Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

A beautiful and faithfully recreated (emulated) masterpiece of the original. One of the few games I bought up front without waiting for a "sale" and well worth the cash. This isn't some unity remake but a really nice recreation from the ground up using it's own game engine. in the style of the Monkeys Island remakes, you can switch between the SMS and remake graphics, music and sound on the fly. Gameplay is as you would expect from the original, well identical in fact apart from the added bonus of having widescreen support. It's actually running the ROM in the background with hooks to perfectly move the modern components. Art is beautiful, the characters are well drawn, well animated and move and control very nicely. If you peruse the files, you'll discover the concept and final artwork. Picking nits, I would say that mouse-man could be less "bobby" Scenery is also great and small touches like the chequered squares getting slightly bigger as mouse-man sticks to them is a subtle but nice touch. Music is great, and sound effects well done. If you play around with the game, you can see the SDK used to create it, cheat and spawn yourself around and for the game, change the art, level assets and tinker around. (Change in Settings.cfg) As others have said, this game plays great for a modern game, frustratingly hard in parts with crazy kick-back but that's the challenge we loved it back in the day.

Well I love that you can switch between original and remake at any point in play, both graphics and music. So I love the original game, visually and sonically. I think the new, hard-drawn, 2D graphics are great. I still prefer 2D cartoon animation and I guess the graphics match that of the TV and film cartoons of 1989, when the game was first released, so you could say, they are the graphics that the game might have had, if resources had allowed it. The music is a different story. I've heard some excellent remakes of '80s game music e.g Double Dragon and Double Dragon II, recently re-released with the music rearranged to sound as the music might have sounded in the '80s, had it been done with real drums, guitar, saxophone etc., sounding new wave and heavy metal. I don't think Wonder Boy's music has been re-arranged like that and I don't think it suits the game. Basically the new music doesn't rock. It now sounds like classical, jazz and folk. A lot of chiptune music in the '80s and '90s had elements of synth-pop, heavy metal, jazz and classical. I wish the rearranged music was more electronic i.e electric guitar and synthesizer. But at least we can combine the new graphics with the original music if we wish(we can also choose been the standard PSG and FM synthesizer versions). I don't much like the new hidden stages, the main purpose of which is to acquire a new sword, even more powerful than the Legendary Sword. They're very difficult and a bit boring and unnecessary.

This remake gives the game a nice visual and audio facelift, while at the same time giving the option to switch to old visuals and sound (it even includes FM option for retro audio) and ability to mix and match options to your liking. Meanwhile, controls and base gameplay were left untouched which may cause some minor annoyances. Controls feel a bit stiff and less fluid than the visuals presented, and the difficulty (I played on Normal) while very manageable, makes you restart from town even if you died while fighting a boss. Fortunately areas aren't particularly long for retries to become unbearable. In short: it's a game with beautiful hand drawn visuals that still plays like a game made in 1989.

OK, so let's start with a little history of Wonder Boy: The original game (let's call it WB1) was an 8-bit game, released on more than one platform (including the Sega Master System). It was no more than a side-scrolling Donkey-Kong type of game, where you had to jump, throw "bombs", etc -- I see it as little more than practice for the devs, who probably had a great time making it. Wonder Boy 2 (WB2) was also an 8-bit game (AFAIR only released for the Master System), which was a complete new kettle of bananas, and was a lot of fun. You had to buy swords, shields, armour, and even boots, to move through the levels (which were full of fighting and puzzles). Good stuff! The next incarnation was the 8-bit WonderBoy 3. Here was a Wonder Boy who could change into lions, birds, mini-men, etc, to enter open-world areas that were only accessible if you could fly, walk under low rocks, etc. It was an absolutely brilliant game! I'm certain that you've heard the "this was one of my favourite games" songs on GOG before, but it goes way beyond just my liking it; it was superb. A really wonderful game -- no pun intended. But then came another Wonder Boy 3: a 16-bit game for the Megadrive (Genesis). This was something of an adaptation of WB2, and was really great to play. I awaited eagerly for the 16-bit version of the 16-bit WB3!!! ... Which was utter shite! The 16-bit WB3 for the Megadrive (Genesis) wasn't an adaptation of WB3 for the Master System, at all. It was more like a stupidly unwanted, and not at all fun-to-play "upgrade" of the original WB1. And so much for the historical sh1te. This is now. The WB3 in this release is not, as some have suggested, an upgrade of WB2; it's an upgrade of WB3! I didn't know this for sure until I installed and ran it, but you can imagine how I felt when I discovered that it was not just another adaptation of a "good" game (WB2), but one of a "SUPER/SMASHING/GREAT!!!" game. I've played it for a couple of hours (taking my time; basking), and what I've seen is that it's a beautifully crafted upgrade of a superb game -- except for one thing... The music absolutely sucks! The 8-bit music in the original was far, far better! Far, far more cinematic! Can you believe that? I didn't think I could, but it's true! If there's an upgrade, I want the original, clanky, 8-bit music!

When we can have fantastic retro games like Shovel Knight or The Messenger, there really is no excuse to make a re-rlease of an old game feel this clunky. Your character wil slip and slide all over the place. Level Design is meandering, your attacks are so dinky it makes hitting anything a chore, jumping feels like lifting a boulder on Jupiter. If all you wanted is an exact copy of the original Wonderboy, there you go. If you want a game upgraded to modern design sensibilties, you're outta luck. The nice looking animations are the only added positive in the game, stay far away from Wonderboy.