Together Retro: Wonderboy/Adventure Island

[alienjesus]

It's just for points. There is a hidden doll in each level (sometimes they're in the open, sometimes you need to hit seemingly arbritrary places with hammers) to collect. If you get all dolls on the first 8 worlds there's apparently a 9th, but I never made it there. The dolls can be tricky to find.

Do points get you extra lives or anything useful?

To be honest I'm not sure. It's possible they give you extra lives, but I didn't really notice either way.

[Marspants]

I'm going to be playing Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair for TurboGrafx-CD. Anyone else extreamly confused about with all the versions of this game or is it just me?

[alienjesus]

The wonderboy series is probably the most confusing game series ever. These are the games:-

Wonder Boy/Adventure Island
Wonder Boy in Monster Land
Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair
Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap
Wonder Boy in Monster World
Monster World IV

Sega owned the licenses to characters and name of Wonder Boy, but not gameplay, so Westone worked with Hudson on a NES port with a new title and characters - Adventure Island. Hudson owned the names and characetr of that series. In Japan, the SMS port is known as Super Wonder Boy apparently.

Wonder Boy 2 is a very different game to wonder boy/adventure island and has some RPG elements. Its the first game in the monster world series.

Wonder Boy III: Monster lair is another different style of gameplay, although more similar to the original wonder boy. It's not meant to be great from what I've heard.

Wonder Boy III: The Dragons trap is the most confusing in the series: - Its a very different game to monster lair. It's titled wonderboy 3 because it's a direct sequel to wonder boy in monster land - wonder boy II. It can also be thought of as Monster World II. So this game is Wonder Boy III (the second): Monster Land 2.

Wonder Boy in Monster world is therefore wonder boy 5 despite there having been no wonder Boy 4. Or perhaps wonder Boy 4 despite being the 5th game. My head hurts. It's also Monster World III.

Monster world IV is the last in the series, and japan only. It has no references to wonder boy in its name, so it seems like the wonder boy series had become the monster world series.

Man, that is confusing. And thats not even mentioning that there are several versions of some of the games. The TG16 got reworked versions of Wonder Boy 2, 3, 4 and er.... the other 3 with different characters, names and graphics. These are known as Bikkuriman World, Monster Lair, The Dynastic Hero and Dragons Curse respectively.

Just to make the headache worse, Dragons Curse (AKA Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap AKA Monster World II) was known as Adventure Island in Japan.

In Brazil the brand was modified by tectoy to tie in with a comic book franchise, so some of the games (monster land, dragons trap and monster world) have been redesigned as Monica games.

Holy crap my head hurts. I'm not sure that helped anything. It probably just made everyone way more confused.

[samsonlonghair]

No one has mentioned the confusing lineage of the Game Boy games.

The first Game Boy Adventure Island game was a nearly exact copy of the first Adventure Isalnd (which in turn makes it a close copy of the first Wonderboy). This game was only released in Japan and mainland Asia; it was never released in the U.S. or in Europe.

Just as Wonderboy and Adventure Island started becoming separate franchises in the sequels, the Adventure Island Game Boy games also started growing into separate games. Adventure Island II was remade into a Game Boy game with its own levels and secrets. This was released in the U.S. simply as "Adventure Island".

When Hudson released Adventure Island III for the famicom, they wanted a completely different game for the Game Boy. The Game Boy version of Adventure Island III has new dinosaur power-ups, new level designs, and a level map similar to Super Mario World which encourages backtracking to replay levels and discover hidden items. This is an altogether separate game. This game was released stateside as "Adventure Island II: Aliens in Paradise." This was definitely one of the best platformers on Game Boy. I highly recommend it.

Just to make things a little more confusing, Aliens in Paradise was hacked by some Chinese bootleggers into "Super Mario World 9".

[noiseredux]

No one has mentioned the confusing lineage of the Game Boy games.

The first Game Boy Adventure Island game was a nearly exact copy of the first Adventure Isalnd (which in turn makes it a close copy of the first Wonderboy). This game was only released in Japan and mainland Asia; it was never released in the U.S. or in Europe.

are you sure about this? I'm fairly certain there's only 2 GB Adventure Islands:

Adventure Island (a semi-port of NES Adventure Island II) and Adventure Island II (a semi-port of NES Adventure Island III). There's no Game Boy version that is "a nearly exact copy of the first Adventure Island" that I've ever heard of.

There are two Game Boy Advance releases of NES Adventure Island, which are just emulations of the Famicom edition. One was released by itself as part of the Famicom Mini series, another was released with Adventure Island 2 and 3 (Famicom versions) as part of the Hudson Best series.

[alienjesus]

So I got around to playing Wonder Boy in Monster Land today, and I'm torn. It's certainly not a bad game, but the formula isn't as well polished as The Dragons Trap. The timer from the original is incredibly unwelcome here as you often need to search for invisible doors in order to have the equipment which is basically necessary to beat the game. When the timer runs out, your health drains, and it's not a system I enjoy. Hitting with WB's sword is hard too - im not sure why. Mouse man in WB 3 has less range than Monster lands wonder boy does, but i never had much trouble hitting with him.

The game isn't bad though, and I can imagine it being the sort of game you'll breeze through the first bunch of stages after a few tries. And I'll have to, because this is the only game in the series with no continues or passwords. Basically I have one life and some very rare potions to revive me to get through the game with.

[noiseredux]

Popped in Adventure Island (GB) last night, which is based on Adventure Island II. I just wanted to mix things up a bit and get a feel for the game in comparison to the first Adventure Island.

The GB game is much much easier. There's way less sketchy long jumps and really if you can get on the back of a dinosaur you can pretty much F up anything that gets in yr path. The bosses that I saw were pretty awesome. The underwater one especially. I think I made it to the third Island on my first try.

[noiseredux]

ok, y'know what? Adventure Island is actually really fucking hard. There's a lot of times I don't even make it past 1-3.

[final fight cd]

i actually have this game on the game gear!! and i have no idea where or how i got it.

the game gear version is called revenge of drancon. i think this will be the first together retro i will be participating in.

[alienjesus]

the game gear version is called revenge of drancon.

Oh god. As if it needed to get any more confusing!