Wonder Boy, also known as Super Wonder Boy for its Sega Mark III release in Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is and Revenge of Drancon for its Game Gear The Sega Game Gear was Sega's first handheld game console. It was the third commercially available color handheld console, after the Atari Lynx and the TurboExpress release in North America North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean; South America lies to the southeast, is a 1986 1986 was a common year that started on a Wednesday, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It was designated the International Year of Peace by the United Nations video game A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device. However, with the popular use of the term "video game," it now implies any type of display device. The electronic systems used to published by Sega Sega Corporation is a multinational video game software and hardware development company, and a home computer and former console manufacturer headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan. The company is famous for its SEGA! chant that appeared on both commercials and games like Sonic the Hedgehog. The company had success with both arcades and home consoles, and developed by Escape (now known as WestOne Bit Entertainment, not to be confused with Westone). It was the first in a long running series of games and was followed up by five sequels, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV.
Originally designed for the arcade A video arcade (also known as an amusement arcade in the United Kingdom, game center in Japan, fliperama in Brazil or as an "arcade") is a venue where people play arcade video games that are housed in colourfully-decorated cabinets. The cabinets consist of a video monitor, gameplay controls (often a joystick) and buttons, computer, it was later ported to the Sega SG-1000, Sega Master System The Sega Master System (abbreviated to SMS or Master System Japanese マスターシステム is a third-generation 8-bit cartridge-based video game console, that was manufactured and released by Sega in 1986 in North America, seven months after the original NES and in 1987 in Europe. Its original Japanese incarnation was the "Sega Mark III& and Sega Game Gear by Sega, and to the ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. Referred to during development as the ZX81 Colour and ZX82, the machine was launched as the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair to highlight the machine's colour display, compared with the black-and-white of its predecessor, the Sinclair ZX81, Commodore 64 The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of memory with sound and graphics and Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself, especially in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of by Activision Activision is an American video game developer and publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO and president is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles. Its first products were cartridges for the Atari 2600.
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Gameplay
The "Wonder Boy" in question is a character known as "Tom-Tom" - a caveman-like character whose girlfriend, by the name of Tanya, has been captured by a monster. The player must guide Tom-Tom through seven "areas", each consisting of four "rounds". The levels are made up of forests, hills, oceans, caves, ice palaces and occasionally mountains lands. The levels always run from left-to-right, with some vertical movement.
Tom-Tom can arm himself with a stone hammer, which he can throw at oncoming foes, a skateboard with which he can rush through the levels and survive one attack by an enemy, and temporary protection by a fairy which allows him to destroy foes by simply running into them. All of the aforementioned power-ups Items that confer power-ups are usually pre-placed in the game world, spawned randomly, dropped by beaten enemies or picked up from opened or smashed containers. They can be differentiated from items in other games, such as RPG, by the fact that they take effect immediately, feature designs that don't necessarily fit into the game world , and are are obtained by breaking open eggs. These eggs can also contain unpleasant surprises - curses which cause Tom-Tom to lose vitality more quickly than usual, and poisonous mushrooms which reduce Tom-Tom's vitality in one go. "Bad eggs" can be easily spotted, as they are covered in red spots, whereas "good eggs" that contain hammers, skateboards and fairies are plain white. The player must remain aware of the vitality meter, which constantly runs down at a steady pace and can only be refilled by collecting fruit throughout the level. There is also one doll to collect in each level, which doubles the bonus points awarded at the end of the level and, as already mentioned, if all dolls are collected "hidden levels" are unlocked.
At the end of every "area" (thus every four "rounds"), Tom-Tom will encounter an incarnation of chief antagonist Drancon as a boss character The first interactive game to feature a boss was dnd, a 1975 computer role-playing game for the PLATO system. One of the earliest dungeon crawls, dnd implemented many of the core concepts behind Dungeons & Dragons. The objective of the game is to retrieve an "Orb" from the bottommost dungeon. The orb is kept in a treasure room. Once defeated, Drancon's mask flies off and transforms into an item such as a tea cup or a piece of fruit for Tom-Tom to collect. Drancon then subsequently makes his escape.
A two-player mode was available, but as per many arcade titles of the era, it was a version of the one-player mode whereby each player would take alternate turns between lives.
The game also contained an hidden eighth area, which could be accessed by collecting every one of the 28 dolls in the game.
Conversions
Master System and Game Gear port
The version of Wonder Boy for the Sega Master System The Sega Master System (abbreviated to SMS or Master System Japanese マスターシステム is a third-generation 8-bit cartridge-based video game console, that was manufactured and released by Sega in 1986 in North America, seven months after the original NES and in 1987 in Europe. Its original Japanese incarnation was the "Sega Mark III& and Game Gear The Sega Game Gear was Sega's first handheld game console. It was the third commercially available color handheld console, after the Atari Lynx and the TurboExpress was a direct port of the arcade title, with some minor reductions to accommodate the more limited hardware. The Game Gear port was entitled Revenge of Drancon in North America to avoid any confusion with Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, which was released around the same time. The European Game Gear port kept the Wonder Boy title.
The graphics were lifted straight from the arcade version, but the HUD was restricted to a simple vitality bar — the score and number of lives were displayed prior to starting the level. The sound was modified slightly to adapt it to the more limited audio hardware. The graphics were brighter. The controls were modified slightly to make it possible to only perform a high jump when the run button was pressed, whereas it was possible in the arcade version to perform one simply by being in motion when jump was pressed.
However, the most important aspect that differentiated it from its arcade counterpart was the addition of "areas". Wonder Boy for the Master System and Game Gear had nine areas; this included all seven areas from the arcade original + two new areas created specifically for this version. The new areas featured unique level design different than the rest of the game. These two areas were dubbed as the fourth area and eighth area in the game. This resulted in a modification on the numbering There are many different numbering schemes for assigning nominal numbers to entities. These generally require an agreed set of rules, or a central coordinator. The schemes can be considered to be examples of a primary key of a database management system table, whose table definitions require a database design for the areas lifted from the arcade original (for example, what was the fourth area on the arcade version became the fifth area on the SMS/GG version).
As with the arcade version, collecting all dolls in the game would reveal an extra "area" which, in this case, would be the tenth area.
Non-console ports
The license to produce the home computer versions of Wonder Boy was awarded to Activision Activision is an American video game developer and publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO and president is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles. Its first products were cartridges for the Atari 2600, who produced versions of the game for the ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. Referred to during development as the ZX81 Colour and ZX82, the machine was launched as the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair to highlight the machine's colour display, compared with the black-and-white of its predecessor, the Sinclair ZX81, Commodore 64 The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of memory with sound and graphics and Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself, especially in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of in 1987 1987 was a common year that started on a Thursday, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The game was true in spirit to the original, although the levels beyond level 4 differed to allow for the necessary multi-load system. The first round of each area was always a forest, the second an ocean, the third a cave and the fourth a forest at nighttime (the C64 had round 1 at night time and round 4 during the day). This was not the case in the console and arcade versions, in which the areas provided more variation (although based on these same four themes). Interestingly, the Amstrad CPC version contained the graphics used in the C64 conversion, but the sound from the Spectrum conversion.
Some Spectrum versions were afflicted with a bug that prevented the game from preloading all four levels in 128K mode — the fourth level's graphics would not load correctly, and it would be impossible for the player to move before the game crashed and the computer rebooted within around three seconds. As a result, 128K owners were forced to boot In computing, booting is a bootstrapping process that starts operating systems when the user turns on a computer system. A boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the computer performs when power is switched on. The bootloader typically loads the main operating system for the computer into 48K mode to run the game, and did not enjoy the benefit of having all levels preloaded as was designed. Under 48K mode, however, the 128K music still worked.
Mobile phone port
In 2004 2004 was a leap year that started on a Thursday. In the Gregorian calendar, the year 2004 was the 2004th year in the Anno Domini or Common Era, the 4th year in the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century, and the 5th in the 2000s decade, Sega released a pixel-perfect conversion of the game designed for mobile phones.[1]
Nintendo Wii VC
On March 31, 2008, Wonder Boy was made available for play on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console in North America. Japan & Europe got the game a week later. The game is available for 500 Wii points, and is a direct port of the Sega Master System version.[2]
Clones
Escape/Westone had a licensing arrangement whereby they owned the rights to the game, but Sega retained rights to the main characters, bosses, and names. Because of this they teamed up with Hudson Soft Hudson Soft Company, Limited is an electronic entertainment publisher headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, with an additional office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo. It was founded on May 18, 1973. Initially, Hudson dealt with personal computer products, but has expanded to the development and to produce a conversion of the game for the NES The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe and Australia in 1985. In most of Asia, including Japan (where it was first launched in 1983), China, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines, it was released as the Family Computer (ファミリーコンピュータ?), commonly, under a new license.
To get around the licensing issue, Hudson Soft simply had the graphics of the main character and the title changed. The result was Adventure Island, which instead of featuring Tom-Tom, featured a character known as Master Higgins, who bore a striking resemblance to Tom-Tom, albeit with a hat. The game was, however, Wonder Boy in all but name. In this arrangement, once again, Hudson Soft retained the rights to the character and name, allowing them to continue to produce future games using the Adventure Island name and characters. These sequels are not based on the Wonder Boy sequels.
Arcade hardware
The game ran on Sega's proprietary System 1 hardware, based on a Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes. The Z80 and its derivatives and clones make up one of the most commonly used CPU families of all time, and, along with the MOS Technology 6502 family, processor running at 4 MHz. Audio was provided by two 2 MHz SN76496 chips with a 4 MHz Z80 co-processor. The graphics were provided by a raster video In computer graphics, a raster graphics image or bitmap is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats unit at a resolution of 256 x 224.
The game required a cabinet that provided a two-axis joystick and three input buttons - one to act a start button, two as gameplay buttons.
Critical reaction
Arcade version
The game was lauded for the detailed, bright, colorful graphics and simple addictive gameplay. Criticisms include the lack of variety and what was considered then to be an overwhelming similarity to Super Mario Bros.[3]
Amstrad CPC version
Amstrad Action awarded the Amstrad CPC version of the game 68% on its original release in 1987, and 62% on its re-release three years later.[citation needed] Computing With the Amstrad awarded the game 88% on its original release.[citation needed]
ZX Spectrum version
CRASH remained unconvinced, citing technical shortcomings, including poor character-based scrolling In computer graphics, movies, television, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, or but incrementally moves the user's view across what is apparently a larger image that is not wholly seen. A common, considerable slowdown, and confusion induced by the monochrome Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Monochrome images in neutral colors are called grayscale or black-and-white. "Monochromatic light" refers to light of a narrow frequency display.[4]. On its re-release, while quoting the aforementioned problems, the reviewer was willing to overlook them, highlighting the quality of the sprites and the fun offered by the game, and offering it 69%.[5]
Sinclair User was the most enthusiastic about the game, offering it 8 out of 10 on its original release,[6] and 72% on its re-release.[7] Your Sinclair offered 7 out of 10 on its original release[8] and 67% on its re-release.[9]
Mobile version
IGN awarded it 7.1 out of 10, praising its accuracy to the arcade original .[10]
Fan base
Wonder Boy and its sequels (as well as Adventure Island) have enjoyed a considerable fan base over the years, and the success that this has generated led to a number of sequels being produced. The final worldwide release title, Wonder Boy in Monster World, was the last, due to the series being past its commercial prime, although a sequel, Monster World IV, was released for Japanese consoles only. The fan base persists nonetheless, with a number of fan sites around the Internet, including the authors of the MEKA emulator, who have campaigned for the Wonder Boy series to be continued on the (now defunct) Dreamcast The Dreamcast is a video game console made by Sega, and is the successor to the Sega Saturn. The Dreamcast was the first entry in the sixth generation of video game consoles and was released in late 1998, before its contemporaries — Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube.
References
- ^ http://www.segamobile.com/gamespage.php?GameID=7&PageID=1
- ^ "Cruis'n USA and Wonder Boy Now Available on Wii Shop Channel!". Nintendo of America. 2008-03-31. http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/4uQJLEZJ2G__3IJq5TXii66HmIjir-lJ. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
- ^ Computer + Video Games Magazine July 1986 1986 was a common year that started on a Wednesday, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It was designated the International Year of Peace by the United Nations issue
- ^ Crash Magazine, issue 43, p. 82
- ^ Crash Magazine, issue 79, p. 49
- ^ Sinclair User Magazine, issue 65, p. 67
- ^ Sinclair User Magazine, issue 100, p.26
- ^ Your Sinclair Magazine, issue 20, p. 32
- ^ Your Sinclair Magazine, issue 54, p. 51
- ^ http://wireless.ign.com/articles/660/660043p1.html
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