{"id":22361,"date":"2022-06-20T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T00:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22361"},"modified":"2022-06-07T12:37:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T12:37:26","slug":"wonder-boy-collection-ps4-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/20\/wonder-boy-collection-ps4-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonder Boy Collection (PS4, Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in the 80s and early 90s, Wonder Boy was a 2-D platforming series by SEGA and Westone.\u00a0 It was a bit more popular in Japan than in the US, but the Wonder Boy series also has ties with Hudson\u2019s Adventure Island games, which were a bit more popular in the States.\u00a0 For the longest time Wonder Boy laid dormant, but in the past few years, we\u2019ve gotten some remakes and updates of some of the games, like Dragon\u2019s Trap<\/strong><\/a> and Monster World IV<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Not only that, we also got a full on sequel in Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom a few years ago.\u00a0 And now here\u2019s a collection of some of the Wonder Boy games for PS4 and Switch (reviewed on PS4 here).\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a look at the games on this collection!<\/p>\n

Wonder Boy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first game was originally in mid 80s arcades, and is a pretty straightforward 2-D platformer like Super Mario Bros.\u00a0 You play as Wonder Boy, a caveboy character out to save his girl from evil.\u00a0 Break open eggs to find power-ups like throwing axes or a skateboard.\u00a0 You have a constantly depleting energy bar and if it runs out or you hit an enemy, you lose a life and must start back at a checkpoint.\u00a0 To keep your energy full, you must constantly eat fruit that appears as you progress.\u00a0 If this sounds an awfully lot like Hudson\u2019s Adventure Island on the NES, that\u2019s because they\u2019re pretty much the same game.\u00a0 They just changed the main character since SEGA only had the rights to the Wonder Boy character, not the game itself.\u00a0 This is the arcade version on this collection, but I prefer Adventure Island more, mainly because the music isn\u2019t as repetitive.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not a big fan of one-hit-and-you-die games, so this was never one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

Wonder Boy in Monster Land<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though this is an arcade game as well, it introduced a lot of staples that would make the Wonder Boy series what it was later on.\u00a0 You can get gold from enemies and buy better weapons, armor, and items at shops.\u00a0 But there are still stages with time limits, so you can\u2019t explore or grind for too long.\u00a0 Most of the Wonder Boy games would evolve with this game with more exploration and RPG elements, as opposed to most of the Adventure Island games which would follow moreso the gameplay of the original.<\/p>\n

Wonder Boy in Monster World<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this one you play as adventurer and warrior Shion and since this was a console game, it leaned more heavily into the exploration and RPG elements.\u00a0 You still defeat enemies in 2-D fashion and collect gold to buy better weapons and armor.\u00a0 But now you can save your game at inns.\u00a0 Since this one was made in the early 90s, it\u2019s a bit slow and clunky, but still fun.\u00a0 I believe you can also play this game on the SEGA Genesis Mini.<\/p>\n

Monster World IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

They dropped the Wonder Boy from this title because here you actually play as a girl!\u00a0 This 16-bit SEGA title was originally only released in Japan, but when it was first brought to the US digitally and I reviewed it<\/strong><\/a>, I was floored.\u00a0 It was made in 1994, late in the 16-bit lifecycle when those kinds of games were starting to get really good.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the makers of Shantae were inspired by this game, since both are very similar.\u00a0 They released a 3-D remake of this one last year.\u00a0 Too bad that one\u2019s not on here, but since it was recently released on its own, I guess I can understand why it\u2019s not here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And those are all the games.\u00a0 You can also toggle how you view the games, save at any time, and rewind with the menu features.\u00a0 There are some problems with this collection, though.\u00a0 One is that some of the goals and objectives in these titles are a bit obtuse, but that\u2019s just the nature of these kind of games.\u00a0 But a bigger problem I had was not all the Wonder Boy games are on this collection, so it doesn\u2019t feel complete.\u00a0 Like the shooter Monster Lair isn\u2019t on here, nor is Dragon\u2019s Trap<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 And it would\u2019ve been really neat to have different versions of these games or other remakes and sequels like Monster Boy.\u00a0 What\u2019s even worse is that there is a collection that fixes a lot of these problems, and it\u2019s called the Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection.\u00a0 But it\u2019s only available physically and is super limited and hard to get.\u00a0 So if you can\u2019t get that one, at least this collection is an alternative.<\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wonder Boy Collection is rated E for Everyone with ESRB descriptors of Mild Fantasy Violence and Alcohol Reference.\u00a0 You hit cartoony enemies with weapons and they disappear when defeated, and you just fall off the screen when you lose.\u00a0 Some of the shops ask if you want beer.\u00a0 Reading skill is needed for the text, and younger gamers may need help with the more difficult areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 80s and early 90s, Wonder Boy was a 2-D platforming series by SEGA and Westone.\u00a0 It was a bit more popular in Japan than in the US, but the Wonder Boy series also has ties with Hudson\u2019s Adventure Island games, which were a bit more popular in the States.\u00a0 For the longest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22363,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22361\/revisions\/22363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}