Wonder Boy in Monster World: Looked stupid, but was actually a lot of fun

What can I say? Our standards for gaming were pretty low back in the early 90's and even though that was the case I still remember looking at this game sleeve in Toys R Us and thinking "well, that looks stupid... pass!"

I don't recall exactly why it is that I ended up getting it regardless, but today it is actually one of the games that I have the fondest memories of on the Sega Genesis.

src

This game at first glance looks just like a myriad of other titles in the it is an adventure platformer game that is kind of cartoonish in its presentation. It was a very "innocent" title in that there was no blood in the game that I can recall and even your own death is treated as a temporary setback rather than actual death. This was back in a time when the world was kind of on the fence about whether or not it was ok to have death and blood in games and there seemed to be two teams in this controversy.

You would travel mostly towards the right of the screen on a sequence of adventures to save whatever planet or community you were in from the monsters that were causing problems in it. This of course, is the plot of 80% of all adventure games, especially back in the 90's.

src

You would travel to different zones and defeat whimsical bosses in order to progress though to the next area that would contain yet another boss. Of course the game got increasingly more difficult and you were also upgrading your equipment and getting more "hearts" to upgrade your health as time went by as well.

src

One of the most interesting aspects of the game in my opinion are the little companions that you will find along your adventures. These guys are kind of like finding an item that you would need to progress such as a little guy who headbutts certain doors that you wouldn't otherwise be able to access. In many ways that was a Metroid-vania type of addition and sometimes it would open up new areas that you were previously unaware were actually new areas.

They would also assist you in combat but don't get too excited about that since their "pew pew" attacks do so little actual damage that for the most part it is irrelevant.

src

The game appeared silly but it was actually quite long and the various stages could end up being very long and would involve several mini bosses on your way to the one sometimes very tough boss at the end. Dying could be a real pain at times since doing so at the main boss could sometimes result in you needing to repeat the entire dungeon as your save points were normally way back in the main town at an inn. Once you got really good at the game and knew the layouts and where to go you could easily go through the entire game in a couple hours. Getting to that level of knowledge, especially the patters of the bosses, took a long time to learn and I don't think I have the patience necessary to do that these days.

Little did I know that this was actually the 5th game in a series of games that had been extremely popular in Japan for quite some time but only a few of them were translated and transferred to the English speaking markets. I never actually played any of the other ones and as far as I know, there weren't any more of these games made until many years later when the franchise experienced a bit of a nostalgic boost and new games were released on the PS4 and PC. I have actually never played them and am probably going to have to go and have a look at those.

This is one of those games that I feel is probably better left in our memories rather than revisiting and destroying our fond thoughts of the game but if you do want to check it out you can get the ROM of the game for free HERE