Wonder Boy Review (Sega Master System, 1987)

I consider clone games to be absolutely fascinating. It might sound lame to play through the same game again but with a new set of graphics, but the licensing and culture around it is really interesting. Wonder Boy is a prime example. Technically a Sega game, this simple side scrolling platformer saw new life as Adventure Island on the original Nintendo. Both franchises went on in different directions and a few sequels later were completely unrecognizable from each other. Today we’re going to take a look at the original Wonder Boy release on the Sega Master System.

Wonder Boy throws you into the shoes of a blonde haired cave man named Tom Tom. He springs into action when his girlfriend Tina is kidnapped by the dark king, and he sets out to save her. It’s your basic girl gets kidnapped so guy hops and bops his way through an army of cartoon villains scenario here. At the very least the main character looks distinct from other protagonists of the time.

I’ve seen the game compared to Super Mario Bros. That’s somewhat of a stretch. You might as well compare it to all other side scrolling platform games because that’s what Wonder Boy is too. You may walk, hop, and throw weapons but the design is fundamentally different. Wonder Boy encourages you to go slow and plan your jumps methodically. Your main weapons in the game are rudimentary stone hatchets. Unfortunately these don’t have infinite range (thanks gravity). You need a power-up in order to use these, and without it you have no way to defeat oncoming monsters aside from a rare invincibility power-up that only lasts for a matter of seconds. There’s also a skateboard you can ride but this forces you to move forward at a constant rate. You can take an extra hit when you have this, but it makes the platforming sections much more difficult.

Wonder Boy follows platforming conventions pretty faithfully, but it does have one trick of its own. This is the vitality meter. It counts down constantly and when it runs out you lose a life. The only way to replenish this is by gathering the fruits you’ll find littered in every stage. This adds a sense of urgency, and slows down gameplay so that you won’t just be moving as fast as possible. There are many times where you’ll have to stop, and walk back to the edge of the screen to collect a banana or apple that popped up as you ran by. This feature is what gives Wonder Boy its identity.

There a few basic issues I had with Wonder Boy. First of all the level designs don’t offer a lot of variety. For the most part you’re either running along flat plains avoiding stones and enemies or you’re jumping from platform to platform doing largely the same thing. It’s too repetitive and the variety of obstacles is too small for a game of this kind even from this era. After the first few stages you’ve basically seen it all, and it’s only repeated designs with more enemies and more difficult jumps. This is not a design that lends itself well to repetition and most players will be bored.

You have a few boss fights but these are recycled. Once you’ve seen the first one you’ve seen all of them; it’s a slightly different looking foe that walks toward you in the same pattern. It fails to offer any kind of challenge in these encounters with just a few well placed hatchets and boom, you win. There’s really no patterns to memorize and you don’t even really have to dodge anything. This is yet another area where Wonder Boy fails to be inventive in any way.

Wonder Boy’s biggest issue is with its physics and controls. Tom Tom can jump as high as Mario, but by default he only hops. You have to hold down the second action button to make him leap high. I found absolutely no situation in which the little leap was helpful in any way so it’s conclusion is a bit of a head scratcher. This is especially true because it makes the normal jump more complicated to perform. Unlike in Mario you can’t change your momentum mid-air. You must commit to every leap. While this is more realistic that’s not something we play these kinds of games for. It’s annoying and leads to a lot of unnecessary deaths. The momentum should have been fixed.

Graphically this is a pretty decent looking Sega Master System game. Wonder Boy makes good use of the console’s large color palette and everything is bright and whimsical in this game. There’s also virtually no slowdown and very little flickering as well. Wonder Boy looks quite a bit better than Adventure Island on the original Nintendo. The only problem I had with the visuals is that the art style is pretty plain in my opinion. There’s not much to set it apart from the sea of generic platformers. The soundtrack is also really poor. The same song repeats through just about every level of the game, and while it’s somewhat catchy it gets old really fast. There’s very little in the way of sound effects or other details in the audio department.