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»Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap
"Simply wonderful."
It’s odd to look back at Sega in the pre-Sonic days. I mean, their old
mascot, Alex Kidd, had some decent games on the Master System, but just
couldn’t make the jump onto the 16-bit generation. Stranger still would
be the other games Sega made in the old SMS days. Try comparing the
original Shinobi to the Genesis games, you’ll be in for quite a
surprise. Stranger still would be the journey of Wonder Boy. It’s
likely that most old-school gamers have played the original in some
form a little company by the name of Hudson took the engine and
replaced the protagonist with a little guy in a red baseball cap, and
rechristened the game Adventure Island. From that point, the Wonder Boy
games changed dramatically, ditching the original protagonist (the
caveman Tom-Tom) for a new character (a knight simply known as “Wonder
Boy”) and changed the game’s engine completely. This new form of Wonder
Boy went on to survive all the way into the mid-point of the Genesis’s
existence (well, at least in Japan).
The game starts at the
climax of the game’s prequel, Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Wonder Boy
has finally fought his way to the final lair, home of the Mecha Dragon.
Fighting valiantly, he defeats the Mecha Dragon with ease. However, all
is not well. Despite his victory, Wonder Boy finds himself transformed
from a human into a hideous Lizard-Man. In order to regain his
humanity, Wonder Boy must obtain the mystical item known as the
Salamander Cross. In order to find it, he must defeat other dragons,
each cursing (or blessing, depending on your viewpoint) him with new
forms such as Hawk-Man or Mouse-Man.
For the most part, this
game takes after its prequel. It’s a platformer with some RPG elements
thrown in there. What RPG elements, you ask? Well, WB can be equipped
with three types of items: swords, shields and armors. As time goes on,
stronger items become available, but some weapons have special
abilities, like making WB impervious to lava damage or increase the
amount of gold obtained from defeating monsters, which brings me to
another point: all monsters drop some kind of reward when defeated.
Sometimes it’s gold, while other times it’s a healing item (hearts of
varying sizes).
There are a few changes in the game’s structure
compared to its prequel. First off, while Monster Land was divided into
stages like most platformers and side-scrollers of the day, The
Dragon’s Trap takes an approach that’s a little more “Metroidvanian”.
The entire world is connected, with Wonder Boy’s hometown acting as the
main hub base (with item shops, an inn, the Church and the entrances to
the various other areas on both sides of the town).
There are
also the aforementioned transformations. After defeating one of the
Dragons, Wonder Boy receives a new transformation ability. The first of
these is the Lizard-Man form, which is quite similar to the Human form
found in the prologue, only lacking all of the power-ups and replacing
the sword attack with a long-range fire breath attack. Other forms
allow Wonder Boy to swing his sword in an arc and swim freely in water.
WB is generally stuck in one form; transformations can’t be changed at
any point. Instead, one must use the transformation chambers or a
special item to transform. Shifting between forms is a necessity in
this game, which adds a nice puzzle element to it.
The graphics
in this game aren’t too bad. Everything fits onto the screen well
enough, the colors are bright, and the game itself looks better than
Wonder Boy in Monster Land, which is to be expected. The game’s
soundtrack is also pretty good, especially with its repetitions of a
main theme (dubbed “The Dragon’s Trap”) in various sections of the
game. The sound effects, on the other hand, are pretty much standard
for the time.
I’ll be honest with you folks: this has to be one
of the best platformers on the Game Gear. This doesn’t exactly mean
that this game is immaculate when it comes to replay, but it ends up
better than the average platformer. The major point against The
Dragon’s Trap’s replay value would be the password system, which due to
the numerous elements of the game, ends up at about 20 characters per
password. Ah, well. You can’t win them all. Still, it’s a fun game that
holds up even to this day. There are other releases of the game,
including Dragon’s Curse on the Turbo-Grafx 16, the original Sega
Master System version, as well as the Japan-only Sega Ages Wonder Boy
release for the PS2, which contains all of the games in the series.
Article by: Wolfdogg
Posted on: Jul. 29th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| It’s a great game, ‘nuff said. |
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Graphics |
| The colors look nice and everything’s clear. Not bad for a SMS port. |
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Sound |
| The music’s not too bad. Sound effects are a bit bland though. |
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Replay Value |
| It’s a pretty good game, and while it may not have immediate replay, it’s more likely than not that you’ll revisit this game down the road. |
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