New Adventure Island is a game that has always piqued my interest. The franchise made its home primarily on Nintendo consoles. I never knew it had an exclusive installment on the Turbografx-16. Honestly I didn’t know what to expect. The franchise had evolved past its days as a simple Wonder Boy clone and carved out its own identity by then. It was natural to be skeptical. After all, the word ‘new’ at the forefront of a game’s title is concerning. Does it return to the roots with new graphics, or is it an all new experience that evolves the mechanics? One can never know. I had to find out myself so I finally gave it a shot. Let’s get into it!
Master Higgins and his girlfriend are finally tying the knot. The opening sequence depicts their happy wedding day. Unfortunately it’s abruptly cut short. Shadow beings approach from the sky and kidnap the six attendees one by one, and finally Tina herself. Master Higgins has never been known to be a pacifist so he sets out to rescue everyone. The story is pretty basic stuff. It did however give me hope that this would be a continuation of the series with new gameplay mechanics instead of a fresh coat of paint.
Unfortunately this initial impression is wrong. New Adventure Island is best considered a direct sequel to the original game. This means the mechanics introduced in the sequels are completely ignored here. There are no dinosaur buddies, nor is there an item inventory where you can stockpile tools. Instead it’s good old fashioned Adventure Island in its most simple form. This is not a remake however. The stages are all new. While a few enemies are recycled most of them are brand new to the franchise here. In most ways this feels like an alternate timeline sequel to the original game. Unfortunately it follows the formula too closely and fails to add anything meaningful to it.
New Adventure Island is a side scrolling platform action game. Its most unique attributes are recycled from the other games in this franchise. For example Master Higgins cannot stomp on enemies heads. Instead he finds power-ups granting him the use of tools. All of these are thrown at foes, but have different power and trajectory. Also of note is the hunger meter. Master Higgins, despite being a rather portly fellow, has to continuously eat in order to stay alive. The meter at the top of the screen continually counts down, and is only restored by finding various fruit littered throughout each stage. If he gets too hungry (when the meter runs out) he dies and you lose a life.
In the original game Master Higgins had only hatchets he could throw at foes. These have an awkward downward trajectory that makes them useless against opponents he’s not close to. This one returns, but thankfully there are three others you can find as well. The first of these is the boomerang. It’s particularly useful in this game because it can destroy otherwise indestructible stones which cause him to trip (costing hunger points). There’s also a fireball which shoots at a completely diagonal angle but has more power than any of the others. Finally we have the spear which is the only unique weapon introduced in this game. It is thrown the farthest, but eventually falls to the ground.
This game gets the honors of having the most different tools of any Adventure Island title. At least that’s something. The skateboard also returns but it really rare. Master Higgins can ride this for a speed boost but unfortunately cannot completely stop while on it. This gets you through the stage faster but really messes with some of the platforming segments. Then there’s a fairy which grants him temporary invincibility as well as an eggplant that drains his hunger points faster. All of these are stored in eggs that you can crack open with weapons or by touching them.
Unfortunately there’s not enough variety in terms of gameplay here. Each weapon is only slightly different from each other. Sure, there are some situations where you’ll want to stick with just one but for the most part it doesn’t really matter. Other things like the skateboard are too rare in this title to make much of a difference. The game really would have benefited from including more of the mechanics from parts 2 and 3. The dinosaur buddies are sorely missed here. Their absence makes this adventure a really dull one.
Level designs are also pretty dull. New Adventure Island has six worlds with four levels apiece. Each of the overarching maps tends to follow a theme but the developers failed to come up with anything interesting here. You have your basic grasslands areas, lava zones, mountains, and ice based stages. If you’ve ever played any platformer before then this is nothing new. To make matters worse the hunger meter causes issues with pacing. Some sections require meticulous platforming. You can’t really take the time you need to plan out your hops because you often need to keep moving to find fruit. I found New Adventure Island more unforgiving than most other titles in the franchise in this regard. Master Higgins is never full for long, and I had some really close calls throughout the adventure.
Normally I love the boss encounters in this series. Pretty much every installment has at least a few creative fights, and most of these are fairly creative. Unfortunately New Adventure Island drops the ball in this regard. At first I thought the first encounter was a fluke. It was boring with a boss that just moves back and forth while spitting attacks. Unfortunately they’re all the same. The developers couldn’t even be bothered to make new graphics for them. Only the heads are different in design. Their attacks are also unique, but the patterns are all really easy to learn. Basically you just have to learn where to stand when they’re firing off attacks and you’re golden. It’s really boring and shows that the developers didn’t have any good ideas with this release.
That’s not to say that New Adventure Island is an outright bad game. It’s not. Gameplay can be mildly entertaining at times, and I had some fun with it. Unfortunately it feels like the game recycles too many of its ideas. Gameplay scenarios are repeated too often. I saw the same fire spitting snake on a hill numerous times. The same flying enemies guard the same falling platforms with fruit in almost the same patterns over and over again. After the first world it feels like too many of the scenarios repeat themselves over and over again. Sure there are little twists here and there, but New Adventure Island is sorely lacking in variety.
This one is also a fair bit more difficult than your average Adventure Island game. As I mentioned earlier it feels like Higgins is constantly on the verge of starvation unless you’re running full blast. Fruit is often placed in perilous locations which caused me to make more mistakes than I care to admit. Higgins can also only take one hit before he dies no matter the power-up he has (save for invincibility and the skateboard). I never felt like the difficulty was because it was well designed, rather, because the level designs and enemy patterns are cheap. Once I got the hang of things however I was able to run through New Adventure Island in just over an hour. Normally I would say that’s too short, but I was done with this one by that point.
The graphics aren’t great, nor are they bad. They’re just fine. Let’s start with what I liked. The game makes great use of the Turbografx-16’s color palette. It’s a bright and vibrant game and the backgrounds at times look great. In some instances they even have a fair bit of animation which is fairly impressive. I just didn’t like the character and enemy designs. Master Higgins has been made really ‘cute’ in this title. He’s shorter and more stockier than before. The enemies have minimal details, and some of the returning guys look worse than their NES counterparts. This was definitely a little disappointing. The music is decent, but incredibly forgettable. It all sounds uninspired and could basically fit any other colorful platformer geared towards kids. This is supposed to be a tropical themed game. I sure wish it sounded more like it.
