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Retro Game Club Discussion Thread - 02 - Wonder Boy/Adventure Island [community]
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Wonder Boy is really where it all started. Developed by Sega and Westone for the arcade, the game was a fast-paced platformer starring some boy, presumably wonderful, trying to save his girlfriend from some monster, and doing so shirtless in a kilt made of leaves. Now that takes some brass balls. Wonder Boy plays as a platformer designed to eat your quarters should: it is very challenging. A lot of that challenge comes from the slipperiness of the character, a one-hit-kills-you design philosophy, and especially a strict time limit. Oh, no, there is no countdown ticking away in the corner of the screen. Instead, you have a "hunger meter" which slowly drains away unless you can keep feeding Wonder Boy fruit. The title did well for Sega, and Wonder Boy became one of their mascots, enjoying about the same level of popularity as Alex Kidd (who?). But interestingly, Sega only owned the rights to the character and the lore of the game. The level design, the gameplay, the code, all of that belonged to Westone, who decided to team up with Hudson Soft to create an NES version of the game. The character still wears only a bunch of leaves, still uses the same weapons, still has to satiate his hunger with fruit, except that this time, the hero is not the blonde and lean Wonder Boy, but instead a chubby guy with brown hair and a cap, named Master Higgins after Hudson Soft's spokesperson in Japan. He looks nothing like him. The games are almost identical, except that most people would agree that Adventure Island looks much worse. So, you can chose whichever version you like (both are 500 pts on the Virtual Console) and start playing and discussing (and possibly cursing!). Thank god for infinite continues... edit - As Roykoopa suggested, why not add either Wonder Boy or Adventure Island to your collection, and indicate you are currently playing it? List of Awesome:ludist210 (finished Wonder Boy) anon_mastermind (finished Wonder Boy) nate38 (finished Wonder Boy) RoyKoopa64 (finished Wonder Boy) X‑pert74 (finished Wonder Boy) Zero (finished Wonder Boy) TriforceBun (finished Adventure Island)Guillaume (finished both Wonder Boy and Adventure Island)URL to share (right click and copy)
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04/09/11, 03:07 Edited: 05/05/11, 04:30
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@JargonIt was in the poll once, no one cared. I will put these less popular options in the running again once we get through the ones that always get the most votes. @TriforceBunWell it looks interesting to me. Click the link I gave to see what Nintendo Life had to say about it. @everyone I guess I will be more open to suggestions in future polls. Personally, I find most of your suggestions really interesting, I just don't think they have much of a chance against the current choices. Unless a bunch of you started requesting one particular game, like it happened with Adventure Island. |
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I went back to playing New Adventure Island (TG-16) on the Virtual Console. The game is a whole lot more fun to play than AI, and my god is it ever pretty. I've never considered myself a graphic whole but if I had seen graphics like these in the NES days, if someone had put this game and the original AI side by side in front of me 20 years ago... well I actually think the TG-16 would have had a shot over here in North America.
There is no way someone could have played the NES and not looked at the TG-16 with envy.
Of course, in reality, while the PC-Engine came out in 87 in Japan, the TG-16 came out in 89 over here, and so its competition wasn't the NES as much as the Genesis and SNES (quite honestly though, the TG-16 kicks the Genesis' ass).
And New Adventure Island came out in 92. So its competition was Super Mario World and Sonic, not SMB3 and Alex Kidd.
Still, it's really, really impressive. |
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