I was always a pretty big fan of the second Adventure Island game. In my opinion it was one of the best platformers on the original Nintendo, and of the 8-bit generation overall. The franchise began as a repackaged version of a rather mediocre game called Wonder Boy. Both that and Adventure Island then went in quite different directions. Personally I always preferred Hudson Soft’s take on the franchise which focused more on refining the fundamentals of the original. It wasn’t until years later that I learned there was a third 8-bit Adventure Island title. I had such fond memories of the previous iteration that I just had to play it. After doing so I had some inner conflict about the game. On one hand Adventure Island 3 builds further upon the fundamentals of part two, but on the other it just isn’t different enough. Let’s take a look!
The story here is largely recycled from part 2. Master Higgins is a grass skirt baseball hat wearing guy living out his days in the tropics with his girlfriend Tina. One day she is kidnapped and he sets out to rescue her with the help of his dinosaur friends. Did I mention it was aliens that spirited her away this time? That’s kind of important, because there were no extra terrestrials last time. Either way the scenario is nearly identical to previous two games, but aliens. That’s the final time I’ll say it because truth be told I oversold their importance. Outside of the opening sequence there’s pretty much no story interjection to be found. That’s alright by me because after all this is an action platformer and so it’s hard to be bothered enough to care.
As I’ve already said Adventure Island 3 is a 2D platformer, and a pretty traditional one at that. Your goal is basically to move from the left side of a stage to the next dealing with assortments of baddies and environmental hazards along the way. You can walk, run, jump and use special weapons once you find them. These come in two varieties. There’s the stone axes which are thrown at an angle. This is functionally the same as it has always been and is pretty useful despite the shorter than expected range. New to the franchise is the boomerang. It’s pretty much what you would expect and in some situations is more useful (or less) than the other one. These are pretty common power-ups and most of the time will serve as your primary weapons.
The high point of Adventure Island II was the dinosaur buddies you can ride. These offered a surprising amount of gameplay variety with their different abilities. I’m happy to report that they all return here. You have a blue dinosaur that whips it’s tail at enemies, a fire breathing red palette swap, a pterodactyl that can flap it’s wings to fly, and a purple sunglasses wearing version of the Lock Ness Monster which can swim through aquatic areas much better than our portly protagonist. Adventure Island 3 only adds one new one to the mix and it’s a little disappointing to be honest. This is a green Triceratops that spins to attack foes. You’d expect it to use it’s horns but no that would make too much sense. The skateboard also returns, but for the most part it makes platforming more difficult so most of the time I skipped it.
All of these power-ups are obtained from eggs. Early on they’re easy to find and simply pop out of the environment when you walk past. Other times you’ll have to get creative. You’ll have to unveil them by jumping in just the right spot which is kind of strange, but I suppose it works. Whenever they appear they bounce in one direction. Sometimes they’ll fall somewhere inaccessible so you have to plan how you’re going to spawn them in some of the tricker sections. I really like the fact that you have an inventory which can be accessed between stages. Here you can store all of the power-ups and use them when needed. The most rare of the items you get from these eggs are keys. These either transport you to bonus areas where you can rack up some points or allow you to skip entire worlds.
Of course you can’t mention Adventure Island without at least touching upon the hunger system. It returns here, and Hudson Soft made pretty much no changes. You have a meter on the screen and as time passes (or you trip on boulders) this drains. When it’s empty you die and lose a life. You can replenish this by going for fruits and other food dangling in midair, but this isn’t exactly plentiful in many of the later stages. There’s a real sense of urgency to feed Higgins, and it’s a creative way to force you to go out of your way or put yourself in danger to acquire these items. The underwater stages can be especially brutal in this regard because our pudgy protagonist swims slowly, and the developers love putting food at different ends of the screen forcing you to take your time. I like the system overall.
Adventure Island 3 is built on a solid foundation. The levels have a lot of variety and are often very well designed. Being forced off the beaten path to collect fruits to stay alive sounds annoying, but the sense of urgency is unique for the genre. My only real complaint is that there just aren’t enough new gameplay elements here. It’s sad when the big new addition is that Master Higgins can now duck. Admittedly this is helpful (especially when using the boomerang) but it’s minor at best. Also, for some reason you can no longer scroll the screen to the left. This means there’s no backtracking of any kind. I’m not a fan of this. The returning dino friends and inventory system is great. Even the boomerang is cool. The fact that we get so few new (or even different) power-ups is ultimately disappointing.
Those complaints would have been forgotten had the graphics been upgraded. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Adventure Island 3 looks almost identical to its predecessor. Hudson Soft recycled almost all of the sprites so the returning characters, enemies, and environmental elements look identical. In some ways Adventure Island 3 actually looks worse. Take the sky stages for example. You have cloud floors, and blue skies. Aside from the characters and enemies that’s it. Would it have killed them to throw in a few background clouds here and there, or maybe some parallax scrolling? Ultimately the game looks decent but it just isn’t upgraded in any significant way. Most of the soundtrack is also recycled. There are a few new sound effects and songs here and there, but these are few and fare between. I like the music plenty, but some new tunes doesn’t seem like too much to ask here.
