The second game in the Alex Kidd series, and the only one released as an arcade game, Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars is a one or simultaneous two-player platform game, developed by Sega and first released in 1986. It of course features the cute boy wonder, Alex Kidd, although this time he’s accompanied by his female partner, Stella. Stella can be played alone or cooperatively with Alex.

The aim of the game is to run left to right, survive all the hazards and traps, and reach the goal at the end of each level. Stars drop from the sky to deliver power-ups, extra time and points bonuses when collected. Occasionally Alex and Stella can also pick up weapons (which have limited use), and speed or jump boosts.

You get three lives per coin and falling into pits or touching anything harmful will instantly lose you a life. One important gameplay element that requires getting used to is building and maintaining momentum when running – especially when jumping over gaps. The character movement is not overly reliant on inertia, but if you’re running right, then turn left, then run right again – then jump – that will translate into a loss of momentum and Alex and Stella won’t leap very far. Which can lead to unnecessary loss of life, unless you remember to compensate for it.

The yellow bar at the bottom of the screen shows your progress through a level. There’s also a timer readout, and a display that shows which power-ups are active for both players.

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars starts off quite easy, but quickly becomes excruciatingly hard. By level three you’ll probably be tearing your hair out with the constant deaths and “insert coin” messages. In MAME, that’s not a huge problem since the coins you’re inserting are imaginary, and you can just keep re-starting, but back in arcades this game would’ve quickly turned into a frustrating coin-muncher. With playable boy and girl characters this is a reasonably fun game for couples to play – or kids – although it’s probably too difficult for both. Skilled platform gamers will probably be the only ones to see past level three or four, but the cutesy nature of the game makes it unlikely to appeal to that demographic. I dunno – I could be wrong.

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars does have some nice features – like being able to shimmy along bars at the top of the screen; swing on ropes; slide down slides; bounce on trampolines; swim underwater; float on balloons, and even ride on the head of another player – and the game is well-produced, but it’s maybe a bit too simple for its own good.

The game was ported to the Sega Master System in 1988 and that version isn’t quite as difficult to play as this one, but it doesn’t look as good.

More: Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars on Wikipedia