Re: Dragon's Curse
I'm going to copy and paste my comments from over at CAG, but in short - it's like Zelda II/Symphony of the Night/Metroid - get abilities by morphing into other creatures to access new areas, buy equipment to increase your stats, probably about 10 hours of gaming or so. I really recommend it.
Also, a Genesis sequel - "Wonder Boy in Monster Land" - is also coming to the VC, and I will get that one the second I can.
Also, quick edit: I mention a site to check out, and I doubt copying/pasting the posts from CAG brought it over, so here it is:
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/wonderboy/wonderboy.htm-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wonder Boy was originally a sort of answer to Adventure Island. In fact, the first one is damn near a ripoff, complete with scateboard and crap. It's the Giana Sisters to Mario Brothers.
Anyway, after that one, it went in an entirely new direction, and gave Wonder Boy a sword. So it became a side-scroller, but you had some RPG elements - you could get better armor, boots, helmets, increase your life, etc.
Originally they were just level based, so you'd get through a level, maybe get enough gold to upgrade yourself, kill a boss, and move on.
Then they switched formats into a Metroidvania sort of thing - you had areas to explore you could go back to, and if you got certain equipment, you could go back and get to new areas, etc.
So the final games ended up being a lot like Zelda II, but with no overworld map - you walked where you wanted to go. Eventually you coudl warp to different areas, swim underwater, etc. You'd go to temples and kill boss monsters and all that sort of thing.
The Genesis version is the last one (that I know of) that came to the USA, but it's really great. There's also a Sega Master System title where you could morph into different characters, and used them to get to various areas.
In all reality, the series became something that far outclassed (on the SMS) damn near anything the NES could really offer in terms of Metroidvania type games. The SNES could answer this a little better, but they are still great games and really ought to be played.
Anyway, I rented the Genesis one a long time ago and I don't think I ever finished it, so it will be a great title to download if it shows up.
Here's a good link with some info -
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/wonderboy/wonderboy.htmI think the greatest thing about the games is that there is a huge amount of hidden stuff, which was virtually unheard of back in those days, and certainly didn't come in this quantity (Metroid notwithstanding, of course). There's doors literally in the middle of nowhere you just have to push up at the right time to find. Sometimes you'll be on a moving platform and find one! And there's ways to get more cash out of monsters and hidden coins in the middle of nowhere as well. So it forces you to constantly be searching.
There's even sidequests that you can do in the midst of the game. Again, this was all brand new at the time. But the series is very overlooked so it's easy to understand why it's not getting enough praise. I mean it's not the greatest game ever, but it's really fun and incredibly rewarding.
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Dragon's Curse if the TG16 version of "Wonder Boy in Monster 3: The Dragon's Trap."
Think of it as a precursor to Symphony of the Night - you travel between castles, get new armor and swords, more life (hearts), etc etc. You can backtrack if you want as well. The big draw of the game was that you can transform into different creatures - so you have "Mouseman" form, "Hawkman" form, etc. These give you different abilities - Mouseman can walk on certain blocks (even upside down), Hawkman can fly, etc.
I was talking about the Wonder Boy series earlier in this thread (I think it was earlier in this thread), and this is one of the games I was talking about. The other, which is simply called "Wonder Boy in Monster World," is on the Genesis, and plays out similarly.
You can also think of it as a sort of Zelda II clone.
Anyway, I recommend them, and I will most certainly pick it up tomorrow. I would imagine you could get a good 10-12 hours out of it.
Here's a site with more information if you care to check it out. Be sure to check out page 2.
(And yea, I'm pretty sure that I talked about this earlier in this thread.)
Topic: Official Virtual Console Mondays Thread (Read 717900 times)
