Hey brave man! Let's play Wonder Boy in Monster Land!

Welcome to Let’s Play Wonder Boy In Monster Land! Who, you ask, is Wonder Boy? And what’s he doing in Monster Land? Good questions! The real answer is sort of complicated, so I’m going to explain it as I understood it as a kid: Wonder Boy is the guy from Wonder Boy except now he’s a teenager and he has a sword and shield! Monster Land used to be Wonder Land, but it’s full of monsters now because the MEKA dragon took over! Time to save the day!

Some of you might remember the original Wonder Boy from the NES version, Adventure Island. As a Sega kid, I’ve never played that game, but I think it’s the same game with a different character. That seems to happen a lot to Wonder Boy/Monster World games. To stick with explaining it as my child self knew it, the Wonder Boy series has three main games, all on the Sega Master System: Wonder Boy, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, and Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. There’s also maybe a game called Wonder Boy in Monster World, but I never saw the Master System version anywhere and if I ever saw the Mega Drive version it was before I had a Mega Drive. And once I saw an arcade machine version of Monster Land at the mini-golf place! Then there’s Adventure Island, a series which totally rips off Wonder Boy but is obviously not as good because it’s on the NES with crappy graphics and so on.

All three of my main games are on the virtual console, as are the Mega Drive versions of Wonder Boy in Monster World and Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair (which is not the same game as Dragon’s Trap on the SMS). There might be a few more from other systems, too. Rumour has it that Monster World IV will be coming to the VC soon, and in English! Exciting times.

Anyway, let’s play some Wonder Boy in Monster Land!



Kshhhhhhhh



V-whum.



Deh-dah!



It’s a pretty nice title screen. I think the original game from ’87 is the arcade version, and the reprogrammed is the SMS one.



Here we are in Monsterland. Currently, we have a score of zero, no gold, no shoes, no shield, and no sword. All we can do is jump.



Luckily, jumping can be a profitable move in Monster Land. There’s stuff hidden all over the place, and jumping is how you find it.



We’re at kind of a dead end here. Better see what’s through that door.



Oh man! A monster!



Or not. According to the manual, this person is the Mayor. According to a different page of the manual, she’s a fortune teller. I guess a person can have two jobs.



Seems like Wonder Boy doesn’t wanna see the Mayor again, ‘cause he’s nailed the door shut. Anyway, we now have a sword. And a way forward! There’s only one thing to do!



Use the sword as a guitar! Rock ‘n’ roll!



Instead of moving forward, we jump on the Mayor’s roof.



There’s more gold up there! WBiML is a platform-adventure-action-RPG, I guess. Or at least the beginnings of one. The sequel, Dragon’s Trap, is pretty much a metroidvania, but Monster Land lacks the exploratory element of that game style. The RPG elements come in the character advancement, and I guess the sidequest. There’s two ways to improve your character: First, each 100,000 points you score gets you an extra heart of health. Second, you can buy or find new gear. The points pretty much take care of themselves, but to get enough money to keep up with equipment you need to spend a lot of time jumping anywhere that looks like it might hide something. Like that tree, or the Mayor’s roof. Enemies also give money, but only the first time you kill them. When they respawn they drop items, which are mostly only good for points. The amount of money you get is random, but tends to increase as the game goes on.



Here’s my current status, by the way. This is the pause screen, which is inaccessible before you visit the mayor. At the top are your health and wealth. Below that, your equipment. The helmet, gauntlet, and wing boots are temporary boosts: the helmet doubles defence, the gauntlet doubles offence, and the boots stop you from falling. The revival potion is a single use item that restores you to full health when you die. You can buy a replacement (though you can only carry one at a time), but they’re kind of expensive. The key is needed to reach the next stage. The bomb, tornado, fire ball and thunder flash are offensive magic. You activate them by pressing down. The Master System’s square d-pad meant that I usually wasted any magic I obtained pressing down accidentally.

Combat! Press button to replace enemy with money. You might notice that Wonder Boy gained three gold between starting his swing and connecting with the SNAKE. That’s because I accidentally deleted the screenshots I took on my first run through. Being so close to the start it was no big deal to just play the first twenty seconds again and get the shots again, but those randomised money drops meant I couldn’t hide it.



Those red SNAKEs just stand there and go down in one hit. That yellow fellow is a bit more dangerous. I better psych myself up.



Step one: Money. Bags of cash are always worth more than single coin drops.



Step two: Booze. Apparently Sega just did not care about impressionable young minds. Lucky that eleven-year-old me didn’t know what ale and mead were. They each restore a little health, and the bartender will give you some information.



See, he says come again, but then he locks me out. Most stores in the game will close as soon as you buy something, or if you go in too often without buying anything. Bars will let you buy twice.



The yellow snake (ANACONDA, according to the manual) takes a few more hits to kill.



And a little bit longer to disappear. Gives about the same amount of money, though.



Wonder Boy is totally hardcore, jumpswording that SNAKE like that.



Oh hey, an hourglass! Hourglasses are the second-worst thing in WBiML. You see the one in the top right of the screen? It’s full at the moment, because I just got drunk, but it’ll gradually run out. Whenever it does, you lose a heart. I estimate at least half of my runs in this game are ended not by enemies but by the time limit. I guess it’s a holdover from the arcade version. Anyway, you pick up an hourglass to reset the timer.



Behind this door is DEATH MASTER. That’s the guy the barkeep was talking about!



It’s not a particularly tough fight. He swoops down at you, you swing the sword. The first hit turns the yellow dot on his robe red.



The second hit makes him cry.



Well, this is awkward.



Then he explodes. Much better.



He leaves behind the key, and a bunch of coins. When you get the key you leave the room, so make sure to get the coins first! It’s actually a bit tricky in level one, because you’re bare-foot and so you can’t jump very well.

There’s just an ANACONDA left before the end of the stage. Easy-peasy.



Oh no! I swung too soon on my second hit! The creature continues to advance, and I’m trapped in the recovery animation!



The hit sends me flying. How embarrassing!



I finish it off with no further trouble, and remember what the barkeep told me. Jump, the last tree on the right-hand side.



Awright! Free health! I’m back in top shape, just in time to finish the level. Why Wonder Boy knocks when he just got the key from the Death Master, I don’t know.



At the end of the stage, you get points based on how much health you have left, with a bonus for perfect health. If you don’t have full health, you get back one heart more than you had.

Well, that ends Round 1: City of Wonder Land. Behold: The whole stage!



Join us next time for Round 2: Whatever it’s called!

TL,DR:

You beat up death so bad that he was crying?

...I don't know whether to call you a jerk, or make a pun about not fearing the reaper.

I believe this whole first stage was recreated in Monster World. Well, except for the part where you make Death cry.

I never had a Master System as a kid, so the only Wonder Boy game I was familiar with (aside from the Adventure Island series) was Monster World on the Genesis/Mega Drive, which was one of the best Metroidvanias for the time and still holds up well enough. I just found the three Wonder Boy games on SMS a few weeks ago, and this one is...quite a bit different. As usual, it's picking and choosing elements from platformers and RPGs, but the elements it decided to go with are a bit unexpected. You have to buy equipment with gold found throughout the game, and you have a score that doubles as experience, but at the same time it's a completely linear platformer with a time limit and no way to backtrack, and you have to do it all on one life.

The few attempts I've made at this so far ended badly due to all the secrets and not knowing which equipment to buy, so I'll be looking forward to this one. I'll take a good LP over an FAQ any day!

Is it just me or do Wonder Boy and Krile kind of look alike?

I'm liking the end-of-update level map and summary gif.

That gif is pretty boss. It approximates gameplay fairly well. Spookily well, even.
I am also in the boat of having played Monster World (briefly), but not this. I thought this was some thread about a slightly-different-titled European version or something.

Awrighty, Round 2! I guess the first level is more the outskirts of the City of Wonder Land, and this is the main drag. That said, the manual calls this area the Valley of Peace.



These little mushroom dudes (MALKONIDs, which I assume derives from the prefix myco-, which makes things fungal, combined with mal-, which makes them harmful) get pretty upset when you hit them.



And they’re stingy! On the plus side killing it pushed me over 30,000 points, so my maximum health increased by one. The manual says multiples of 100,000 get you extra hearts, but I’m not complaining.



This is a shoe store. I’m not going there yet.



Instead I jump off the platform. There’s money between those buildings: A whole 1G. Meanwhile the mushroom respawns.



Up here I can get a shield, but first:



More cash! I’m a little bit short of money after buying those drinks in Round 1. I don’t normally bother with bars, because I pretty much know my way around Wonder Land, and there isn’t usually too much money to spare. Right now I want 120G, because with that I can buy the cheap shield (40G) and the expensive boots (80G) in this town.



Speaking of bars, there’s one over here! If you look closely, you’ll notice that I lost two gold and gained a heart of health between shots. That’s because I made a separate run through of the game, just to get drunk. Like I said, you can’t really afford to stop at every bar in the game if you want to have good equipment. This way I can ignore the bars in my main run, but still get all the information. Let’s see what they have to say in this town. I’ll get a couple rounds of ale, then some mead:



When you buy mead you find out that some dude is oppressing folks ‘round here. At least the drinks are cold. The first round of ale scores me some info: I might have an ally against the red knight in a cavern somewhere. Groovy. The second just gets the bartender fishing for compliments. Anyway, back to the main game. I was thinking about how to spend my money.



I buy the light shield and spend a little time trying to get money jumping off the left side of the platform. I don’t get any. There is a coin there, though. I guess you can’t reach it without shoes.



The question mark door is the magic shop. I won’t be buying any of that, but I thought it might be worth a browse.



The shopkeeper can see I’m wasting his time, and he locks me out. Jerk.



Just outside of town is a desert. And an arrow.



This cactus is hiding some gold.



This dude (a GOBLET) is why I prioritised the shield: it blocks arrows. After a few hits he drops a bag of cash. I need this to have 22G in it so I can buy leather boots.

Sadly, there wasn’t enough. On the plus side, this must be the cavern the barkeep mentioned.



Jumping above this step makes me 4G, so now I have enough. But I can’t go back to town.



The FANG BATS swoop when you get close, and drop hearts when they die. That’s good, ‘cause I’ve taken a few hits.



And because I tend to get hit by bats.



I take it out, heal up, and proceed. But what’s this?



Another fortune teller! This is the rebel the barkeep mentioned, and the sidequest I mentioned in the first post. You visit a string of people to get the Hero’s Emblem. Baraboro is in Round 4. We’ll have to keep an eye out for Catherine.



Since I cheaped out and didn’t buy shoes, I miss this jump. I’m flashing, and so invisible in the second shot, but I’m in the lava and down a heart.



The second attempt goes more smoothly. This bat swoops a little bit high, so you have to jump to hit it.



I screw it up.



Not pictured: the heart it drops falling into the lava. Blast!



This cheery fellow is an optional boss. He hovers and throws fireballs at you, and swoops when you close in.



I get hit a few times, and now I’m almost dead. I blame it on trying to play and screenshot at the same time. His yellow spot is all red now, so he’s nearly dead too.



Killing him gets me a heart back, a cool explosion, and a new sword! There are a few optional bosses hidden through the game. Most give you a sword upgrade, but some will refill your health or drop magic. Incidentally, when I did my bar run and found out that someone resisting the red knight was hiding in the cavern, I thought the bartender was talking about this dude, and I felt a bit guilty about killing him. Of course it was the someone beyond the wall, so I can relax about having killed the KING VAMPIRE.



I spent frickin’ ages getting up here with no shoes.



Three coins drop for a total of eight gold, and I move on.

Poor little guy. Not pictured here is me falling in the lava again. I’m gonna be real embarrassed if I have to use my revival potion in round 2.



Here’s another shoe shop. This is why I didn’t prioritise the shoes earlier or just buy the cheaper cloth shoes, which I could’ve afforded. I figured I could get here easily enough. Too bad I suck.



I spend the 80 bucks. A nice touch in this game is that you can tell by looking at your character how well-equipped he is. My cheap shield is pink (as would be the cloth boots), but my more expensive boots are yellow (as is my sword’s hilt, whereas the starting sword is red). The really good stuff is blue.



Jumping on the last step gets me a few gold back. On the right is the hospital. Normally I don’t use them, but I’m in kind of a bad way here.



For just 20 gold you get your remaining health added to your score, all your health back, and some good advice. As a nurse myself, I’m not sure how I feel about the depiction of the profession in this game. On the one hand, she’s very competent. On the other hand, she’s a cow. Plus she won’t help you, no matter how sick you are, unless you pay. Each time you visit, the price goes up. If I need healing again, it’ll cost 40G.



I immediately disregard the nurse’s advice and get hit by a stationary enemy.



In the arcade version there’s vertical scrolling, but on the SMS things are nicely compartmentalised.



In Monster Land pretty much every cloud has a golden lining. You might be able to get to that other cloud if you buy cloth boots at the first shoe shop and then ceramic boots at the second, letting you jump further, but I haven’t done that in ages. Actually, hang on, let’s find out.



Aww yeah. Those lovely blue boots give a nice boost to jumping distance, and also make no sense to me (ceramic footware?). They aren’t the best boots going, though. That’s the Legend Boots. It is possible to get those in round 2, but you have to resort to cheating. They cost 350G, and the second shop won’t stock them unless you buy the leather boots at the first one for 80G. There just isn’t that much gold in the first two levels. But! If you press the pause button like seventy times (or any button on controller 2 – the Master System has its pause button on the console itself rather than the controller, so if you’ve got two controllers the game lets the second function as a pause button) you get I think 45G. I believe it can be repeated as often as you like (within the limitation imposed by the hourglass), so it’s sort of like the worst simultaneous 2-player mode ever if you’ve got someone to hit the button for you. Anyway, back to the main run:



Trees are as profitable as ever. The arrow in that last screenshot will go on to hit me.



This jerk doesn’t even have the decency to drop money. That’s the gauntlet, which doubles your attack for a little while. That’s nice, but I don’t really need it right now.



This is the boss mushroom (MASTER MYCONID (note that the little guys are MALKONIDs. Apparently the manual writers didn’t have a very good style guide)). It throws lesser mushrooms at you. Sadly they don’t drop anything when killed. The boss itself takes two hits to kill. With the power of the gauntlet:



One hit K.O.! Poor little guy. It drops 48G in total, which is nice.



Here’s where I stand: Got the broad sword (up from gladius), a shield and shoes, the gauntlet is still in effect, I have a scroll to take to Catherine, and the key to the door to the next level. Speaking of which:



No round bonus this time, because I don’t have perfect health. I need to start playing better if I wanna get through this.

As much as I think this game is super-awesome, I can imagine how I might have a different opinion if I were to play it for the first time today. Hopefully I can put enough information here to help some new players make some progress.

Can't say I'd noticed that. Are we talking any particular job? I did a Google image search for "Krile" and I kind of wish I hadn't. Anyway, here’s the map of this stage:



It’s much bigger than Round 1 (and took a lot longer to assemble), so I broke it up into sections. Click it for a full-size version in one (wide) piece.

That's probably because I took a screenshot of every single frame in Round 1. That's no longer practical, since all the other levels are a fair bit longer. It wasn't all that practical to begin with, actually. A lot of shots to sort through. Still, I did my best with what I had for this round, and I think it turned out pretty well.

TL,DR:

It's mostly the combination of blonde hair, blue eyes, and keeping his face turned towards the screen when he isn't attacking. It's ok, Wonder Boy, you can turn your entire head to watch for enemies instead of looking for them out of the corner of your eye. We won't mind!

When you put it like that, it actually makes a lot of sense.

You based that on a shot from the demo, right? I always thought it was weird that the demo has WB decked out in the cloth boots, light shield, and light armor and carrying the broad sword. You can't get any of that stuff in round 1!

I'm such a nerd.

Maybe it was played in some sort of debug mode?

So the first thing you do in the Valley of Peace is murder all the inhabitants? Those mushroom guys could have been friendly with a bad name, but you'll never know now. They have sworn revenge for their fallen comrade.

This. Love the animated gif.
I was a Sega child and Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap was my second favorite SMS title (next to Zillion). I've never beaten WBiML though I've gotten close, but typically ran out of time in that damn labyrinth! I think I made it to the boss once, but couldn't pull it off.
I'm really looking forward to your LP man!

This game was my bread and butter as an SMS kid. I used to have the labyrinth memorized.

They are so excellent.

The Wonder Boy series is pretty much the hardest to follow there is here's an excerpt:

Wonder Boy==Adventure Island----->Adventure Island Series
|
v
Wonder Boy in Monster Land (this)------>Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair (lame autoscrolling shooter)
|
v
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (totally awesome Metroidvania deal)
|
v
Wonder Boy in Monster World (the Genesis Metroidvania one)
|
v
Monster World IV (The one with the Arabian Nights-y girl)

And that's not even getting into the alternate titles for all of these (I really dig how in Japan Monster World is "Wonder Boy V Monster World III, makes perfect sense really), or how NES/TG-16 ports got renamed and resprited. I mean, you really want to know what a mess this is? Whomp'Em is a resprited version of the sequel to the resprited NES port of Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

Say what you will about the original Adventure Island being a reskinned Wonder Boy (It totally is), but that series spawned some pretty good sequels.

I can't help but wonder why SEGA's Wonder Boy games were so popular on the whole "Steal the Game/Replace the Sprites" scene.

Because it was a lot easier to make a Wonder Boy clone than a Super Mario Bros clone. Those Mario physics are hard to imitate when you only know how to make an 8-bit computer do basic math!

Super Adventure Island 2 also makes more sense once you know this, since otherwise you'd have no context for why a Mario-like platformer series suddenly morphed into an action/adventure. I thought I had this all figured out, but I had no idea Whomp 'Em was involved.

I just started playing Monster Word IV now that I know about it, and it's fantastic.

Or Adventure Island 4.

OK so here we have Round 3: Wizard’s Castle. We also have a new enemy: the EEL WHIPS. That’s actually what the manual says it’s called. Aside from making no sense to begin with, it’s one of only three enemies with a plural name in the manual (the others being the DEATH MASTERS from back in round 1, and another that’s yet to appear), so I assume EEL WHIPS is actually the singular form. Anyway, these jerks float around and drop GOLD WATER JUGs instead of money when you kill them.



They also drop GOLDEN HARPs. I would’ve thought gold would be too malleable to support the tension of a harp’s strings. Maybe it’s an alloy.



And GOLD NECKLACEs. These don’t look so golden. All of these items are worth points only, so they push you closer to getting your max health up. That’s great, but I think you get enough points in the game to reach the upper limit pretty reliably; you don’t need to worry about getting all the points.



Little bit of hidden cash here.



These guys generally aren’t worth the bother, but that guy on the left will knock me off the ladder if I let him. But he’s too high up to hit!



The trick is patience. That way you can kill the guy you can reach (for a GOLDEN MIRROR), and the other one’ll move out of the way. And you lose a heart to the timer.



Oh hey, a bar!



It’s a new bartender! She still says the same thing as the other dudes when you buy the same drink twice in a row. Actually almost all the bartenders do. Anyway, she lets you know there is a store sells armor, and chides you for drinking underage. Doesn’t stop her selling it to you, though. Also, notice that in my bar run I have sixty more gold than I do in the main run.



I trade a few hit points for four gold and move on.



I think I might’ve missed some hidden gold on this staircase. I’m kinda sucking up the place.



I just noticed that in the first shot there there’s a ladder going back down. I wonder if that means you can climb back down. Or if there’d be any point in doing so. Hmm. Anyway, not pictured is the free heart I got for jumping in the little corridor I’m standing in in the last shot above. Anyway again, this room is full of snakes. Now that I have the BROAD SWORD, I can kill them in two hits instead of three. Here’s me trying to jump on one instead of hitting it with my sword:



This isn’t Mario, that’s for sure. Wonder Boy doesn’t even have fireballs!



Or does he?! Actually the magic shop is not worth my time or money, but if you’re curious: Thunder flash hits all enemies on the screen for minor damage, and the fireball is a fireball (!) that flies from you towards the nearest enemy. It usually misses if the enemy is moving.



Jumping here gets you some gold.



I have no idea what the purpose of the floating platform in this room is. Maybe it does something in the arcade version, which has vertical scrolling. Maybe if you have better boots it lets you shortcut up through the roof. Maybe it’s just there to waste your time. Notice that I lost a heart to the timer while I was jumping on it. I’m sure you usually get a timer refill on the way up the stairs to the left, but it didn’t turn up this time.

?



!



It’s that armor store the bartender was talking about! Sadly, I can only afford light armor.



It’s pink. The conveyer belt there is I think the only one in the game. In leather boots, as I am, you can stand still by holding forward. In cloth boots or barefoot you move backwards. In ceramic or legendary boots, you move forward slowly. There’s some hidden gold on the stairs past the belt, which I missed, so I’ve thrown in a shot from my bar run. Note that I got the knight armor in that run. And I didn’t get hit so much.



A short trip across the battlements later, we reach the end of the stage. Swinging the sword in mid air is not necessary to get the hidden gold, but I like to do it anyway. There’s no stage exit, just a menacing looking door. There’s only one thing to do!



Inside is the stage boss of the Wizard’s Castle, the wizard RED KNIGHT. This is a pretty easy fight. You just stand where you are. When he comes at you low, you hit him:



When he comes at you high, you jump and he hits you:



Aww, nards. Then he hits you again:



Then you hit him a couple times and he dies:



Yeah! Collecting the coins finishes the stage. I get back a heart for killing the boss, and another for finishing the stage, putting me on three. That’s kind of pathetic for this stage of the game, especially since I’ve been to the nurse once already.

Here’s the map:



I'd like to tell you I drew this as a child, but sadly this is the work of a grown man. Because it was taking me so long to piece together the screenshots to make the maps of the first two stages, I decided to try something different this time: Coloured pencils. Rather than risk sullying the result with accuracy or consistency, I drew it freehand from memory. So there might be some inaccuracies. I have a feeling there’s a hidden coin missing at the first set of steps. I had to turn down the brightness to get some of the lighter pencils to show up, too. All in all, as a time saving measure I think this failed. Not sure what I’ll do next time. Any advice?

Here’s bonus footage: How the knight fight is supposed to go.



And of course the TL,DR version:



Yeah, me too. I tend to take a few wrong turns now. I'm not looking anything up for this LP, just going on what I can remember. I'm hoping people will point out some stuff I've forgotten, or never knew, as I go along.

Oh, you flatterers!

My understanding is that it's because although Sega owned the Wonder Boy character, the actual developer, Westone, owned everything else about the games and could do what they wanted with them. Seems like kind of an odd arrangement.

This is the best.

I actually didn't know Whomp'Em was in the mix there either until I went to wikipedia to double check the name of the WRONG 3

Since you seem to be swimming in cash for your secondary run, you should go ahead and buy some magic to show off (possibly even in awesome animated gif form!). For SCIENCE!

This LP has already had more awesome in its first page than some have in their entirety.