Wonder Boy: Monster Land (1987)

Preliminary: I love how you knock on the doors to enter lol. I like that there are shops so you could grind for gold as desired, tho I was playing it as a straightforward run forward always type action game. Tho I always like to upgrade my speed/boots :-p Speaking of, it felt very clunky at first but I noticed with the first Boots upgrade (Leather), things got a bit better, maybe the same will be true of the Sword. There are supposedly only 11 rounds in this arcade version so this seems doable. The Round 1 boss (Death) felt a lot like an NES boss, surprised this is an arcade release, and the enemy mechanics of Round 2 similarly feel NES-y.

Pro-tip: be sure to move away from the center after defeating a boss or else you will insta-tele with the Key. Collect all that Gold first! Kinda tacky they programmed it that way. Same with the way text sometimes pops up, you eventually can move again and the text box will block enemies lol. Woopsie.

(Welp, end of my first night and already through Round 5 and having fun. It's got some definite action-adventure and ARPG influence with the stores, but is also just a straightforward fun action game too. Nice. I wish the Sound or Look were more striking tho)

Look: 7/10 Cute enough. Nothing spectacular, though.

Sound: 7/10 Same as Sound ha.

Play: 7/10 Good thing I didn't buy a shield at the store, I got one from an enemy in the next Round!

On my 2nd play session, I noticed so many faults like the squid enemies in the later Rounds have a terrible hitbox.

Feel: 7/10 Sign of a good game that I said I was wrapping up my first night at Round 6, but then finished the Round heh. The Sphinx aspect was neat. I at first wasn't clicking with it because of the clunky feel to the controls, but now I know that's just to make the upgrades feel more impacting. Even my Broad Sword is slicing faster. Nice. (Unfortunately, this good Feel and Joy was lost as the game's difficulty got too high and the clunkiness and quirky features became more and more central to the game's challenge.)

Attachment: 7/10 The 2nd play session wasn't going as well. It was feeling clunky again, largely because the difficulty was increasing to match the new weapons, so it was time to earn new weapons (e.g. Excalibur). Started noticing the lame features again like only being able to attack one enemy at a time (even if they overlap).

I did a little more digging on the StrategyWiki and I liked the subquest aspect. (collect a series of hidden items with no function except at the very end of the game, reminds me of working toward an Ultimate Weapon in a Final Fantasy heh). Regardless, more and more during Round 7 and on I needed to refer to the StrategyWiki maps. And turns out because I was originally just playing it as a straightforward action game, I didn't do the Link's Awakening esquer "get the letter, bring the letter to the lady, get the flute, etc." so I can't even do the subquest. Boo.

I was reallllly considering stopping on the last couple rounds. The difficulty was getting too high, riddled with tacky moments and frustrating tedium. At least the Death type miniboss before the Snow Kong boss provides a Revival Potion... Yeaaaa on Round 10 (2nd to last round haha) I called it quits. It wasn't fun anymore. It has a great mid game tho!

Completion: Round 10 (arcade version, SMS version has an extra stage) Playtime: ~1h 10m

NOTE: This is for the arcade version since the arcade version looks better.

Wonder Boy has improved from his last adventure! Taking on a very particular and nasty maze of secrets and gold hoarding across 11 Worlds, this challenge can be very punishing if not following an exact path but has a bit more fun and variety in between compared to its predecessor.

Wonder Boy must fight the evil fire breathing MEKA dragon and reclaim his Wonder Land from the evil monsters. Controls are fairly simple, with the player being able to jump, stab with a sword, and press down to use magic that gets collected in a queue. The player may upgrade swords along the way and collect gold in order to buy spells, upgrades, hints, health, etc.

The nature of finding this gold is absolutely important (don't even bother trying to beat the game without full upgrades) but can be filled with obtuse secrets. Many pieces of gold are found jumping around trees, off of platforms, and in other areas. There are secret doorways (HA!) to be found as well as one important sidequest for an important item, and a life upgrade system that rewards high score. The player is also on a time limit, as an hourglass starts ticking at every stage and takes off a heart if it has to reset. This makes the pace deceptively both breakneck and wary, which doesn't balance well unless the player is familiar with all the game's secrets.

There are a variety of smoothly moving and colorful monsters, including large fluffy vampires, giant knights, snow apes, a large variety of snakes, rats, pigs, and bats, and the evil MEKA himself. The music is cute and catchy, and while the enemies can get downright nasty, they're at least cute. The stages are also more varied than their predecessor, with caves, underwater passages, castle halls, and one heckuva maze at the end.

There are also a variety of useful items (that usually spawn randomly) - helmets for protection, wing boots for gliding, extra hearts, gauntlets to amp up attack, and mantles that render Wonder Boy invincible. Spells vary in usefulness, though things like the Whirlwind will absolutely be important in a very specific place.

That last statement very much describes Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Demanding an almost too keen eye for its secrets, it can be aggravating and frustrating for people who aren't willing to play it repeatedly to try and find everything it has to offer. The people who will get a kick out of these secrets have got quite the fun game ahead of them though!