself. There is nothing worse than people watching you pretend to pray, except maybe them saying “Hey, you’re only pretending to pray!” Like they could somehow tell. They never could, but it always worried me anyway.
The only thing anyone said was Pastor Roy who said “It smells like someone has been drinking on this bus” and now thinking back I bet he didn’t investigate further because he wanted to just ignore it and get the day over with so he could get back home on his day off and not worry about if any of the kids had only pretended to pray that day.
Anyway me and Ellis sat together and his next “cool idea” to pass the time was to play Rock Paper Scisscors. I said ok thats fine. But there was an “Ellis Twist” to this game of course (the ellis twist was a special seasoning he would sprinkle on normal things in order to make them worse for you and more fun for him)
So we played Rock Paper Scissor except the winner got to lick his first and second fingers, then curl the other fingers and thumb down kind of like a peace sign but with the fingers closed, then grab your wrist with the other hand and slam those wet fingers down across your fore arm.
Then you played again. And again. And again. Sometimes I would win, and my hits were always weak because I hate to hit but by this time all the other kids in the back of the bus were watching us and having fun except for a girl named Crystal who just looked kind of sad. She was new to AWANA and I didn’t know her real well yet but she was nice to me. By the time Pastor Roy got wind of it and came back and told us to knock it off my arm was in pretty bad pain and was red all over and starting to bruise in the middle of my forearm. Ellis was fine and grinning of course.
We got to the cave and got off the bus and prayed, then we were given the chance to explore on our own with a partner because there were some easy hiking trails and a water fall so it was like a little adventure. I was a big Indiana Jones kid so that was neat to me. I figured I would pair up with Ellis but he went with this girl he liked and I just kind of stood there looking around until Crystal, the sad looking girl from the bus came over to me and asked if I wanted to go on a hike with her.
This was the first time a girl ever paid any (good kind) of attention to me since my girlfriend Beth in third grade so I immediately said yes. So we started walking up the trail that led up behind the waterfall. I was still tipsy from the vodka pepsi at this point and we started talking.
She said “why did you let that guy hit you so much” and I said I don’t know, he just always has these ideas to do things and since he’s my friend I go along it. I told her it isn’t a big deal it’s fine and it doesn’t even hurt anymore. (Lie) She said well, if he is your friend he wouldn’t do stuff like that.
Then we got to the top of the waterfall which was more like a big creek and not really a river. A little part of the path branched off and and went to this little outcropping of rock way above the pool of water at the bottom of the water fall. The path was wet and very steep, and there was nothing to stop you from falling off the outcropping if you were to slide on the mud. She said do you want to try going down there? I thought it would be cool to do that since she didn’t seem afraid of the idea and even though I was I could pretend I wasn’t and maybe she would think i was cool, too.
I told her I will go first, so I went down it real careful, holding on to these big thick roots that stuck up at the edges of the path until i made it down to the outcropping. Everyone at the bottom by the pool immediately saw me and Pastor Roy started yelling “Get off of there and back onto the path right now!” so I turned around and the mud was so slick going back up I slipped on it and slid back down to the outcropping and almost fell off of it and the 40 feet or so down to the pool. When I got up everyone started yelling “TAKE HER HAND!” at me and I turned around and saw Crystal was holding on to a skinny tree and leaning down the little path about halfway with her hand out. I took her hand and she pulled me back up. She asked if I was ok and I said yes. We didn’t talk anymore on that trip and we didn’t talk anymore at AWANA meetings.
Anyway after lunch we played softball and I was on third base because I had actually managed to hit the ball earlier and had to run around bases which was the first time I ever got to do that.
So when the next kid up to bat also hit it I had to run towards home and as I got closer they yelled SLIDE! at me so I slid but you are not suppose to slide in those thin satin umbro shorts because there is no weight to them and there is nothing to stop them from going all the way up your butt crack along with your regular white underwear so that everyone saw half of your bare butt and laughed for what seemed like an hour but was probably only thirty seconds and then multiple times during the rest of the day. There was nothing to do but pick my underwear and shorts from my butt while they watched and laughed.
Anyway they threw the ball in time and I was out. On the ride home Ellis wanted to play Rock Paper Scissors again and Pastor Roy either didn’t notice or didnt care this time. While we played I thought about how in Miracle World this wouldn’t happen. I never went on an AWANA trip again.
So this is why I give Alex Kidd in The Mericle World a 2/10
