Wonder Boy – Escape, SEGA - 1987 - First time playing?: No, played as a kid

Okay, so there's a lot of confusion around the relation between Wonder Boy and that game that Americans only know as Adventure Island since the Master System was less popular over there. It's actually not that complicated. I will now get the obligatory explanation out of the way. In a tiny font with no punctuation.

so there was this game called wonder boy in arcades and it was pretty cool so it got ported to the master system but then hudson soft wanted to port it to the famicom but due to licensing issues they changed the main character to a caricature of some hudson soft spokesperson and called it takahashi meijin no bouken jima although you may know it better as adventure island but then adventure island got sequels that were separate from the sequels wonder boy got and the jist of it is that adventure island sequels are done in the style of wonder boy 1 while wonder boy sequels are instead fantasy platform rpgs except for that one time that super adventure island 2 was also a fantasy platforming rpg but in short only adventure island1 and wonder boy 1 are the same game and for the rest of the games if it is called adventure island then you are playing an adventure island game unless you are playing the japanese game adventure island on pc engine which is actually a port of wonder boy 3 and has nothing to do with adventure island at all because GOD IS DEAD WE KILLED HIM and that is why also wonder boy in monster land on pc engine was then converted into a game based on a brand of japanese wafer snacks and stickers and then in brazil they instead turned the wonder boy games into games based off of the comic monicas gang so you play as monica and instead of using a sword you smack people with a rabbit that you swing by the ears and oh also something to be aware of is that wonder boy iii the dragon's trap is completely different from wonder boy iii monster lair and those two games have absolutely nothing in comparison and also make sure to take note of the fact that dragons trap is called monster world 2 in japan which may confuse you because there isn't a monster world 1 in japan and the reason its called monster world 2 is because retroactively wonder boy in monster land is now considered the first monster world game and it is not the game we got in the west called wonder boy in monster world on mega drive which is actually monster world 3 unless you are playing the pc engine version which is called the dynastic hero and has you play as a guy in a japanese rhinoceros beetle costume and if you are still reading this i am sorry for wasting so much of your time with this joke explanation but in case you were wondering yes everything i said is in fact true and i did not fabricate anything and i just decided to explain it in the hardest to read and most convoluted way possible to get it out of the way in a format that basically screams to be skipped because it barely matters to the subject at hand

Got all that? Cool, so Wonder Boy is a game where you play as a femboy in a grass skirt and you need to rescue his girlfriend from a king that stole her and hid her in one of his ten castles for… some reason. The manual doesn't elaborate why so my default explanation in these kinds of situations is that he did it because he thought it could be funny. Rushing through 36 to 40 levels (depending on if you unlock the secret world or not) you'll be running, jumping, eating fruit, breaking open eggs that contain hatchets (oh, HATCHet, I get it now) and throwing those hatchets to defeat enemies on your quest to defeat the king in all of his ten castles and save the girl.

Wonder Boy is all about speed. Your vitality bar at the top of the screen is always rapidly decreasing even when standing still and you'll lose a life if it empties, but you can refill it by eating fruit scattered throughout the level. You're encouraged to always stay on the move as a result since idling will result in death, and to accommodate for this fast-paced gameplay the levels are very much designed for rushing through at full speed. There's a lot of wide open planes and wide jumps that require a running start to clear, with enemy placement and behaviour that is also designed to quickly overcome without slowing down, either by throwing a hatchet or avoiding the enemy altogether.

The enemy variety is more vast than you might expect, and they all fill a different route as an obstacle to overcome, elegantly adding to the platforming obstacle course style of level design. Snails are simply hurdles to jump over. Bats swoop down at you from above. Octopi meanwhile attack you from below by jumping up from the bottom of the screen, and coyotes will chase you down from behind. Spiders move up and down their thread, requiring you to run under or jump over them accordingly. Bees zigzag up and down while moving towards you, requiring you to recognize their pattern and look for an opening. Frogs leap in the air when you approach them with the intention of intercepting you if you try to jump over them. And, umm… what's this enemy?

Okay, this guy looks maybe a little questionable. He kinda looks like that one time they recoloured Mr Popo from Dragon Ball to give him blue skin in an attempt to make him look less like a blackface caricature. Maybe I'm looking too much into this and this is actually some weird fantasy creature or alien as opposed to a racist caricature of an island native. One second, let me just check the manual- his name is ‘Coal Kid', are you kidding me?

I have a lot of praise for this game and I need you to understand that all of that praise has absolutely nothing to do with this embarrassingly awful character design. I overall vastly prefer how Wonder Boy looks compared to Adventure Island, the graphics in Wonder Boy are more colorful and vibrant and the majority of the character designs are cuter and more charming, but one of the few things that was better in Adventure Island was that they replaced this racist enemy with a cartoon pig instead.

The game does look great for the time overall in spite of the Coal Kid design. It's surprisingly faithful to the arcade original with very few compromises, with lots of detail and colour throughout. There's definitely still some quirks however that are to be expected with an early release on the Master System like this. The sprite flickering is pretty bad throughout, enough that on rare occasions it can impede your ability to tell what's happening on screen. There's also an issue with some platforms and enemies blending into the background, especially during any level set in a cave, which I'm guessing is at least partially due to colour palette limitations. It's still impressive overall, especially when you consider that Wonder Boy in Monster World, a game that came out after this one, is nowhere near as detailed or faithful to the arcade.

It's not just a one-for-one arcade port either. Alongside the usual minor tweaks (such as infinite continues, a vast improvement over the arcade version which disables continues once you reach the last four levels), there's also an extra four levels here that weren't in the arcade version. Typically other arcade to console ports of the era ended up having to cut levels entirely, so it's impressive that they managed to cram an already pretty massive arcade game into an early release for the Master System and even have room for extra content. Although, with that said, there is a bit of repetition with the level design, with several levels being remixed versions of earlier stages with extra enemies and platforming sections and such, and the game also taking a page out of Super Mario Bros 1’s book by having every single boss in the game be the same guy but slightly harder each time. As a kid it took me several days of leaving the Master System on overnight before I could finally beat the damn thing, and replaying it again now I can definitely say it's nowhere near as difficult as I remembered and I had little trouble beating the game in a single sitting, but the challenge is definitely still pretty steep, especially if you're going for the secret levels. A password save system might have been a nice addition. There is a level select code which the manual straight up tells you how to use immediately on the page about the start screen, but you can't access the secret levels using the code, requiring a full single sitting playthrough to get to them.

So, how do you unlock those secret levels anyway? Well, every level contains a doll for you to collect, which in addition to giving you doubled points at the end of the level will also unlock the final four levels if you collect all of them from the first 36 levels. Many of the dolls are just in plain sight and no trouble at all, but before long you'll run into levels where they're hidden more deviously. These dolls are instead hidden in rocks, a common hazard throughout the entire game. Running into them will result in Wonder Boy tripping and losing some vitality, which is obviously a bad thing. However, if you trip on certain rocks, they will instead break and reveal a doll. Do you just have to trip over every rock until you find the dolls by trial and error? Thankfully, no. Throwing your hatchets at most rocks will result in the thrown weapons just bouncing off of them, but throw them at a rock with a doll hidden in it and the hatchet will instead phase through it. There are two dolls that as far as I can tell have no clue on how to get them however, which require you to take an even bigger leap of faith and jump into a fire, but those are both in the secret levels that you've already unlocked by that point.

This leads into what I respect the most about Wonder Boy, that being the excellent replay value. It's not just the dolls, the entire game is filled with secrets, scoring opportunities and rewards for mastery of the game. The best example of this is the skateboard powerup. Taking advantage of the focus on speed that the game mechanics and level design employ, a skateboard has a chance of being hidden inside eggs scattered across every level, specifically in place of eggs that contain hatchets if you're already equipped with the weapon. While you're on the skateboard you have the highest possible speed in the game and are also protected for a single hit, with taking damage just breaking the board as opposed to killing you on the spot. The downside meanwhile is that you can't stop moving forward while on the skateboard, only being able to control your speed with the d-pad. As mentioned earlier however, a skilled player doesn't need to stop moving forward, so while the skateboard can be a risk when it comes to platforming, mastering it results in some of the most satisfying flow and speed of any platformer of the era.

There's also the usual classic hallmarks of arcade games in the form of one credit clears and going for high scores. You can collect mushrooms that increase the point value of all collected fruit for the rest of the level (often found in eggs that usually contain skateboards if you're already riding a skateboard, thus further encouraging mastery of the level design and keeping the skateboard), there's bonus levels you can go to by finding your girlfriend's missing belongings where you get a chance to collect high scoring heart items, there's secret letters hidden through the game that spell out SEGA which give you extra points and even extra lives if you get one of each letter, there's a ton of depth underneath the simple exterior of Wonder Boy. There's a similar appeal here to both the Master System and Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog games. Much like how those games are frequently cited as becoming more fun the more you replay them as you learn the level layouts and how to blast through them at full speed with hundreds of rings stockpiled, Wonder Boy similarly manages this with the skateboard and score attack elements.

Aside from the occasional level design repetition, I have very few complaints honestly. I think Wonder Boy is excellent, honestly one of my favourite platformers of the 80s and a joy to play. Fluid, fast and fun and consistently rewarding and replayable. If the levels were a little more varied I’d say this is up there with the best of the era, but as it is it’s not lagging too far behind.

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 24th February 2025