Quote Originally Posted by SpyHunter View Post
Maybe I am biased because I played SMB back when it came out and didn't play AK until a few years ago. Its awful hard to judge games like that, but I still play SMB and hardly ever play AK anymore. I think that says a lot.
I am in the same boat, having played through every Mario countless times as a kid and only to finally play Alex Kidd for the first time last year. In many ways that made me appreciate it even more, since I came in with expectations for another SMB variant, but was surprised at the depth, creativity and overall uniqueness of the game. Considering there are so many SMB clones out there, this was really refreshing. Just the idea that money could be used other than just for point acquisition was a real nice change (and something the later Wonder Boy games really perfected). SMB does have tighter control and better collision detection though, I'll give it that, but otherwise I think AKIMW is every bit the better game.

If you look at how Nintendo evolved the franchise proper with SMB 3, you can see they definitely amalgamated a lot of the Kidd's pioneering concepts (menu accessible power-ups, flight power-ups, odds matches with all the mini-games, a visual map of the outer world, etc.) to their generic formula. There's no question SMB 3 is a better game than the first, and I'd argue it is largely because of the influence of Alex Kidd.