Anyone
who has played Wonderboy 3 (SMS) or Wonderboy 5
(Genesis) would instantly be familiar with this title. For those not
familiar with those two games, the object is to get through the
"levels" to get to the next town or find your next quest.
Between the levels, you’ll encounter monsters that attempt to stop you
from completing this task. When you defeat the monsters, money appears,
which you can pick up to get new weapons, armor, etc. at the next town.
The fighting is all real-time – you press the button and your character swings his sword or throws magic to hit the enemies and the action in this game is fast paced and intense! In WB 5 and WB 3, control was a bit sluggish. This problem has been taken care of and I would consider the control to be perfect! The graphics in this game kill the graphics in all the previous versions. The colors are brighter, the graphics are more crisp (although still cartoony) and the animation is top notch. The number of weapons and armor seems to be about the same as WB 5, although I didn’t finish the game, so I don’t really know how many weapons there are. The best thing about the Wonderboy series is the puzzles you need to solve in order to progress in the game. In WB 3, you had to change into different "monsters" with special powers in order to progress to certain areas. In WB 5, you had to play a musical instrument in order to get doors open and make it to a boss, and puzzles like this abound in this title.
Unfortunately, the game was released in Japan only, so unless you can read Japanese, a lot of the puzzles and quests are all but unsolvable. If you can find this title and aren’t afraid of the Japanese text, I’d definitely suggest picking it up!
