The Mystery of Alex

Wow. I have another page about Alex. Hooray. By the way, I am being bitingly sarcastic.
Everything about Alex is a mystery anyway.
Like how does he get his hair to remain in such great condition?
Or how he can warp like no other Mercury Adept can?
Or even what colour underwear he wears!
Pink.
Huh? What, are you serious?
No, I was just kidding. >_>
Are you inferring that Alex is girly?
Uh... I just remembered I have to be somewhere...
I was talking more about the fact he never made it obvious he was out to steal Alchemy...
Yeah, well, how many evil guys come up and say "BWAHAHAHA, I am evil and stuff and I want to take over the world because... uh... yeah.", anyway?
Okay, so what is the mystery?
What is Alex's gender?
Oh, for crying out... will you all stop making fun of Alex already?
I don't really see it either. Is it just because he has long hair or something?
This page is actually about a new mystery that has taken over seven years to be discovered, dating from the first game's release in Japan...
Wow, we're still able to find new stuff in this game? That's incredible!
Thanks to the miracles of rom hacking, something new has been discovered. Actually, it's not that big a deal and it's a very small thing.
Our inane ramblings are just a poor excuse to take up page space actually.
Can you blame us? The games are so old now, we hardly have anything to talk about.
Where's that damn third game? Random reference intended.
Okay... you have all talked enough, thank you. Let's get on with this.

So... Alex. Alex continues to be an enigma of course and now some very interesting data has been discovered in the first game's code. It is also in the code of the second game. The discovery happened with Atrius's development of the fantastic Golden Sun: The Lost Age hacking tool, which is the best thing since sliced bread. Something strange was discovered when looking at the character portraits, a portrait that has not been seen before. In fact, this portrait is buried so deep in the game's code that, for some reason, it does not show up in the debug room. An oddity to be sure, considering that even young Felix's face portrait shows up in there and he never spoke a word during the entire prologue.

A screenshot was provided so that we could see this bizarre mystery for ourselves. I'll just provide the cropped version with only the portrait first.

Yeah, that's Alex, but isn't there something a little strange about him? Of course, I could see it immediately, but I must remember that not everyone might have a good eye for faces.

So now, I'll show it next to his normal portrait for those who can't figure it out, and I'm also resizing them just to make it easier.

Hmm, yeah, they are kinda different, aren't they? It's not really all that big a difference. The background is a different colour. Alex has a different expression, and you can see more of his head... yes, it's really, really small. I'd have to say that I like Alex's normal face portrait more, the other one looks weird to me, but then again, that might just be because I'm not used to it. Hmm, I guess normal Alex's hair looks a little more green, but I honestly don't think that matters.

What, is that it? No, of course not. You don't see me making a page all about Felix's younger self portrait, do you? No, I'm not going to do that. That would be silly. You can see it in some places on the site. Now then...

There was another interesting thing about the face portraits and now I'm going to show you the screenshot that Atrius provided.

Now then, at the top are the playable characters. The ones lower down are of course the NPCs. There is a rather large gap between the playable characters and the NPCs. I know, I'm pretty much stating the obvious here but I am getting to the point. Notice how Alex's normal portrait is down there in the NPC section, but his, uh, let's call it the beta portrait is located with the playable characters. Piers is pushed back one slot, despite the fact he is playable and "beta" Alex isn't.

In the first game, the portraits look the same, except Piers isn't there. Yes, that means beta Alex is there too, located after Felix, Jenna and Sheba. So, what could this mean? What it could mean is that in a very, very early stage of the game, Camelot considered having Alex be playable (like Felix, Jenna and Sheba. Felix and Sheba could be added as party members in the first game too), but then scrapped that idea and redrew his portrait for some reason when they made him an NPC.

There is no other data to suggest that Alex was playable. He had no battle sprites, but then again, Felix and Sheba didn't in the first game either, they were just assigned Vermin sprites. Still, I think Alex must have been scrapped as a player character very early on, since he can't be added as a party member at all.

It does make sense that Camelot might have thought of having Alex be the Mercury Adept of Felix's party, but then they apparently changed their minds about that and created Piers for the second game.

So, yeah, that's about it.

Just as well, anyway. Can you imagine if Alex had just been someone who joined your party in the second game anyway?

Some random person knows more than you all do!
Some random person?
Uh, who is some random person?
He is some random person and he knows that the lights from the beacons will gather on Mt. Aleph and the Golden Sun will form!
Is that the source of Alchemy?
And some random person wants that?
No... that's awful... I can't believe some random person would do that... I feel sick... disgusted...
So some random person we've never even heard of or met is trying to take over the world. Yippee.

Uh... yeah, anyway, nobody else could be as cool as Alex when it comes to the whole "I'm secretly out for ultimate power" thing in my opinion. And just think, if Alex had been playable, Piers would have had no reason to exist! *gasp*

... I actually had a dream once where Piers was the one going up Mt. Aleph. Yeah. o_o

Okay, I'm out of stuff to say, so back to random Adepts conversation...

Well... that is weird. Can we use it as proof I'm not evil?
What are you, crazy?
You've got to be kidding us...
You are all meanies...
Just ignore them, Alex. They are probably just jealous of your good looks.
Good looks? Alex?
That other picture just looks kinda odd...
Maybe it's just me but he actually looks friendlier in his normal one...
Of course! It's all a ruse to hide the fact I'm out to claim ultimate power! *dazzling smile*
Uh... o_0

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