Not connected to an earlier 8-bit version of the story by Windham Classics, Alice in Wonderland (1985). Also not to be confused with the 2000 Game Boy Color game based on the 1951 Disney animated film.
The console version of the game provides examples of the following:
- Ability Required to Proceed: Alice is too tall or too small for certain doors, requiring the party members to locate the items that make her grow or shrink. When the White Queen opens up the world map, she also fixes the doors so that Alice no longer needs to drink potion or eat cake in order to pass through them.
- Action Girl: The Dormouse. She's a Pint-Sized Powerhouse who is devastating in melee combat.
- Anti-Armor:
- March Hare with his telekinesis can remove shields from shielded enemies.
- The Hatter counts as an "Armor Cracker" type. He can remove the armor from tougher enemies with his Perspective Magic.
- Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: The White Rabbit is a Time Master with well-rounded ability, Dormouse is the melee-oriented Pint-Sized Powerhouse, The March Hare is the Long-ranged skill character, and Hatter is a Magic Knight with an ability to remove armor from enemies. Cheshire Cat is the second gimmick character who relies on his powers of Invisibility to get by.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Mushroom Forest is populated with gigantic mosquitoes.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Throughout the game you must try to collect as many "Impossible Ideas" as you can. These come from inside chests, from destroying landscaping, and from defeating enemies.
- The Chosen One: Ironically, while the movie on which the game is based paints Alice as this, she's an NPC throughout the game.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you run out of HP, you simply respawn to try again. This usually doesn't even require you to restart the fight from the beginning.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The appearance of some of the characters, particularly the Red Queen in some scenes, is eerily reminiscent of The Sims.
- Down the Rabbit Hole: Forcibly. In this version of the story, the White Rabbit yanks Alice into the hole rather than waiting for her curiosity to make her fall in.
- Escort Mission: The game is effectively this. You don't actually play as Alice, but rather the Underland residents, and you have to protect Alice from the Queen's Red Knights. Alice really doesn't do much helpful, making this journey rather difficult.
- Faceless Goons: The Red Knights, who show up randomly and must be defeated before gameplay can continue.
- Final Boss: As in the movie, the final battle is against the Jabberwocky.
- Friendly Enemy: The Hatter and the Cheshire Cat are practically this. While the movie shows that there's a bit of animosity between them because of the Cat's inaction on the Horunvendush Day (when the Hatter's family was killed), they're mostly good friends. In the game, the Hatter is openly hostile to the Cat, who isn't entirely pleasant either.
- Gonk: The Red Queen was already this in the film, but the animation style of the game turns most of the cast into these, with large mouths and weird expressions. Even the White Queen, who is very attractive in the film, looks peculiar.
- Inescapable Ambush: There are sequences where the Red Knights show up to attack the group and try to capture Alice.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: They're everywhere.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The White Rabbit can only jump on top of the mushrooms that have ladders attached to them.
- Invisibility: The Cheshire Cat, of course. In addition to himself, he can make other objects become visible.
- The Load: Alice. Seriously. She does virtually nothing useful for a large part of the game, and provides annoying commentary while you're trying to get on with things. Meanwhile, you have to constantly keep an eye on her to make sure the bad guys don't capture her.
- Loading Screen: These appear every so often, and feature portraits hanging in the round room (you know, the one with all the doors) along with quotes by one or another of the characters. Something of an oddity, because the 'quotes' are never actually said in either the game or the film.
- Master of Illusion: The Hatter's special ability.
- Mind over Matter/Psychic Powers: The March Hare is telekinetic.
- No-Damage Run: Your lives are limitless, but you are rewarded bonus points for not dying during a fight sequence. You're rewarded an even bigger bonus for not getting hit.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Required in a few of the miniboss battles.
- Or Was It a Dream?: The game's ending makes this even less clear than the movie did. While the movie ended with Alice choosing to drink the Jabberwocky blood and return to her normal life, the game takes the option away from her (presumably so the player can't decide to stay in Underland/Wonderland). She drinks the blood because she's told that it is "Futterwacken potion" which will make her dance like the Hatter, and then... they all wave at her while she fades away.
- Perspective Magic: The Hatter's specialty. He can use this to circumvent Broken Bridges and remove armor from tough enemies by crushing them between his fingers.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The Dormouse is the smallest of the five heroes, but she proves remarkably nimble in combat, shredding apart bigger enemies with lightning speed.
- Point Build System: Skill upgrades for each character are acquired by finding stray chess pieces throughout the world. But you must then enter the 'shop' and purchase the skills with your Impossible Ideas.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Cutting down greenery and breaking things like stray chairs yields Impossible Ideas.
- Save Point: The sparkly yellow wisps of smoke found here and there.
- Shifting Sand Land: The Red Desert is constantly windswept in the midst of a raging sandstorm, and the crew has to follow the ribbon on the ground to avoid getting lost.
- Ship Tease: Mallymkin the Dormouse remarks, at one point, that the Hatter is kind of smitten with the White Queen.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Due to a past incident, Hatter and Cheshire Cat are at odds with each other.
- Time Master: The White Rabbit's special ability is freezing and manipulating time.
- Video Game Geography: Deserts, swamps, and forests full of oversized greenery will keep you on your toes.
- The Voice: Hamish, Alice's would-be betrothed, never appears onscreen; the player just hears him shouting at her from out of view at the beginning and end of the game.
- Welcome to Corneria: A number of NPCs, such as the talking flowers in the Mushroom Forest, are guilty of this.
The DS version provides examples of the following:
- Adaptation Distillation
- The Ditz: Alice. She calls the Mad Hatter a wigmaker at one point!
