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

The drawn map is cool. You should continue to do that.

Oh, and the animated GIFs, but that goes without saying.

So many stages does this game have? When does (if it already hasn't) start to get hard?

Really, Wonder Boy 2's challenge comes in 2 forms:
1- Game-long Attrition (money is a very finite resource, and HP kind of is too).
2- The 12th and final level is pretty freaking brutal. Back in the day, I'd usually be satisfied just getting to it, and immediately swapping in the 3rd game (which starts off all SotN style by having you replay a much easier version of it).

I cannot deny the will of my public. Behold:



That's the TORNADO MAGIC, followed by the 8 BOMBS. I guess the bombs aren't really magic, come to think of it, just grenades. The damage seems to be on par with the sword, but I don't know if it gets stronger as the sword does. Magic is actually pretty useful in a few situations. There are some enemies that are low to the ground, so you can't hit them until they move upwards. Much easier to deal with them if you've got something to throw at them.

I've got .gifs for lightning and fireballs as well, but they contain SPOILERS for Round 4, so you'll have to wait until the next update.

Also I found the hidden gold at the first set of stairs in Round 3:



Couldn't find and at the second stairs though, so I've updated the map:



Googleshng beat me to this, but there's 12 rounds, and the challenge really ramps up in the last one.

I apparently did the same. Here's some stuff I found in an old diary:

I should perhaps point out that it was a Ren & Stimpy themed diary, which is probably where the 'Joy!' came from. I have no excuse for "Clocked". Not sure which cheat I'm talking about for WB3. Probably the WE5T ONE password (which is in a screenshot in the manual). The other possibility is the Hades Armor glitch.

Here’s Round 4: The City of Baraboro.



The great thing about Baraboro is there’s money everywhere. The bad thing is that there’s also a lot of JELLYFISH, and killing them is depressing. Not only does it make them sad, they don’t drop anything. At all. Though you do get 200 points. Remember, I get my next extra heart when I reach 100,000 points. That’s only 95.3 JELLYFISH away!



Money, everywhere. It’s pretty great. Not so great are the giant enemy SNAPPER CRABs:



Enemies in Monster Land have a few different responses to being hit. Some will die from one hit, like the SNAKEs. Some will be pushed back, like the ANACONDAs and the RED KNIGHT. Some won’t react at all until they die. Others, like the SNAPPER CRABs, will freeze in place. You can’t hit them while they’re frozen, so if you swing at the wrong time it won’t hit, but they’ll start moving again during your swing animation and they’ll hit you. The other thing that makes crabs annoying is that they shoot a slow-moving projectile (not pictured) which you need to deflect with your shield, limiting the time in which you’re free to strike. Anyway, the guy above hit me once (between the third and fourth screenshots), and dropped one shot of the lightning spell (see the top right corner of the last two shots). I accidentally pressed down, which blew the spell, but luckily I killed some JELLYFISH that’re just offscreen in the last shot. Also note that I lost some life to the timer between shots five and six. Continuing on brought me to:



A nice place! When I was a kid it took me ages to figure out that the picture on the first shop there was of armor, not a house.



This guy’s an ALLEE RAT. He moves quickly from left to right and back again, jumping in the middle. Like the SNAPPER CRAB, he freezes when hit, but he moves a lot faster so it’s even easier to get hit. The safest way is to stand just outside his movement range and hit from there.



He dropped a free heart, which I was certainly in need of. Also like the crabs, rats don’t drop money. In fact all three rats in town drop a heart the first time I kill them. I wonder if their drops are influenced by my being almost dead, or if it’s just coincidence. Anyway, let’s see what the armour shop has for sale.



Knight armor, for 150G, or Heavy armour, for 100G. The heavy is further up the armour chain, and I’m pretty sure it gives better protection. I don’t know why it costs less, but it’s useful if you want to save money. See, there’s four kinds of boots, and four shields you can buy in WBiML. Each store will sell the next two up from what you have. Since you start out barefoot and shieldless, the cheapest way to get the best stuff is to buy the second and the fourth items. If you buy the cheap ones (like my Light Shield) then you’ll need to buy another two items to reach the top tier. There’s five kinds of armour for sale, though, so as long as you can survive from Round 3 to this point in Round 4 with cheap armour, your best move is to get the cheap stuff and then move up to the other cheap stuff. The next armour shop I visit will be selling Hard Armor and Legend Armor (at 360G and 540G, respectively). I don’t know why Heavy Armor is cheaper than Knight Armor, despite being higher tier. Maybe it doesn’t protect you as well? I had an idea that it limits your jumps, but I did a test:



On the left is the apex of a jump in Light Armor, on the right is the same with Heavy Armor. The jump in the heavy armor actually goes a pixel higher. I don't know what's going on!



The mouse respawns and I visit the hospital. Like I said, the price has gone up. Also, I missed the screenshot, but the nurse asks “Oh, did you get hurt again?”. Sure did. If you leave and go in again she talks again, but I can't make sense of what she's saying. Well, I’m basically dying here, but I have a plan and will not be requiring the nurse’s services. Oh hey, is that a bar?



The bartender tells us some stuff about some people he knows. Seems like a social guy. Come to think of it, wasn’t I supposed to visit Catherine when I got to this town?



All there is up here is a shield shop, though. I can’t afford a new shield just now. Maybe if I just bang on the wall a bit, Catherine will show up.



Yes! She gives me a flute to take to an island so someone else will give me actual useful information. Time to leave town.



After I loot the place a bit. That platform just outside of town is a favourite of mine. As you walk along, a spring boosts you up into the cloud. And if you stand where I am in the last shot three coins will appear out of nowhere (the first is obscuring my life hearts in the shot). Sadly, getting down off that cloud means dealing with another SNAPPER CRAB, and his nefarious bubble projectile.



Yeah! He hit me, but just the once. And he dropped three fireballs. I carry on, kill an ALLEE RAT, and enter the lair of the deadly KURACKEN. It bobs up and down and throws fireballs at you. Here’s what you do:

Step 1: Swing your sword at nothing, then get hit by a fireball.



Step 2: Hit it, then miss again, then hit it some more.



Step 3: Throw some fireballs, hit it some more.
Step 4: Profit.



At this point I could carry on to the left and finish the level, but instead I walk into the waves. Unlike in the rest of the level, here you can drop below the sea. I was too busy taking screenshots to remember to press left and go to that magic shop.



The OCTOPUS takes forever to kill because your sword can’t hit it when it’s on the ground. You have to time your swing to match with it jumping. Anyway, it drops a shot of lightning, which I used to kill the JELLYFISH I forgot to screenshot that were all over those steps. Then I climb the steps to re-emerge at the same place I went under. You can’t go back to the right at this point, or underwater again.



I guess that crab pulled the boards off the KURACKEN’s doors. He drops a MYSTERIOUS MANTLE. As a kid I wondered what a giant sea shell had to do with making you invincible, but now I understand that it’s an invisibility cloak. It lasts for a short while. The stage exit is in sight, and I have the key, but before I move on I might as well take another look at the boss room.



The KURACKEN is back! Unfortunately, the flashing effect of my mysterious mantle means Wonder Boy doesn’t appear in most of my shots of the battle, but if you look at my life hearts you’ll see I didn’t get hit this time. And the 3,000 points I got for killing the boss push me over 100,000, getting me my second extra max life heart. Add to that the heart I recover for the kill and things aren’t looking so bad anymore. But what’s this?



A giant heart! I pick it up, and it drains me of all my health. That kinda sucks. But then:



It fills me back up, allowing me to finish the level with full health and get the 10,000 point bonus! Nice! There’s a couple of bosses where you can leave the area and come back and fight them again for a health refill (and some cash). Knowing this was coming is why I didn’t use the hospital. A pretty frustrating thing in WBiML is when you fall into the hidden area before killing the KURACKEN, because you miss out on this little boost. Anyway, here’s where we stand now:



I have, on average, the second worst of everything. I still have my revival potion, and I’ve picked up a flute. I have 256G, and full life. Basically things are going OK.
Here’s some extra stuff:



Killing the boss (the first time).



The map (click for annotations).



The awesome power of lightning, from a separate run.

TL,DR (not sure why this is so fast, I might fix it later):

I vaguely recall being able to get the ceramic boots as a drop from that octopus under the sea, but that might be in the later ocean level.

I tried jumping on one of those jellyfish when I first saw them. Having to kill them was even sadder after Monster World.

Hory clap, the Lightning spell is metal. No animation, just a flash and everything is suddenly dead.

Love the colored pencil maps. Gives the whole thing a fantastic, nostalgic feel. Also, I had NO idea that the Heavy Armor was better than the Knight Armor!

SotN TOTALLY ripped off Wonder Boy 3 (in that aspect), or was at least a little inspired by it.

That sounds awfully familiar, but it hasn't happened to me lately. It definitely is possible to get some nice drops from normal enemies: large hearts are pretty common, and I got a revival potion during my bar run.


When I thought about it, I wasn't sure whether or not it was, so I did a test. Here's me getting hit a few times wearing Knight Armor:



And here's me getting hit a few times in Heavy Armor:



In both cases, it takes four hits to lose one heart. So they seem to have the same defensive strength. I suspect that actually a quarter of a heart is the minimum amount of health you can lose at a time, so it's possible I would've seen more of a difference getting hit by a stronger enemy. For now, I label this test: INCONCLUSIVE. In terms of economy though, Heavy Armor is by far the better choice. If you don't buy it then you need to get the Hard Armor (360G) before the Legend Armor comes up for sale.

While I was at it, I got a few other shots. Here's what happens if you skip the fortune teller in the cave in Round 2, and then visit Catherine in Round 4:



She refuses to talk to you and you're cut out of the sidequest to get the Hero's Emblem. I also managed to get a shot of the nurse's reaction to your second visit:



I just now realised that this implies that the same nurse is travelling across Wonder Land slightly ahead of Wonder Boy. Tough lady.



I also fought the RED KNIGHT wearing the Knight Armor. Each hit from him cost me three quarters of a heart. In the Light Armor each hit cost a whole heart. So at least there we can see an improvement.



Here's what happens when you lose all your life hearts: The game freezes while WB faces the audience and drinks his revival potion, getting all his hearts back.



Once you lose your potion, the magic shops start selling them for 100G. You're better off in my opinion hoping an enemy drops one and then maybe picking one up near the end of the game if it doesn't happen. This reduces your chances of making it to the end, but if you're spending all your money on potions then you're not spending it on better equipment, making beating the game unlikely. Not every run through the game can end in victory. In fact I think very few can.

You might notice that I'm still carrying the Gradius, the first sword you get, in all these shots. That's because I skipped the KING VAMPIRE in Round 2 for another test. Results next time!

King Vampire is a pretty awesome name for a sword.

Round 5: Mam Desert. Looks pretty lush, for a desert.



I score 8G from a tree and an arrow up the bum from a GOBLET. I need a drink!



Oh, I guess I’m not in the desert yet. That makes sense. Anyway, my nerves fortified, it’s time for revenge:



Bite it, you scum.



It’s a bit hard to make out in the shots, but I killed this second GOBLET for 10G, then jumped (at the third tree after the bar) to get that hidden bag of cash.



I missed the shot of it, but this GOBLET dropped a gauntlet rather than money.



I kill the SNAKES and move on. There’s some hidden cash just past this structure.



3G! Yeah! But alas, a dead end! Hold on, though. What did the bartender tell me?



“The old well over there is the entrance to the Mam Desert.” Thanks, bartender.



These are VAMPIRE BATS. Colour aside, they’re no different from the FANG BATS earlier in the game. Probably if you didn’t upgrade your sword they’d take more hits to kill. I get two life hearts from them.



Man, a MADMAN (Maybe they were supposed to be mudmen?). Screw these guys. Doesn’t look so bad in that shot, but the problem is they usually look more like this:



You can’t hit them when they’re down low like that. They go back and forward, then pop up and fire their projectile at you. That’s your chance to hit them:



Ha ha! Sneaky devil.



One more hit and his money is mine. I kind of wish MADMEN didn’t drop cash, so I could just ignore them.



There’s a few of them around. Once you get past one, he’ll respawn while you fight the next and then start shooting at you from behind. Jerks. This is a really great place to have magic, because then you can hit them while they’re low down. Sadly, I wasted my magic on the KURACKEN. Anyway, there’s another mysterious door here. Let’s see what it contains!

A GIANT KHONG!



He throws rocks and jumps around. The rocks break up into smaller rocks, which I dodge poorly.



The trick is to get him backed up to the edge of the screen. Each time you hit him he’s knocked backwards. If you get him up against the edge, he can’t move back out of range, but he’s still stunned for a second and you can get some hits in. Unfortunately he’s just out of range in the last shot above, so I missed and he jumps away:



He actually takes a lot of hits to kill, though I miss a lot, too. Like a lot of enemies in this game, he gets pretty upset when you beat him.



The great thing about bats is that even though I suck at fighting them and get hit a lot, they drop health so you tend to come out ahead. What’s through that door?



An armour shop! I can’t quite afford hard armor, and even if I could I wouldn’t get it when the armor of legend is sitting right there waiting for my monies. For the moment the heavy armor is protecting me pretty well, anyway.



As always, there’s some cash upstairs.



If you stand on the top step then this bat will swoop into the ground in front of you. When you kill it there the heart it drops will be trapped. I tried to avoid this by jumping, and I took a hit for my troubles.



Oh hey, I’ve heard of this place. Let’s see what’s happening at the bar.



This is Jack, the guy the bartender in Round 4 mentioned. How do I know? He sells the premium ale. 28G! I’d better stick to mead, which nets me some advice on how to kill the final boss. But if I were to buy a few rounds of the good stuff, here’s what I’d get:



Jack and Betty are perhaps the most developed characters in WBiML. They’re in a relationship. She lives in a bar. Buying ale twice nets you a Letter to Betty. If I’m ever in the Pyramid’s bar, I’ll pass it along. Or I will in the bar run, anyway. I don’t think this sidequest is worth the money, so I’m not going for it in the main run.



Now this is a desert! I’m getting sick of GOBLETS dropping GAUNTLETS instead of cash.



I jump around a bit, but I don’t find any hidden cash. Instead:



I fall through the floor and nearly get hit by a bat. I don’t know what kind of bats these are, by the way. There’s only two types listed in the manual, and this is the third I’ve encountered. Anyway, whatever these bats are called, they’re the boss of Round 5.



Each time you kill one, a platform appears.

You also get a platform for collecting the stage key.



The bats themselves are pretty easy. They might’ve taken two hits each if I hadn’t picked up that gauntlet, but I did, so we can’t be certain. After killing the bats comes the secret actual boss of the stage:



Climbing out of the hole. It’s kind of hard to depict in screenshots, so take a look at the .gif at the end of the update. Basically the platforms move erratically (or maybe I just suck), and I tend to miss them on the way up and fall back down again.



I kill some more GOBLETS. Note that I’m getting shot at from both sides in the second shot. As I move to the right, the pyramid comes in to view. But even more amazing, we’re about to solve the riddle of why these dudes are called GOBLETS:



They’re weaker versions of this guy, the GOBLIN.



Run away! Hey, someone’s shooting at me!



Oh, I forgot about this guy. It seems that when you climb out of the hole you’re in a different part of the desert. Kind of like replaying the boss in Round 4. There’s an extra GOBLET off to the left of where you come back out.



I take two teaspoons of concrete and go face the GOBLIN.



Actually he’s not so tough.



So here’s where I stand after Round 5. Not too bad, really. I got a GREAT SWORD from the KHONG, I didn’t lose too much health, and I’ve got a fair bit of money. Speaking of KHONG:



And I think I promised some inept climbing:



I also took a shot at the KHONG in a separate run where I still had the gradius instead of the broad sword:



He took forever to kill. I wanted to figure out whether he always drops the great sword, or if he just drops the next sword up from what you have. Looks like it's the latter.

Here's the map:



I've been having some trouble with my computer, so the scanner's out of action. That's partly why I didn't manage to keep my cracking pace with this update, by the way. For a while there I thought I might have this LP knocked on the head by the end of the month, but that looks pretty unlikely now. Sorry, gang. Anyway, I had to resort to freehand computer drawing. The yellow circles are hidden cash, and the letters represent enemies. The Gs are GOBLETs and the GOBLIN, the Ss are SNAKES, the Bs are BATS, and the ms are MADMEN. Just so you know, this is probably the least accurate map yet.

Edit 28/8/11: So I had a quick run through the game this morning just for fun, and managed to jump over the hole in the desert where the bats are, allowing me to kill a few extra GOBLETs before falling down and get some extra money. Also there's a hidden coin at the cactus just past the hole, and you can get it both before and after falling down (that is, you can get it twice).

TL,DR:

KHONG's sprite looks really weird and janky when his arms are up.

Round 6: Pyramid of Sphinx. Let’s proceed!



The first area is a series of platforms over spikes. The same pattern of platforms pretty much repeats four times. The first time you go low, the second time a convenient spring takes you high.



The third platform pits you against a new enemy: MINI-DEATH MASTERS (a mistranslation of the original ORGASM MASTERS). They’re a lot like the DEATH MASTER in the first level, except they’re smaller and take two hits from the third-best sword to kill instead of two hits from the weakest sword. They tend to drop large amounts of cash, 36G in this case. Somehow I missed it jumping over, so I had to brave the spikes, costing me a whole heart.



I manage to repeat this with the second MINI-DEATH MASTER.



In the great tradition of video games, these red platforms sink when you stand upon them.



There’s a hidden magic shop up top, but I don’t bother getting any.



These blue snakes are PYTHONs. Just an obstacle, really. They don’t move and they die in one hit. The blue mouse on the lower floor is a MASTER RAT. By standing where I am in the last shots, I cause three bags of gold to appear.



I get 47G from the three of them, then kill the green ANACONDA for another 5.



I believe that this ROHPAH is guarding a hospital, but sadly it knocked me away before I could find out. If only I’d had some magic, I could’ve fought it from the platform on the left. Oh well. As I fell I uncovered a hidden coin! What the heck is a ROHPAH, you ask? I don’t know, but according to a quick google search “La ropa” is Spanish for “clothing” (second result: “kEE-tah-meh lah roh-pah. Take your clothes off.”). Another possibility is that it’s a mistranslation of the D&D monster “Roper”. It’s got the tentacles and the mouth, anyway.



I go back over to the left, under where I entered this area. There’s a hidden armor shop, and I take the chance to get the Armor of Legend, the strongest in the game. Notice that I’ve been doing pretty badly this level, so I can use some extra protection. I am now all but broke.



I manage to get hit by the MASTER RAT, but with my new gear I only lose a quarter heart. I drop through the hole in the floor to move on.



I head off to the left initially, and knock on another door.



It’s a bar! I’m pretty short on health, so I could use some booze to restore me. I buy two rounds of ale, and find out that the sphinx likes to ask questions. You know, this must be Betty, the girlfriend of Jack from round 5. In my bar run Jack gave me a letter to give to her, but in this run I’m not carrying it. But if I were:



If you buy the mead, the response is the same whether you’ve got the letter or not. Betty doesn’t help cheapskates.



Buying two drinks of ale is the trick. The first gets you some thanks, the second lets you know what’s been happening lately. So that’s 30G here, plus 56G in round 5 to get the letter, all so you can find out there’s a chicken thief about. What’s the point of that?

It’s another door like in Round 3. Incidentally, that platform to the left of the door has a hidden shoe shop on it. I didn’t bother because: A) I can’t afford new shoes; and B) I wanted to get to the bar and get some health, pronto.



Inside is the Sphinx. He seems like a nice guy.



Y’wha?



Y’wha? I guess After Burner?



Annoyingly I missed the end of the screenshot. I’m “ALLOWED TO GO OUT OF THE PYRAMID.”



Then he kills himself. Wierdo. So what’s the deal with the missing chicken? Well, let’s see what happened during my bar run:



There’s a few different questions, and I think the answers are randomised. I’m pretty sure he can also ask about his hobby (one of the answers is golf). If you get it wrong you have to fight him. He stands at the edge of the screen and throws lightning at you, then teleports to the other side of the screen when you get close. It’s nice to avoid the fight, but in my opinion it’s not worth 86G, especially when you’ve got one chance in three to avoid the fight anyway. That said, if I’d had to fight him I probably would have lost my revival potion in the process, and that’s worth 100G.

No boss fight .gif this time, ‘cause there was no fight. Here’s the level, though:



There's at least two mistakes in that map. Can you spot them? This handy annotated version has them corrected (sort of).

Well, we're half way through the game now, with six out of twelve rounds completed. And still on page 2! It's kind of hypocritical of me to ask this, given how infrequently I comment on other people's LPs, but if you're out there reading this, I'd be happy to hear about it! Also, my thanks to everyone who's commented so far.

TL,DR:

For some reason younger me used to pick up the Boots of Legend first, typically leaving the armor for last. I guess I just preferred the speed/jumping height boost.

I completely missed out on the chicken clue though! I just delivered the letter and thought that was it.

I'm still reading the LP.

It's pretty nice that the game let's you skip one of the later bosses. Usually only the early bosses have that sort of gimmick.

Also, the Sega references are nice, but it would've been funny if they went for something a little more specific.

WHAT COLOR IS ALIS HAIR?

BLUE
GREEN
PURPLE

If you are going to insight such a wonderful character as the sphinx, I demand at least a genuine riddle. I'm disappointed at you, game I wasn't aware of until someone did an LP of it.

The Sphinx in Wonder Boy In Monster World (Genesis version) just askes you trivia about the game. Come to think of it, I don't know of any games offhand where a Sphinx or related creature asks you proper riddles. Maybe there's some point-and-click or text adventures that did it.

To be fair, with the grasp of the language that sphinx has he'd probably have a horrible time of it trying to come up with real riddles.

OK, see. Now this is getting into Earthworm Jim 2 territory. Phantasy Star doesn't lower itself to the crazy anime hair colors (except for that one guy).

Wow, I never realized that I had to speak to her twice to get the Sphinx hint.
Also, this LP is making me want to play the game again in the worst way!

I know, but it's a Master System game, it's got to be completely off base somewhere.

After all, it was already getting pretty close to EJ2 territory with the what game am I playing? question. Why not go all the way (or be...*sigh* factually correct)?

Also I forgot what color Alis' hair was.

So, what color is Jim's red gun?

I know for a fact it can't be red. That's just silly.

The one in Wario: Master of Disguise at least asks you pun-riddles (and, occasionally, the Classical Sphinx Riddle).

Just chiming in to say that I am enjoying the LP.

Plain old brown!