[Loki Laufeyson]

so i recently completed this game for the first time ever.
it's a metrovania for the master system. most of the obstacles preventing you from progressing are overcome by changing form, which happens every time you defeat a boss. field balm tells me there's a lot of sequence breaking possible in this game, but i guess you'll have to wait for him to post to hear more about that.

i'm trying not to reveal too many details about the game, so that you all go and play it, but i will tell you one thing to try and sell it better: in a bizarre parallell to symphony of the night, you start the game at the end of the previous wonderboy game, and it starts properly straight after you kill that game's final boss.
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[kthorjensen]

Yeah this is a pretty fascinating game, although I've only played the TG-16 version.
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[starblood]

I bet you are going to try Super Adventure Island II

[Loki Laufeyson]

i don't know that game. should i?
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[starblood]

It is the only AI besides IV that felt like Wonder Boy

[field balm]

There's not really that much sequence breaking, but it has another parallel to symphony of the night in that at a certain point, if you know where to look you can get equipment to break the game open much earlier than you're meant to.

This was one of my favourite games growing up (sms kids unite), and IMO one of the most underrated platformers. I'm planning to do a fairly in depth post outlining some of the main stuff in this game later today, and maybe another detailing some of the ways to break it for people who aren't planning to experience themselves.

[Laurel Soup]

Which version should I play?
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[Loki Laufeyson]

i've only played the master system, and i can't imagine any of the others being any better than it. i recommend emulating so you can save, though. the original uses passwords, like nes metroid
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[Loki Laufeyson]

[haze]

love this game, though I only got up to the end and then didn't finish it.

whenever people fondly remember Zelda II or Castlevania II, I recommend to them to play Wonder Boy III. it feels like a more polished version of what those games were attempting to do, while also shorter and more concise. none of the excess weight.
unless they LIKED the levelgrinding in Zelda II, or the confusing/mistranslated/lying villagers and illogical puzzles in CV II, then they just have bad taste.

[field balm]

Haze’s explanation was spot on - this is a cruft-free action-rpg platformer in the vain of zelda 2, metroid et all.

You begin at the end of the previous game, in the castle before fighting the last boss. You begin fully powered up, in your most powerful form (human). When you defeat the boss, Meka Dragon, he places a curse on you, transforming you into lizard-man. The goal of the game is to break free of this curse.

Progression through the game is mainly made by locating a new dungeon and killing the dragon inside, which will transform you into your next form, opening up new routes of exploration. The forms are Lizard-man (weak, but has an unlimited missile attack), mouse-man (can walk vertically and upside down on certain blocks), piranha-man (can-swim), lion man (sword swing covers 180 degree arc instead of straight in front, high charisma), and hawk-man, who can fly.

The world design is fairly minimal, but charming. After beating the first boss, you begin in the town of Aseldo, which contains a few shops, a nurse, a smoking pig that gives you passwords, Aseldo tower, and a house without a door. This is absolutely one of my favourite environments ever, a combination of nostalgia and my love of streamlined, yet evocative level design.

Here is an (edited) image of the town, which functions as a sort of hub between the rest of the map.



You can clearly see several avenues available using different powers. Through the second door from the right is the entrance to an aqueduct which leads to a beach scene. Through the top door to the right of the tower is a desert scene. Once you get mouse-man you can climb over the blocks on the left to a jungle. Acquiring an item lets you break the gold blocks over the well. Once you can fly you can enter the door on the top left, and fly over the bricks to the right.

Most of the dungeons are fairly straight ahead, castlevania type affairs, and the boss battles always happen in a featureless room.



meka dragon



There are only three stats - Attack points, Defence points and Charisma Points. Attack is influenced by the weapon you have equipped, Defence by your armour and shield, and Charisma by your armour. Each form also has different stats.

While the first 2 are self explanatory, charisma is weird for a game like this, but important. Most items can only be purchased from shops, and which items you can see is dependant on your Charisma.

On top of this, a lot of shops are invisible, so can only be found by pressing up in a likely looking location. You will have to do a bit of grinding for cash if you want to get the best stuff.


Charm stones can be found in chests or randomly dropped, and are useful for increasing your charisma. If you have 99, you can access a boss select through secret doors in town - like many of the secrets in this game, its not sure if this was intentional or left over debug stuff.

Keys are used to open important doors, and you can only carry one at a time.

The shields are only stat-boosters, but the swords and armour can have intersting attatched properties, like breaking or creating blocks, and armour that makes you immune to lava. There is a combination of armour that makes your health refill whenever you die - whether this is a bug, or a reward for exploring is unknown.

On the right is your magic, which function similarly to sub weapons in castlevania. You have a limited stock, which are randomly dropped by monsters. One interesting thing i only realised lately, and makes the game quite a bit easier at parts, is that if you catch a boomerang you don’t expend any stock.

I’m not going to talk about any more details because this game can be finished in about six hours the first time, but I will do a post about some of the broken stuff you can do sometime soon, hopefully after more people play through it.

also, the music is pretty great - here are some of my favs, the first dungeon theme, town theme and misc danger theme. (someone tell me how to embed youtube links :( )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um_4wOM8_N0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok68Z2mpSr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUctiDA7PmE

[Levi]

Man lying villagers are what's good in life.

So like what's up with this series? I'm pretty sure I played the first one, which featured a bare-chested youth throwing hammers at slugs while riding a skateboard. How do you get from there to metrovania?

[field balm]

this site has a pretty good explanation - http://www.insertcoyne.com/wonderboy/wonderboy01.html

basically, 'wonderboy' is the first game, then the rest are 'monster world' games, with wonderboy thrown in for recognizability

[username]

I picked up the Sega Ages Wonderboy collection on a whim a few years ago and while I wasn't in love with the earlier games, Monster's Trap was pretty excellent. Very odd series progression where you go from a standard platformer to a basic adventure game to a weird scrolling shooter to a very charming Metrovania but hey, it worked.

As odd as it sounds, I ended up playing through the included Game Gear version over the SMS version as for whatever reason it felt just a bit tighter and a bit more intimate due to the reduced viewing area (the town is a few blocks shorter because of this and I think it helps).
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[Rud31]

Sword is too fucking short.
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[Schwere Viper]

I guess I'm the weird one. I grew up playing the hell out of the first game - the platformer - and didn't even know about any ARPG sequels until much, much later.

Still enjoy Wonder Boy the most.
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[Persona-sama]

[field balm]

mouse-man's sections are frustrating for that exact reason. that and the way you grind to a halt as you attack makes jump-stabbing things pretty integral. your shield absorbs 100% of projectile attacks if spaced properly (i think?) so you can just let most stuff come to you. Your sword stays out in front of you for a decent amount of time, so they'll run into it. Also the main reason the boomerang is so important, i literally smacked my forehead when i realized they are reusable.

[Rud31]

[Loki Laufeyson]

when i played ys iii, i thought it was hard to the point of being practically unplayable. that was a few years ago, though
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[Broco]

Tried this for a few hours yesterday. Dunno, this game has some good ideas but it feels like it was made in a rush. The artwork and music aren't as nice as Wonderboy 2, and the movement physics feel floaty and wrong (probably because they put in too many variants). The levels have too many featureless hallways and go on interminably. And the Metrovania format doesn't work very well with the outdoor theming (underground beach? desert in the sky?). I miss all the secret coin-hunting and the bite-sized levels from Wonderboy 2.

Thanks for explaining CP, it really wasn't clear what that stat did. I had assumed shop items got unlocked by beating bosses, which would've been a more natural difficulty balancer. That explains what you're saying about breaking the game open, it had looked to me like it was carefully designed for that to be impossible.

[field balm]

yeah, the first castle in the game is actually above the beach scene too, it looks pretty stupid on vgmaps - http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/MasterSystem/WonderBoyIII-Dragon'sTrap-Village.png

also the 4d doors do not add to the sense of a real space at all!

i get the feeling that the hidden doors are meant to replace the coin hunting, but it's no way near as fun.

I did my first real sequence breaking run last week, and got every item in the game just after beating the 3rd boss (when you become piranha man), then went straight to the 6th and final one. I have a suspicion it is possible as soon as you beat the 2nd boss, which i'll try soon (and document, i suppose). It should only take an hour or 2 if i don't die a bunch. Tempted to do it with the minimum amount of hearts as well, but i'll probably get sick of save state abuse.
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