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Released In: 1994 After saving her yet again in the previous Super Adventure Island game, Master Higgins finally decides to marry his girlfriend Tina. Following their union, Master Higgins decides to take her on a cruise for their honeymoon. Unfortunately, the "cruise" is on a makeshift raft, the kind that clearly wouldn't hold up in a storm. When a storm does hit, the two lovebirds are (surprise!) tragically separated, and Master Higgins blacks out. When the Master awakens, he finds himself on Waku Waku Island suffering from a bad case of amnesia. The king of Waku Waku Island charges Higgins with a quest: rescue his newly appointed queen, who also happens to be a new arrival to Waku Waku Island and who also happens to be suffering from amnesia. Convenient, eh? Features RPG elements not found in the previous Adventure Island games including equipment, a navigable world map, and random battles. Syd Lexia: Once upon a time, there was an arcade game called Wonder Boy. It was developed by a company called Escape (later Westone) for Sega. Sega would go on to port it to the Sega Master System and release a whole bunch of sequels on the SMS as well as the Genesis. Meanwhile, Escape was looking to make some extra money. As part of their agreement with Sega, Sega owned the rights to the Wonder Boy character as well as the bosses and music, but Escape owned the rights to the concept. So Escape licensed the concept to Hudson Soft and the game was remade as Adventure Island. The Adventure Island franchise became popular in its own right, spawning 4 NES games, 2 SNES games, and a TurboGrafx-16 game. Over the years, Adventure Island built up a reputation as being a series of very fun, slightly flawed platformers. While Adventure Island flourished, Wonder Boy did not. The first three Wonder Boy games were absolutely fantastic, but they went virtually unnoticed since they were released on the poor-selling Master System. Then something happened. Sega beat Nintendo into the 16-bit market by two full years and despite a weak start, they had acheived a 55% market share in North America by 1992. So when Wonder Boy V was released in North America (as Wonder Boy in Monster World) in 1992, people took notice. With its unique action/adventure blend, Wonder Boy became a hit. Though the action/adventure hybrid had been a staple of the Wonder Boy series since the second game, Hudson had never felt the need to emulate it in their Adventure Island games. Then, when the series suddenly became popular, Hudson decided to copy its style in Super Adventure Island II. This decision was fairly dubious, as the last thing any self-respecting SNES owner wanted was a rip-off a Sega game. That being said, Super Adventure Island II is a fun game. It isn't as good as Wonder Boy in Monster World or the first Super Adventure Island game, but it's still pretty awesome. Valdronius: Forget everything you know about Adventure Island. Hudson Soft decided that it was time to reinvent the series, and opted to turn it into an adventure game. Ironically, the Adventure Island brand makes a terrible adventure game. Gone are the axes and skateboards that you grew to love. Instead, you will have to rely on fire swords and daggers, as well as armor, shields, and magic. That's right, magic. And instead of fun platforming, stages have been replaced with large, multi-room maps. On top of all this, you get randomly attacked by enemies on the world map. Not only are these encounters pointless, they're also infuriating. Sometimes it's good to change things up to keep a series fresh. But not like this... not like this. |
