Sega’s Alex Kidd In Miracle World Was Originally Conceived As a Dragon Ball Game

At one point, it almost looked like Sega was prepping the Master System game Alex Kidd In Miracle World to go head-to-head against Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. as its key platforming game for the system. Alas, it wasn't as well received as it was hoping to be.

But…what if we tell you that the Alex Kidd game was originally conceived as something else? Because that's apparently the case.

A couple of years back, a French YouTuber by the name of Anthogeek posted a video where he talked about comparisons between Alex Kidd and a more popular franchise at the time – the Dragon Ball series. Some visual evidence between key characters indicate that the game could've started out as a project that was set to be based on the Dragon Ball series. You can see that video above. (Note: it is in French, but you can see the images, at least.)

Of course, that fan video is just a theory, but now, thanks to NintendoLife, some more concrete evidence indicates that, yes, Miracle World was in fact originally set up to be a Dragon Ball title.

Kotaro Hayashida, who created the character, recently spoke with John Szczepaniak for Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, where he admitted that the game was something else when it started.

"Sega were planning on making a Dragon Ball game... I guess this happened long enough ago that it's okay for me to talk about this! The project began as a Dragon Ball title, not as a direct competitor to Super Mario Bros," he explained.

"But when we were told we could not use the Dragon Ball license any more, we were forced to come up with our own ideas instead. For example, when it was Dragon Ball, Goku fought with his Power Pole, but we changed that to a punch attack. It was only after we came up with the plan to restart the project as Alex Kidd in Miracle World that we starting thinking about Mario, and looking for ways in which to differentiate the title from it."

It's kind of interesting what might have been with Dragon Ball's earlier game, as that could've catapulted the franchise to new heights. I mean, not that it's doing too shabby right now, with FighterZ being a big seller and all. But, ahhh, what might have been.