Introduction
After a few months hiatus (and many hours in Subnautica, one of the best games I ever played) I’m back with a title that was on my radar since I watched its launch trailer a few years ago: Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, developed by Lizardcube, the French people responsible for Streets of Rage 4, and published by Dotemu. The title was released in 18 April 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox, and Switch. In 8 June 2017, the game was released on PCs. It also has ports for iOS and Android.
The game is a remake of the 1989 game Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, which was originally developed by Westone Bit Entertainment and published by Sega for the Sega Master System (SMS) in 1989. If you don’t remember them for their other games, it’s because they are mostly known only by the Wonder Boy franchise. Ryuichi Nishizawa, series creator and one of the founders of Westone, took the role of director, designer and main-programmer on the SMS and Game Gear versions. Shinichi Sakamoto, a composer and sound designer who primarily worked on previous Westone games, provided the original score. Also worked on the game Takanori Kurihara, also on programming duties and Hiromi Kurihara, responsible for the art design.
The studio behind the remake, Lizardcube, was founded in Paris in 2015, and is a two-men team comprised of Ben Fiquet, responsible for art and animation, and Omar Cornut, responsible for the technical aspects of the production. Cornut is an administrator and active member at SMS Power, a website dedicated to the preservation of Sega’s 8-bit consoles history, media, and software. They have a lot of information about these systems, rare dumps, and even development resources.
Cornut is also the creator of the Meka multi-system emulator. It pays homage to Meka Dragon, Dragon’s Trap first boss. It was a well known emulator in the early days of emulation, and still is regarded as a very good piece of software thanks to its debugging tools, ability to emulate obscure peripherals, and exotic games. But, even if it still receives updates, there are more user-friendly options available if you do not require its unique components.
Thanks to his knowledge on the SMS, Cornut was able to dump a copy of the game and reverse-engineer it to better understand how it works and ensure that no aspect of the game was missing. After finally analyzing and understand the game’s code, he was able to recreate the “feeling” of the original. That means that timings, physics, and reactions appear unchanged, even though there are changes to the physics, as the game now runs at 60 FPS, whilst the original runs on half of that, a widescreen aspect ratio, and so on.
Lizardcube’s dev blog is a wonderful read if you have the time and want more details about the remake’s creation
The original Dragon’s Trap game garnered high scores from many publications of the time, even being considered the best game of 1989 for a Sega console by Electronic Gaming Monthly. The Game Gear version was also well received, getting a score of 7.5 from Beep! Mega Drive, a Japanese magazine dedicated to Sega consoles. The remake was also well received, with high scores in many publications, and a Metacritic score of 79 for the Nintendo Switch and PS4 ports, and an 80 on the Xbox One.
So how the remake fares? Let’s find out.
A bit about the franchise
Before we begin, it’s worth noting that, while Westone controlled the rights for the game design and concepts of Wonder Boy, Sega owned the name. In practice, the developer could license gameplay elements or even commission ports of the games to non-Sega consoles, but without the label, as Sega usually reserved it for their platforms only. This is why the game received different titles or had to be adapted into different games with similar gameplay whenever present in the Turbographx-16/PC-Engine. It’s also important to note that the series is called Monster World in Japan.
A Game Gear reprogrammed version (as the official manual calls it) was released in March 1992 in Japanese and European markets. In Japan, it’s called Monster World II: Dragon’s Trap, as it is considered a sequel to the second Wonder Boy, therefore, the second in the Monster World subseries.
An intriguing fact is that in Brazil, during the late ’80s until the discontinuation of the Dreamcast, Sega products were licensed and manufactured by a company called Tec Toy. They released Dragon’s Trap, the text was translated into Portuguese, and certain characters were replaced with those from Turma da Mônica (Monica’s Gang —a children’s gang, not a criminal one), a beloved comic book in the country. It was called Turma da Mônica em o Resgate.
Nowadays, the series is still alive thanks to some remakes and the rereleases of older titles in special collections. They are easy targets for modern ports, thanks to their quality and easy to play. There is also one last main title from 2018, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, developed by Game Atelier and published by FDG. I couldn’t find if the developer and publisher couldn’t strike a deal with Sega or if they didn’t want to diminish their profits with a license.
What does the future hold for Wonder Boy? We can only hope the interest in the series keep growing, so we can see new titles, instead of a new remake or a new compilation.
In any case, you may be wondering where is Wonder Boy IV. Actually, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap is the fourth game. Although the lack of an international release and the delay in creating a console copy of Dragon’s Lair are the most likely explanations, we don’t truly know why Sega chose to not release a Wonder Boy IV. The first home ports of Dragon’s Lair were released in Japan only in August 1989 on the PC-Engine, while Dragon’s Trap was released in North America just a month later. Sega probably thought players would be confused and opted to release Dragon’s Trap as the third Wonder Boy.
The Narrative
The game picks up at the ending of Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Book, our main character, enters Meka Dragon’s castle and defeats it without difficulty.
Unfortunately, he (she if you picked Wonder Girl as I did) is cursed and turns into Lizard-Man. Finding the Salamander Cross, a magical object with the power to lift curses, is the only way to return to being human. So Book departs into an exciting new adventure, accumulating curses, going on a dragon killing spree, and wreaking havoc across Monster Land.
Presentation
Dragon’s Trap is playable with either the original Master System graphics and sound or with updated hand-drawn visuals and orchestral sound.
If you decide to go full retro, you’ll notice that the Master System’s graphics are quite impressive for an 8-bit console, with its vivid palette, good animation, and well-made sprites of your character and its cursed forms, enemies, and bosses. Each area in Monster Land is easily distinguishable from each other due to their different themes and obstacles. However, the backgrounds are too simplistic for modern gamers, and I don’t believe there is one instance of parallax scrolling in the entire game (yes, it was possible on the SMS). They are fine for an 8-bit console, but nothing exceptional for today’s standards.
The Lizardcube developers did a great job with their scaling options, so you can play the game in full screen at various resolutions without anything seeming stretched and deformed.
Although the songs are lively and go well with the locations’ different themes, but I probably won’t be listening to them on my free time. Highlihgs to “The Danger Zone” and “The Monster Lair”, my favorites.
Normally, I would play this game with the original graphics and music, but the updated visuals reimagined soundtrack are too amazing to pass up (sorry, Wonder Boy purists!). The new hand-drawn characters, enemies, and locations are stunning. They feature a cartoonish style and have a gorgeous, soft palette similar to a watercolor painting. Fiquet created them traditionally, frame by frame. The backgrounds stand out thanks to the parallax scrolling, a detail absent in the original game. It’s difficult to resist falling in love with the new graphics and only using them.
French musician Michael Eyre composed the new score, with additional arrangements by Romain Gauthier (who is also the sound designer). It’s a magnificent score that enhances the new visuals and makes the remake a wonderful experience. Geyre’s orchestration of the Master System’s simple tunes was impeccably done, as they will immediately invoke the original themes. The newer technology and bigger budget allowed the use of real instruments, played by 18 musicians. It’s available in bandcamp with 33 main tracks and 56 bonus tracks. Even if the game doesn’t pique your attention, you should still go and listen to it.
But how do you switch between the older graphics and soundtrack and the newer ones? The developers at Lizardcube probably were aware that players wouldn’t be swapping modes if they had to pause the game to access a menu, or worse, if changing the assets resulted in a complete restart of the game. In order to address this issue, Dragon’s Trap gives the player the option to seamlessly switch between the original and rebuilt graphics by simply pressing two buttons—one for the audio and the other for the visuals. Even better, you can play with Master System visuals while listening to the updated soundtrack or using the newer graphics with the old chiptunes audio.
There are no changes regarding the gameplay, hitboxes or to any other element. It’s amazing how they technically achieved this result, a result of Cornut knowhow of the SMS and his love for the game. More remakes should implement this kind of functionality.
Finally, you can also unlock some original artwork, concept art and a few audio sessions to look at the gallery.
Mechanics
The game is an action-adventure platform with some light role-playing and metroidvania elements. In other words, you explore in a non-linear fashion, sometimes having to return to locations already explored with a new ability to reach new areas or find secret ones. Interestingly, in Japan, the game is considered an action RPG.
The game’s hook are the five cursed forms Wonder Boy can acquire after defeating the dragon bosses: Lizard-Man, Mouse-Man, Piranha-Man, Lion-Man, and Hawk-Man. You can also use the Hu-Man form (or Hu-Girl form) after beating the game. They all play somewhat differently from one another, with due to differences in speed, damage output, and how many hits they can take before dying.
Each form has their own attributes in addition to unique abilities that are required to enter particular areas of the game, similarly to a metroidvania. For instance, Dragon-man spits fire, Mouse-Man can attach to some walls and ceilings, Piranha-Man can swim, Lion-man can hit higher and lower than other forms, Hawk-Man can fly, and Hu-man can… well, it looks nice. To switch between forms, at first you must enter a special area, but later on, an item allows you to do it whenever you like.
The world of Dragon’s Trap in centered around a hub village, from which you access the other areas. Every time you die, you will restart here. It also houses a hospital and a weapon and armor store.
You’re free to explore the game, killing the monsters on your path and finding new items and treasures along the way. Some areas will require the use of a special ability from one of your cursed forms to be accessed, forcing you to backtrack and revisit the same area a few times.
Moving throughout the game isn’t challenging as there are no mazes, nor useless dead ends that force you to retake your steps, neither difficult jumps that you must master to progress. The character will gather some momentum as they move, which can be problematic when timing jumps or striking against enemies. Nothing that will make it impossible to progress, just something to get used to.
Every form in the remake—including Hu-man—has a hidden area where you can locate a charm stone. Find all six to unlock secret doors around the village, that will let you fight the game’s bosses. On the Master System and TurboGrafx-16 games, 99 of these stones were scattered around the game, and you had to find them all to unlock the same content. Thank you, Lizardcube for sparing us from a Collect-a-Thon.
The game autosaves, so you don’t need to worry about it. Still, the eye-patched pig gives you passwords when you enter the church. You can use them on the Master System game, and you can use your old passwords on the remake. That’s incredible!
Your character’s attack and defense stats are the game’s only RPG components. You can increase them by purchasing or finding new equipment, so if an enemy hits too hard or takes too long to kill, probably your character is under-equipped. Your life is measured in hearts, and you can increase it by finding new hearts inside chests. This streamlined RPG mechanics give the game an arcade feel. According to a 2012 [interview with Ryuichi Nishizawa] (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/interview-ryuichi-nishizawa-wonder-boy/) from Hardcoregaming 101, he was inspired by Wizardry to incorporate role-playing elements since Wonder Boy in Monster Land.
Besides your sword strike, you have a few consumable items available: Fireball, Tornado, Thunder, Arrows, and Boomerang. They must be gathered after killing enemies in order to be used, but you will lose everything if you die. You can also use your shield to defend from projectiles.
Potions serve as a way to revive your character whenever you die, and you acquire one by buying or through a bonus roulette every time you die.
Overall, the game is more on the easy side of difficulty if you play on Normal, offering more challenges in its exploration than in its action, since you can keep pushing ahead if while you have enough life to spare. Still, it’s really fun to explore this little world using your different forms. However, if you play in the Hard difficulty, your character will keep receiving damage after a few seconds, similarly to the first Wonder Boy. In the Extreme difficulty, besides the periodic damage, you will have only one heart for the entire game So, prepare yourself to repeat the same sections many times, to learn how to time your jumps, which enemies to kill and where you can heal.
The bosses are usually, as they have simple patterns that are easy to learn and, if you are well equipped, they won’t deal a lot of damage. They can only cause problems on Extreme difficulty, as you need to avoid taking any form of damage besides the one you automatically receive. Their design is highly diverse and a pleasure to look at in the remake.
Final Thoughts
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap is a special little game. It’s a fantastic remake of a good game. It’s beautiful art and music, together with a somewhat simple and easy, yet fun gameplay, deserve your time if you like games with non-linear exploration, action, and light role-playing mechanics. It also plays flawlessly with controllers in PCs.
The game offers around 7 or 8 hours to complete, so it’s adequately priced at $20. Some of you may have it on your Epic Games account already, so go play it.
Final opinion: Recommended.