There’s a good chance that many of you reading this weren’t even alive when Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap received the Game of the Year award from Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1989. Even if you were alive and old enough to have played and enjoyed it, it’s been a whopping 28 years since that initial release. In the last three decades, the SEGA Master System title has become a classic hit, though largely relegated to history books about gaming gone by.
The Dragon’s Trap was a metroidvania style game before the term had even been coined (as this sub genre designation came around in 1997 with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night). It sets up a non-linear path that requires players to explore the side-scrolling world, earning additional life, weapons, and armor, and unlocking new abilities that facilitate reaching previously inaccessible areas. It’s a mix of the platforming of Mario and the inventory and combat systems of Zelda, sadly never reaching the pop culture status of either of these Nintendo powerhouses even though it was critically acclaimed in its day. Perhaps it was SEGA’s change to software only (and a penchant for fighting games and a certain blue hedgehog) that spelled relative obscurity for Wonder Boy, and he was lost to the annals of history, until now. Resurrection of a Classic
A faithful recreation of the original 8-bit game with stunningly vibrant hand-drawn animation, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap is the ki...