There awaits only more Monster World
Last month, French developer Lizardcube released their beauteous remake of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap remake, a painstaking ode to a classic game which had gone largely overlooked solely for being trapped on the wrong hardware. Now any fan of retro platformers, action RPGs, and/or Metroidvanias owes it to themselves to put console allegiances aside and spend a few hours getting lost in the dense forests, arid wastes, winding caverns, and deep blue sea of Monster World. Then again, being the on-the-ball Retronaut you are, maybe you've already completed Bocke's journey to regain his human form and found yourself yearning for more. If that's the case, you should look no further than the assortment of Monster World games Sega brought to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii back in 2012.
Ported by the masters at M2, the titles number three in all: Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World, and Monster World IV. Looking past the localized titles that only exacerbate this series' confusing lineage, what you have here are in fact Monster World I, III, and IV. (Though in fact, the arcade version of Monster Land is titled as such even in Japan. For whatever reason, the Japanese Sega Master System version was renamed Monster World, and the series continued from there.) The Dragon's Trap, which is Monster World II, was unfortunately passed over at the time, perhaps owing to the fact that only the downsized Game Gear version had been released in Japanese before; the Master System version was exclusive to America and Europe. But with this year's remake, which includes the game in its original form, the entire Monster World series is now available to play in one modern format or another. (But not, mind you, the entire Wonder Boy series... Westone must have been on some kind of mission to make a line of games this mystifying.) Whether you're a new recruit or you carried Westone's torch all these years, there's never been a better time to plunge into this world of side-scrolling role-playing and funny animal people.
Same.
Monster World IV is the easiest to recommend, boasting a fluid move set, fleshed-out dungeon puzzles, a heartwarming story, a setting that evolves over time, adorable animations, and a stunning use of color that you'd never guess was brushing up against the limits of the Mega Drive hardware. All that said, it's also the least similar to every other game in the series—a brave new world unto itself, but maybe not the first thing to reach for if you're just after a fundamental Monster World experience. Wonder Boy in Monster World is a more workmanlike installment that plays out a bit like a "greatest hits" compilation of the series up to that point. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it's definitely best to play in order of release. Come to it before its predecessors, and its many homages will fly right over your head; go back to it after the clean break that is Monster World IV, and you'll probably find yourself disappointed by its relative lack of ambition.
If you're fresh off The Dragon's Trap, I would instead point you to its direct predecessor: Wonder Boy in Monster Land. For one thing, The Dragon's Trap begins shortly before the end of Monster Land, with our hero facing down a robotic dragon at the heart of an impossible maze, and you might be wondering how he got into that predicament in the first place. For another, well...Monster Land might actually be the secret best game in the series. Compared to a latter-day 16-bit effort like Monster World IV, it may appear simplistic at first—archaic, even—but there's a lot going on under its hood. There's so much, in fact, that I started talking about it and soon realized I couldn't stop. So come back tomorrow for part two, where I'll explain at length how Monster Land's various moving parts combine to instill the player with a sense of tension and accomplishment rarely found in games. For now, I'll leave you with this hint: it involves wiggling. A lot of wiggling.
