Wonder Boy is one of the most important and least known brands ever. It is a contradiction mainly due to its age: in our last Monographs we told you about how the series started in 1987 , which means that Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap (at the time Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, but also Monster World II in Japan) specifically it is twenty-seven years old, having been released in 1989.
The confusing spread and nomenclature of the various episodes – called a bit ‘Wonder Boy and a little’ Monster World, as well as “cloned” in the Adventure Island franchise of Hudson Soft – also helped make the series signed Westone even more elusive, especially because the best releases saw the light only in Japan on SEGA 8 and 16-bit consoles. but yet
Wonder Boy III represents one of the pillars in the birth and evolution of the adventures / platforms that today we affectionately call “metroidvania”.
The small developer Lizardcube has therefore decided to take over the original code and offer modern generations a taste of what it meant to play in the ’80s: a successful operation one hundred percent, for better or for worse. We explain why in our review.
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap is a fantastic remake but really too short for what it costs
BACK TO THE FUTURE
It is simply useless to analyze Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap through a comparison with the original Master System, since the remake of Lizardcube basically maps the original code 1: 1: in fact,
just press the right backbone at any time to change graphics and move from the beautiful illustrations and modern animations to that fist in the eye that today we see the sprite and colors of the 8-bit SEGA console.
Ironic, since at the time Wonder Boy III was a technically sumptuous game. The solution adopted by Lizardcube is refined and elegant. Moreover, by pressing the right analog stick, it is also possible to replace the modern audio compartment with the original one and then you can shuffle the cards, playing for example with the ancient soundtrack and modern graphics or vice versa.
Realistically, there is no reason to recommend the old cosmetics, because the new one perfectly matches each frame, but enriches it with fluid animation, gorgeous details and pastel colors that make each location look like a Skottie Young comic strip.Even the structure of the game perfectly replicates the original, except for a tiny addition: before starting the game you can choose whether to play Wonder Boy … or Wonder Girl,
his female counterpart. From the point of view of gameplay, nothing changes at all. Indeed, once you have entered the game, the choice loses all meaning.
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, in fact, begins when the original Wonder Boy prequel ended in Monster Land: our hero – or our heroine – faces the Dragon Meka in his castle, but is cursed to his defeat and turned into an anthropomorphic lizard .
The only way to get back human is to find a powerful relic, but forget plot or dialogue: Wonder Boy is a 1989 title in all respects, in which you have to play instead of reading.
There are few lines at the beginning and end to explain what happened, the rest is left to our imagination and interpretation. In this case, once transformed into a lizard and returned to the village of Alsedo, we immediately begin to explore the district, taking advantage of a world far from linear and that extends in every direction.
