Alex Kidd/YMMV


 * Americans Hate Tingle: While Enchanted Castle did reasonably (although not outstandingly) well in Japan, it bombed in the West and was completely overshadowed by Altered Beast and Moonwalker, which helped set Sega on the path to focusing on an older audience.
 * Anticlimax Boss:
 * Janken the Great, the Big Bad of the first game, attacks by standing perfectly still and spitting easily avoidable fireballs at you. If you stand right next to Janken, then it's actually impossible for him to hit you at all.
 * Ashra, the final boss of Enchanted Castle, is even easier than Janken was. Not only does he use the same "stand still and launch easily avoidable projectiles" attack pattern, but Alex can even block his projectiles by punching them.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome:
 * The main level music of Miracle World is memorable for anyone who ever owned a Master System. There is also a full-rock version of this song by Sega's in-house band, SEGAROCKS.
 * Although the music in Enchanted Castle is generally agreed to be severely lacking next to that of Miracle World, the music for the final stage has quite a few fans.
 * Shinobi World features not only some awesome remixes of the music from the original Shinobi, but some very cool original music as well.
 * First Installment Wins:
 * Some fans argue that Shinobi World is the actual best game in the series, but Miracle World is still by far the most well-known, and still generally regarded as being better than nearly all the following games.
 * If one does not include Dolled-Up Installments (of which Shinobi World is one), then it is the best in the series.
 * It's Short, So It Sucks:
 * One of the main criticisms of Enchanted Castle, which has barely half the stages that Miracle World had. Moreover, the stages in the former aren't really any longer than those of the latter.
 * Inverted with Shinobi World. It is very well regarded despite being on the short side.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Having to play Jan-Ken-Pon every single time you want to buy an item in Enchanted Castle, instead of just being able to walk into a shop and hand over the requisite amount of money... which you still have to do in Enchanted Castle, and will lose if you don't win the single round of Jan-Ken-Pon that follows.
 * Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Shinobi World is pretty universally agreed to be a better game than Enchanted Castle or Hi-Tech World, and some even consider it to be the best game in the entire series.
 * That One Boss: The second battle with Scissors Head in Miracle World is probably the hardest boss battle in the game, as you not only have to deal with his detached head flying around at high speeds, his body shoots projectiles at you while that's happening, something that neither Stone Head nor Paper Head does in their rematches.
 * What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Most of the games are pretty weird in one way or another, but The Lost Stars contains so much bizarre imagery — including backgrounds that are sheets draped over a wall, and enemies that attack by spitting the letters that spell out their cries at you — that it almost comes across like a Yellow Submarine licensed game that had Alex shoved in at the last minute.