Originally released for the PC Engine in 1990 in Japan only as “Fushigi no Yume no Alice” (aka Alice in Wonderdream), this challenging and colourful platform game was fan-translated in 2021 as The Fairytale Dreams of Alice and is now fully playable in English.

The game was developed and published by FACE Co., Ltd. and is based on the Lewis Carroll stories “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass“. The game also mixes in other unrelated fairytale characters too, like Cinderella, Pinocchio, Red Riding Hood and Snow White, which is fine since this is meant to be a dream anyway, so anything goes I guess.

Alice can jump and can bounce on enemies’ heads, which is the main way to effectively kill them. She can also power-up and shout an “EEK!” at them which will also hurt them, but it’s generally not as effective as bouncing on their heads which will often kill them outright. That said, enemies do also re-spawn, so it’s best to keep moving ahead if you’re able.

One major ‘taker-of-lives’ that you need to watch out for are pits that you can fall into. You must avoid these as much as possible if you have any chance of completing the game.

The gameplay is structured somewhat similarly to Wonder Boy in Monster Land, where you make your way through a relatively short level and then enter a house for a boss battle. Winning this boss battle then frees whichever character was trapped by the demon who has taken over fairytale-land. You then repeat this process for each trapped character, and when all have been rescued you then move onto the next stage.

The Fairytale Dreams of Alice is an interesting platform game with a cute female lead and attractive, colourful graphics and jolly music. The gameplay is simple but pretty tough overall, and can be frustrating at times, but controlling Alice does feel good and the excellent presentation goes a long way to making the game appealing.

More: Fushigi no Yume no Alice on Moby Games
More: Fushigi no Yume no Alice on romhacking.net