Where another platform game might have set a time limit, Wonder Boy gave its hero an appetite. He has an energy bar that falls the whole time he is playing, and the only way to fill it is to grab the fruit dotted along the route. “Fail to collect enough fruit, or take too long to reach the end of a stage,” Wireframe wrote, “and hero Tom Tom will literally starve to death.” So the player never stops running. The game came from Escape, a Tokyo developer, and Sega released it in the arcades in 1986. The ownership deal behind it, with Sega holding the name and the developer holding the game, explains why the same design went on to star two different heroes on two rival consoles.
Fast facts
- Developer: Escape (later Westone), Tokyo. Designer: Ryuichi Nishizawa.
- Publisher: Sega, arcades, 1986.
- Hero: Tom-Tom, out to rescue his girlfriend Tina from the King.
- Home versions: SG-1000 (1986); Master System, as Super Wonder Boy in Japan (in Britain in 1987); Game Gear (1990); Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC from Activision (1987).
- Remake: Hudson Soft’s Adventure Island (1986), with a different hero.
Run or starve
Wireframe described a game “built with the express purpose of making the player go faster”. The fruit vanishes if the player does not jump for it in time, and the screen scrolls only one way. Eggs along the route hide help: an axe to throw at the snails, frogs and bats, a skateboard, and a fairy that protects Tom-Tom from everything for a few seconds. The skateboard is the fastest way through a stage and the riskiest: at that speed, among moving platforms and bouncing enemies, it is soon lost. Wireframe pointed out that it works like the power-ups in Super Mario Bros., as an extra hit. Each stage also hides a doll, and all of them have to be collected to finish the game.
Nishizawa, Wireframe reported, “once said that he designed Wonder Boy in response to Super Mario Bros.’ jumping physics, which, controversially, he said he detested”. The magazine thought the result had “some of the most satisfying and precise controls of any eighties platformer”, and that mastering its long and short jumps made it at heart a score attack game.
Two owners, two heroes
Hyper untangled the business arrangement in 2005. “Sega owned the Wonderboy trademark; the games themselves belonged to Westone.” Westone was happy for Sega to release its games under the Sega name, and also had “no problems shopping the games to rival companies”. Hudson Soft took a licence for the first game and put its own celebrity, the fire-button champion Takahashi Meijin, in the lead. On the Famicom in 1986 it became Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima, and in the West Adventure Island, starring Master Higgins; the Hudson Soft entry tells that side of the story.
At home
Sega’s own versions came first: a cut-down SG-1000 card in 1986, then a much closer Master System cartridge, called Super Wonder Boy in Japan, which reached Britain in 1987 at £19.95. A Game Gear version followed in 1990.
Activision brought it to British home computers in 1987, at £9.99 on cassette. The reviews were cool. CRASH called the Spectrum version “quite playable, but technically uninspiring”, with awful scrolling and a monochrome play area where the outlines were hard to pick out; its review described seven territories, each split into four lands of four areas. Zzap!64’s reviewers liked the Commodore 64 version’s “arcade type graphics”, but one found it “far, far too easy”: the conversion had only four levels, running from the forest over the sea to the King’s icy palace, and could be finished in about half an hour. “At ten pounds,” he wrote, “Wonder Boy doesn’t offer enough challenge or depth to be worth buying.”
The series
The sequels left the forest behind. Wonder Boy in Monster Land (1987) gave the hero a sword and shield, shops and gold, and let him walk left as well as right; Hyper called it the first game in the series with the role-playing elements the later games became known for, and Retro Gamer thought it the best of them all. Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair went back to the arcade, adding horizontal shooting sections. Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap (1989) for the Master System was a different game despite the number: a dragon’s curse turns the hero into a lizard, and later into a mouse, a piranha, a lion and a hawk, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Wonder Boy in Monster World came out on the Mega Drive in 1991, and Monster World IV (1994), with a heroine, Asha, was released only in Japan.
The names were never tidy. Retro Gamer’s 2007 guide to the series counted five titles for Monster Land alone. In Brazil, Sega’s partner Tectoy gave some of the games new heroes from the Turma da Mônica comics.
Later history
The series came back in the 2010s through other studios. Lizardcube’s Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap (2017) was, Wireframe said, “a complete remake of a Sega Master System game that was largely overlooked in its day”. Game Atelier’s Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (2018), “essentially a belated sequel”, followed, and in 2021 a remake of Monster World IV, Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, which Wireframe gave 46 per cent as “a staunch remake almost to a fault”.
Sources
- “Killer Feature: Wonder Boy”, Wireframe issue 17, June 2019, p. 66: Escape and Nishizawa, 1986; the energy bar and starvation; vanishing fruit; the skateboard as an extra hit; the dolls; Nishizawa on Super Mario Bros.; the controls.
- Hyper issue 140, June 2005, pp. 86–88: Escape and Westone; Sega owned the trademark and Westone the games; Hudson’s licence; Monster Land and its role-playing elements; Monster Lair; The Dragon’s Trap; Wonder Boy in Monster World (1991); Monster World IV (1994).
- Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, “The Definitive Wonder Boy”: Tom-Tom; the names of Monster Land; “the best”; Monster Lair’s shooting sections; The Dragon’s Trap (1989) and its six forms; the Brazilian Monica’s Gang versions; Monster World IV.
- CRASH issue 43, August 1987: Spectrum Wonder Boy review (Activision, £9.99; Tina and the King; seven territories of four lands of four areas; snails and frogs; the reviewers’ comments).
- Zzap!64 issue 28, August 1987, p. 28: Commodore 64 Wonder Boy review (Activision; Tina and the King; four levels; the axe, skateboard and fairy; snails, bats and frogs; “far, far too easy”; “at ten pounds”).
- Sega Retro, “Wonder Boy” (web, secondary): arcade release in April 1986; the instruction card’s story; the SG-1000, Master System (Super Wonder Boy, £19.95 in the UK), Game Gear and Activision versions; Nishizawa’s credits. https://segaretro.org/Wonder_Boy
- Steven T. Wright, feature on indie games, Wireframe issue 41, July 2020, p. 78: Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap as a remake.
- Wireframe issue 26, October 2019, p. 19: Lizardcube’s remake and Game Atelier’s Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.
- Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World review, Wireframe issue 53, July 2021, p. 94: remake of Monster World IV; 46 per cent.