Adventure Island exists because Hudson Soft’s most famous employee was a man who could press a button very fast. By 1986 Toshiyuki Takahashi, known as Takahashi Meijin (Master Takahashi), was touring Japan with Hudson’s game tournaments and appearing on television. Hudson was converting Escape’s arcade game Wonder Boy for the Famicom, and when the work was well along its vice-president came to look. “You’re popular now,” Takahashi remembered him saying. “Why not make the hero you?” Within a day or two Takahashi was in the game. It came out as Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima, “Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island”, and sold over a million copies. “At first I had mixed feelings,” he said. “I had become the player character, so I was dying every day.”
Fast facts
- Publisher: Hudson Soft. Famicom and MSX, Japan, 1986; NES, North America, 1988, as Hudson’s Adventure Island.
- Based on: Escape’s arcade game Wonder Boy (1986), made under licence.
- Hero: Takahashi Meijin in Japan; Master Higgins in the West.
- Structure: eight areas, each of four rounds, with a boss at the end of each area.
- Sales: over a million copies in Japan.
The same game, a different hero
Sega owned the Wonder Boy name, but the game belonged to its developer, Escape (later Westone), which was free to license it to other companies. Hudson took a licence for the first game. Takahashi was plain that Hudson “did not develop it from scratch”: it was a port of the arcade Wonder Boy with changes. Hyper and Japanese reference sources say that Escape itself did the conversion for Hudson. The Hudson Soft and Wonder Boy entries tell the business side of the story.
Takahashi said Hudson wanted an action game because Super Mario Bros. was such a hit, and Hudson used Adventure Island in game tournaments besides its Caravan. It came out on the Famicom and the MSX on the same day in September 1986.
Run or go hungry
The rules are Wonder Boy’s. The hero has an energy bar that drains all the time, so standing still is a way to die. Nintendo Power explained it to American players in 1989: “Getting hit’s not the only way to lose energy, so keep moving.” Fruit along the route tops the bar up. Run into an enemy, fall off a cliff or run out of energy, and a life is gone.
Eggs hide the help, and Nintendo Power listed what was inside:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stone axe | Thrown with the B button; “the easiest weapon” to find |
| Fireball | Stronger than the axe; it can break rolling boulders and rocks |
| Skateboard | Much faster running, but Higgins “will be unable to stop”; a hit costs the board, not a life |
| Milk | Fills the energy bar |
| Flower | Doubles the energy each fruit gives |
| Honey Girl | Flies beside Higgins and makes him invincible for a few seconds |
| Eggplant | To be avoided: it eats up his energy |
The island’s jungle forests, mountains and caves are divided into eight areas, each split into four rounds, and the player has to beat the “Big Kahuna” of each area to move on. Cobras spit fire, snails crawl and rocks roll. A bonus stage of springboards lets a skilful player skip part of a round.
Hudson’s Adventure Island
Hudson Soft’s American company brought it to the NES in 1988. Nintendo Power’s preview set the scene: Master Higgins has come “all the way to this South Pacific jungle island to rescue his beloved sweetheart, Princess Leilani”, kidnapped by the Evil Witch Doctor. Wonder Boy’s hero, by contrast, was Tom-Tom, out to rescue Tina. The name Master Higgins stuck to the character in every Western sequel.
The series
Wonder Boy’s own sequels turned into role-playing adventures, but Hudson’s kept running and jumping. Retro Gamer’s guide to the whole family in 2007 sorted them into two lines, the arcade-style Adventure Island games and the Monster World ones.
| Game | Platform | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Adventure Island II | NES, 1991 in America | The first original game in the series. Dinosaurs hatch from eggs and can be ridden, and power-ups can be saved for later rounds. No password save. |
| Adventure Island | Game Boy, 1992 | Called Adventure Island II in Japan; close to the NES Adventure Island II |
| Super Adventure Island | Super NES, 1992 | Game Informer found it “basically the same game as Adventure Island for the 8-bit, but with much improved graphics and sound” |
| New Adventure Island | PC Engine | Retro Gamer’s favourite: “the best of the original-model Wonder Boys” |
| Adventure Island 3 | NES, 1992 in America | Retro Gamer found it so like the second game that it was “almost more of a 12-inch remix than a new game” |
| Super Adventure Island II | Super NES | A mix of Adventure Island and the Monster World games, with exploring and new abilities |
| Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV | Famicom, 24 June 1994 | Japan only; the last game released for the Famicom |
The names are tangled. The PC Engine game called Adventure Island in Japan is not one of these: it is a version of Westone’s Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, released in America as Dragon’s Curse.
Hudson came back to the first game in the 2000s with a remake in its Hudson Selection budget range for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 in Japan. Retro Gamer reported that Hudson left the play untouched, apart from an easy mode in which the energy bar only falls when the player stops eating, and gave the graphics “a rather lovely Claymation kind of look”. Hudson itself was absorbed into Konami in 2012.
Sources
- Taro Kawashima, interview with Takahashi Meijin, “高橋名人の仕事哲学【中編】”, ITmedia Business Online, 29 November 2019, p. 6 (web, secondary): the port of Wonder Boy, Super Mario Bros., the vice-president’s suggestion, the contests, over a million sales and “dying every day”. https://www.itmedia.co.jp/business/articles/1911/30/news004_6.html
- Hyper issue 140, June 2005, pp. 86–89: Wonder Boy (1986, developer Escape); Takahashi Meijin; Hudson’s licence and the Famicom version made by Escape/Westone; the Japanese and American titles; Master Higgins; the GameCube remake.
- Nintendo Power issue 2, September/October 1988, p. 79: Hudson’s Adventure Island preview (Hudson Soft USA; Princess Leilani and the Evil Witch Doctor; Honey Girl).
- Nintendo Power issue 5, March/April 1989, pp. 31–35: Hudson’s Adventure Island strategy (energy; the items; eight areas of rounds; the Big Kahuna; the bonus stage).
- Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, pp. 66–71, “The Definitive Wonder Boy”: Adventure Island II and 3 on the NES, the Game Boy games, New Adventure Island, Super Adventure Island and its sequel, Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV, the PC Engine Dragon’s Trap and the Hudson Selection remake.
- Nintendo Power issue 22, March 1991, p. 48 (Adventure Island II preview); issue 36, May 1992, p. 80 (Super Adventure Island); issue 41, October 1992, p. 115 (Adventure Island 3 among new NES releases).
- Game Informer issue 4, March 1992, p. 23: Super Adventure Island review.
- Retro Gamer Videogames Hardware Handbook volume 1, 2nd edition (2016), pp. 102–103: Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV as the last Famicom game, 24 June 1994; Takahashi, the Caravan and the localisation as Adventure Island.
- Sega Retro, “Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima” and “Wonder Boy” (web, secondary): Hudson’s 1986 Famicom game and the same-day MSX version; Westone’s contract with Hudson. https://segaretro.org/Wonder_Boy
- Japanese Wikipedia, “高橋名人の冒険島” (web, secondary): the release date, 12 September 1986, on Famicom and MSX; eight areas of four rounds. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/高橋名人の冒険島