We don’t cover Sega stuff a whole lot here. I grew up a Nintendo kid, so I definitely have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Sega stuff. As I’ve gotten into checking out stuff to fix my “blind spots”, I’ve started playing some of the Wonder Boy series. The number one thing I’ve found is it has a bit of confusing naming scheme. Don’t believe me? Okay, here’s the titles in the series:
- Wonder Boy
- Wonder Boy in Monster Land
- Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair
- Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap
- Wonder Boy V: Monster World III
- Monster World IV
Want to be even more confused? The NES game Hudson’s Adventure Island is a modified port of Wonder Boy. None of the sequels in the Adventure Island series have any connection to the Wonder Boy series. I can almost never keep any of them straight in my head. If you really want a deep dive on the series, go ahead and give the article about the series from Hardcore Gaming 101 a read. It should clear up any of that, but you’ll still probably struggle with the names.
Back on track, I bought the Sega Vintage Collection: Monster World Collection on the Xbox 360 and then the Playstation 3 (the Dualshock 3, for being a controller I dislike a lot, has a far surperior D-pad) and played a fair amount of them. And like them!
Fans of the series have had some good things going for them. A while ago Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom was announced. Set to release in the later half of 2016 for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a new game in the confusingly named series that started off life as Flying Hamster II: Knight of the Golden Seed. Game Atelier, the studio behind the development of Cursed Kingdom, was given access to the original assets by Ryuichi Nishizawa, creator of the original Wonder Boy series through a licensing deal. The game also has a rather impressive amount of people working on the soundtrack. In charge of the music production is the legendary Yuzo Koshiro (ActRaiser, Streets of Rage, Ys) and Motoi Sakuraba (Dark Souls, Star Ocean series, Tales series), Michiru Yamane (Castlevania series), Keiki Kobayashi (Ace Combat series), and Takeshi Yanagawa (Culdcept, 7th Dragon, Etrian Odyssey Untold 2: The Fafnir Knight) will also be contributing to the soundtrack.
All in all, it looks like this one has a lot of potential to make long time fans happy as well as attract some newer ones!
Next bit of news is a remake of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, originally released on the Sega Genesis in 1989. Keeping the same title but losing the numbered part of it, The Dragon’s Trap is being developed by Lizardcube and published by Dot Emu. Ryuichi Nishizawa is also consulting on this one, so both of these projects look to be in good hands!
As of right now, there is no release date and its development is being listed as for PC and consoles. Which consoles it’s being brought to has yet to be revealed. I’ll certainly update as more information becomes available.
