Looking back the most surprising thing about the Game Boy was that the library wasn’t completely full of NES ports. Instead developers generally opted to release scaled down versions of their SNES releases on the handheld. The result often wasn’t pretty. Still, some developers did release portions of their NES catalogue on Nintendo’s black and white Game Boy. Today we’re going to talk about one of these. It’s Adventure Island from Hudson Soft. Surprisingly this is not a port of the original game on the NES, and is instead a re-titled version of the first sequel. Trust me when I say that’s actually a good thing. Regardless let’s dive right in to the review.
Adventure Island stars a portly man named Master Higgins who lives peacefully on a string of island with his girlfriend Tina. She is kidnapped by an evil witch doctor, and so he sets out to save her. It’s a veritable adventure across several islands. See what I did there? The thing is there’s almost no story exposition in this game. You have a brief kind of intro on the title screen, but all this shows is Master Higgins being awoken by a nap by a falling coconut, and then he chases eggs around? Yeah it’s a little bizarre I guess. Who really cares about story anyway? It’s time to hop and bop our way to adventure!
Adventure Island is a 2D side scrolling platform game. You guide Master Higgins from the left side of a level to the right generally. Some more vertically inclined stages require you to climb from the bottom of a stage to the top, but these are pretty rare. By default our hero has no means of damaging foes. He can’t even jump on their head. What’s more is he dies in one hit. Sounds pretty weak, right? Well that’s where the power-ups come in to play. The default tool you can find is the rock hatchets. These can be thrown but always at an arc. There’s also a skateboard that allows Master Higgins to move faster, but he’s stuck constantly going forward and can only slow down. This does allow him one extra hit though, and he can still through hammers while decked out on the skateboard.
The real highlight however is in the dino buddies. These little guys are locked inside card symbol blocks that are released from eggs. There are four different dinosaurs that Master Higgins can ride here. Two types of bipedal lizards that are differentiated by color and their attack. One swings it’s tail at enemies while the other shoots fireballs. The latter can also walk through lava without being damaged. The remaining two are significantly more interesting though. You can ride an Elasomosaurus (I had to google the name, sue me) which allows you to effortlessly glide through water stages. It’s also the only one that can survive in aquatic environments. The final one is the rarest. It’s a Pterodactyl that can fly by flapping it’s wings, and drop rocks on enemies. For an 8-bit title the power-ups are amazing, and add a lot of variety to gameplay.
There’s also a neat reserve system in place here. If you survive to the end of a stage with the hammer or any of the dino buddies (sorry skateboard, you aren’t a part of this) you can choose to store it in your inventory. This allows you to use them again at the start of any other stage you choose. This means you can potentially hold on to these things throughout the entire game if you’re smart. I know I tried to play intelligently with the Pterodactyl in particular, and only used it in stages that you can fly all the way through on to make life easier. Of course it was super upsetting when I lost it. What’s neat is the fact that if you collect two hammer power-ups you no longer get the fire rings to throw, but instead the spare is sent to your reserves.
One of the major defining aspects of Adventure Island however is one that I’m not a particularly big fan of. I’m speaking of the hunger meter. This depletes naturally as time progresses, and once it reaches zero you lose a life. Most of the time this is fairly harmless but in some stages it can be a real pain to manage. The only way to replenish Master Higgins’ hunger is by eating yummy fruits. These are hanging in the sky throughout every stage, but only restore a few points apiece. Basically Master Higgins will always have the hunger pains and later in the game it’s rare to be have this meter completely satiated. The hunger system adds some largely unnecessary urgency to the later stages which can be frustrating.
Speaking of frustration Adventure Island actually has very little of this. The game is mostly pretty easy, and the stages are perhaps a little too short. Even the boss encounters don’t offer much in the way of challenge. The most difficult part is dodging their projectiles, but this is surprisingly manageable here. It’s because they move slower in this version of the game than in the NES release. It’s clearly because of the difference in hardware. Those looking for a super challenging title will probably want to check something else out.
Speaking of the version differences I’m surprised at just how close Hudson Soft got here to the NES release of Adventure Island II. The graphics are obviously different (but I’ll touch on that later). For the most part the fun level designs are re-created with surprising care. It did seem to me that some of the items were moved around, but that’s not a big deal at all. All of the power-ups, stages, and mechanics such as the inventory management are all re-produced here almost perfectly. That’s quite impressive and shows how much work went into this port. So many other developers were phoning it in for their Game Boy releases and so it’s nice to see Hudson Soft deliver.
As I’ve already mentioned the graphics have been altered, but this is still recognizable as Adventure Island 2. Master Higgins sprite looks slightly worse and more blocky now. This goes for some of the enemies as well. I also notice the boss characters have less animations. Honestly none of these are a big deal at all for me. What is a little annoying however is how the screen doesn’t scroll as smoothly. This is a little choppy, and when it scrolls up and down Master Higgins sometimes seems to hang for a few milliseconds. It’s not game breaking by any means, but definitely noticeable. The soundtrack has been altered a bit too but that’s because the Game Boy can’t perfectly re-create NES music. Each song is recognizable at least, but the notes are a little higher pitched generally. I still like this soundtrack, but it’s barely not as good.