Wonder Boy

Wonder Boy/Monster World
Genres	Platform game
Developers	Westone Bit Entertainment Lizardcube
Publishers	Sega DotEmu

The Wonder Boy (ワンダーボーイ, Wandā Bōi) series, also known as the Monster World (モンスターワールド, Monsutā Wārudo) series, is a franchise of video games published by Sega and developed by Westone Bit Entertainment (formerly Escape). Beginning with the original Wonder Boy arcade game released in 1986, the game has spawned several sequels released for the Arcade, Master System, and Sega Genesis, as well as two compilation titles and two remakes by other developers. Several titles have been ported to other consoles by different publishers under different names, most notably Hudson Soft's Adventure Island adaptation of the original game.^[1]

Overview

The original Wonder Boy is a side-scrolling platformer in which the player must reach the end of the level, avoiding enemies and collecting fruit to restore a gradually reducing time meter. Aside from Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, which features similar gameplay to Wonder Boy while also incorporating shoot 'em up gameplay, the other games in the series, referred to in Japan as the Monster World sub-series, focus on a fantasy setting with role-playing game elements. Defeating enemies in these games earns money that can be used to purchase new weapons, armor, and items to make the player stronger. Many of these games have a Metroidvania approach to gameplay, in which obtaining new items or abilities can grant access to new areas in the game.^[2]

List of games

Main series

Remakes

Compilations

Modified ports

Westone, the developer of the series, owns the copyrights to each game in the series, while Sega owns the Wonder Boy trademark. Because Westone was an independent company from Sega, this created a unique situation which allowed other game companies to publish ports of the games to non-Sega platforms under license from Westone, provided that they changed the titles and characters to remove all references to "Wonder Boy" or "Monster World".

With the exception of Monster World IV, each game in Wonder Boy series has been ported to other systems by Hudson Soft. The original game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System under the name Adventure Island, which eventually spawned its own franchise. Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, and Wonder Boy in Monster World, were all released on the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine under the names Bikkuriman World, Dragon's Curse, and The Dynastic Hero respectively. Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair was ported to the TurboGrafx-CD with no notable changes, other than removing the Wonder Boy name. Another port of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, titled Saiyūki World, was developed by NMK and published by Jaleco for the Nintendo Famicom in Japan, also spawning an independently created sequel, Saiyūki World 2, which was released in North America as Whomp 'Em.

In Brazil, where the Master System received much popularity, Tec Toy released adapted versions of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, and Wonder Boy in Monster World under the names Mônica: No Castelo do Dragão, Turma da Mônica em O Resgate, Turma da Mônica na Terra dos Monstros. These games replaced the main characters with characters from Mauricio de Sousa's Monica's Gang comic book series.^[12]

Related games

Adventure Island series

Adventure Island was Hudson Soft's adaptation of the original Wonder Boy game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Due to the popularity of the game's success on the system, Hudson Soft created a series of sequels with no involvement from Westone, retaining the same gameplay style as the original game.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

In January 2015, FDG Entertainment and Game Atelier announced the development of an official sequel titled Monster Boy and the Wizard of Booze. The development team includes Ryuichi Nishizawa, one of Wonder Boy's original developers, and a co-founder of Westone Bit. The soundtrack was composed by Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, Keiki Kobayashi, Takeshi Yanagawa, and Haruka Shimotsuki.^[13] The developers chose a new name, as Sega owns the rights to name Wonder Boy. The game originally began development as an unrelated game Flying Hamster II.^[14][15][16] In July 2015, the name of the game was changed to Cursed Kingdom after criticism of the original subtitle, Wizard of Booze.^[17]

Other media

Soundtrack

A soundtrack album, the Monster World Complete Collection Original Sound Track was released in 2007. Composed by Shinichi Sakamoto and Jin Watanabe the 2-CD album was published by Wave Master (the audio division of Sega).^[18]

Comic books

Wonder Boy was adapted into two stories that ran in Fleetway's Sonic the Comic, which were loosely based on Wonder Boy in Monster World. "Wonder Boy in Demon World" ran between issues 2-9 and saw Shion, the protagonist who has a dislike of being referred to as Wonder Boy, fighting to save some people while staving off a demon curse. "Wonder Boy in Ghost Land" ran between issues 22-27, and saw Shion travel to a world of ghostly dinosaurs.

References

External links

• Official Monster World Complete Collection website from Sega (in Japanese)
• Westone Bit Entertainment (developers of the series) (in Japanese)