Sega Ages: Wonder Boy in Monster Land

SEGa Ages keeps bringing ports of the old classics. This time it's Wonder Boy, an incredibly difficult platformer but a fun one at that. The game comes as a perfect port that includes bugs and glitches of the original. So you get the good and the bad.

Wonder Boy in Monster Land’s nascent fusion of platforming and role-playing mechanics creates viable candidacy for M2’s meticulous talents. If the SEGA AGES line continues to explore the breadth of Sega’s catalog, games that inspired creators are just as valuable as games that empowered players. Wonder Boy in Monster Land is proud to be part of the former.

It’s nice to see another relatively uncommon Sega game getting the Sega Ages treatment, but while it’s still perfectly playable after more than three decades, the arcade version of Monster Land suffers from frustrating combat and a general lack of spark. Its importance in the evolution of the action platformer can’t be denied, but it’s not quite as addictive as other Sega Ages games, and while the emulation is as flawless as ever, the underwhelming extra modes mean there’s less incentive to keep coming back time and time again. Still, sometimes it's nice to play a game that has a bit of history behind it, and this is one such game; it may not be anywhere near as refined as Wonder Boy's more critically-acclaimed adventures, but it's still an entertaining way to spend an hour or two.