It's new to me: Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair
Wonder Boy changed quite a bit from game to game, but the jump from II to III was something else.
This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair is the last of the Wonder Boy titles made for the arcades. Its sequel is Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, which… don’t think too hard about the fact that they’re both Wonder Boy III. Just know that The Dragon’s Trap is a sequel to Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the second game in the series, and is known as Monster World II in Japan even though the designation changed from “Land” to “World,” and also the next game after that is known in Japan as Wonder Boy V: Monster World III. Alright, never mind, let’s dwell on all of this for a moment.
The ports of these games — starting with Wonder Boy in Monster Land — to NEC and Hudson Soft’s PC Engine/Turbografx were known as Bikkuriman World, Dragon's Curse, and The Dynastic Hero, while Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair dropped the “Wonder Boy” portion for its North American release on the Turbografx CD, where it was simply known as Monster Lair. This was all to fit in with the fact that Westone retained the copyrights to the games themselves, and could license them out for publishing on non-Sega platforms, but Sega owned the naming rights. Hudson not only ended up working with Westone for ports of Wonder Boy games to the PC Engine and Turbografx, but also used this licensing deal as a way to launch their popular Adventure Island series on the NES, which worked out well for everyone involved.
So how did both Monster Lair and Dragon’s Trap end up as Wonder Boy III? Like with there being two very different Final Fantasy IIs once upon a time, the answer is timing. While Monster Lair launched in arcades worldwide in 1988, it was The Dragon’s Trap — made exclusively for consoles — that landed in homes first. The Dragon’s Trap released on the Sega Master System in North America in September of 1989, but didn’t see a release on that system in Japan. Monster Lair skipped the Master System and went straight to the Mega Drive, except not until 1990 in Japan, 1991 in Europe, and not at all in North America. The Turbografx CD edition was the first to launch in that region, and that was in August of 1990. The Dragon’s Trap was known as Monster World II in Japan, as it was a sequel to Wonder Boy II: Monster Land, but in North America, at that point in time, it was the third Wonder Boy game to end up on a home console, and the same goes for Europe, which saw a release just one month after North America did.
It’s all confused and confusing, yes, but that fits Wonder Boy’s whole deal, considering the series never quite seemed sure what it wanted to be in its early days. That’s not meant as a criticism, either: developer Westone seemed mostly interested in making whatever game they felt like making, and put the Wonder Boy name and likenesses on a bunch of them because it was a brand they had established, and that makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. Far more sense than the naming conventions, anyway. The Dragon’s Trap does make sense as Monster World II, since it was building on the conventions of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the sequel to Wonder Boy, and basically skipped what was going on in Monster Lair — these are a couple of branches on the same tree. Monster Lair built itself mostly as a sequel to the original Wonder Boy in its gameplay, but with some of the fantasy-based set dressing of Monster Land, and a new third element that exists just in this one space: horizontal shoot ‘em up stages.
The original Wonder Boy didn’t have a fantasy setting. It had a prehistoric/tribal one, and also a skateboard. Levels were timed, and when you ran out of time, you failed. Taking damage from enemies would kill, stumbling on rocks would slow you down and harm you, so it was important to not just be fast, but also safe, and to take down foes and collect fruit to extend your time as you traversed an environment full of opportunities for pixel-perfect jumps. Its sequel, Monster Land, kept the timer as a way of slowly sapping away your health, but traded in the skateboard and the original setting for a fantasy world with swords, cash, and permanent gear upgrades. It hadn’t hit the pathfinder-esque gameplay it would end up with when The Dragon’s Trap landed, but the first steps of moving away from the original arcade setup to something new were there.
Which makes Monster Lair something of a diversion from that path, and a stronger embrace of the arcade nature of the series. Once again, a timer tied to your life exists. When it runs out, you lose a life instead of just some health like in Monster Land. Eat fruit, and your remaining time goes back up. Kill enemies, and the time goes up. Just keep moving, keep collecting, and keep killing monsters, and you’ll have time. You’ll have to avoid taking damage, however, as getting hit by foes will kill you, instantly. Sometimes, that can be easier said than done, and it doesn’t help that the world is full of instant-death pitfalls you might find yourself in while chasing fruit, or avoiding enemies, or while trying to grab powerups for your sword.
Which you don’t use as a sword, like in Monster Land, but as a way to shoot different kinds of magical bullets. The weak, short-ranged default shot, or one that spins around you continually as you hammer the fire button, or a wide beam that fires off three large circle shots at once, or the missiles that keep going as long as you hold the fire button down and explode once you let go, or the two-way shot that fires in front of you and behind you, or the laser that cuts through a line of enemies, but on a narrow path.
It makes Monster Lair a forced-scrolling run-and-gun platformer, which is vastly different from what it was in either of the series’ prior iterations, but the change doesn’t stop there, since it goes from run-and-gun to outright horizontal STG in the second half of each stage. There, the timer is gone, with it looking exactly the same but instead being a health bar, and you’ll have to take down wave after wave of flying enemies before reaching a boss fight that will end the stage as a whole. Those boss fights are the real draw of these stages, as they’re about more than just shooting a ton until something dies; instead, you have to figure out a strategy for how you’re going to take down a foe, like the giant snake firing shots at you as it slithers through the air in patterns you’ll have to recognize, so that you can damage every segment of its body enough to inevitably kill it. Or the fish that fires off its scales at you, turning them into small fish you’d been fighting already in the stage, putting you on the defensive before it runs out of scales and you can aim for its face with everything you’ve got during a brief window.
You’ll go through settings that cover the first two Wonder Boy games, and end up in sci-fi territory by the end of the Monster Lair, completing levels in outer space. Sure, you’d think that makes sense for a game where half of it is an STG, but you’re riding around on a dragon for those segments, not piloting a spaceship. The game is arguably a little too long: Westone might have made the push to consoles for the sequel in part because their ambition was constrained a bit by how arcade games were designed at the time. Going through 14 stages like these is a lot of arcade game, especially given the difficulty level of Monster Lair that’ll either force you to restart quite a bit or have to keep feeding in credits to continue.
Monster Lair is a standout in the series more for its unique design than its actual quality. It’s not bad by any means, but it can be pretty frustrating, and it’s nowhere near as good as later entries like The Dragon’s Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster World, or Monster World IV. The original Wonder Boy was a lovely little platformer, and its sequel, Monster Land, showed you could build some more depth into the concept and come out with something that was fresh that still managed to retain some of the spirit of its inspiration — it even lets you play a two-player mode, though, it has you taking turns, not working together. Monster Lair kind of ended up stuck halfway between Westone’s desire to grow the scope of their games and their then-home in the arcades, however, so while it’s not a black sheep of the franchise or anything, it’s still kind of the weirdo.
If you’re looking to check out the game, you’ve got some options. The Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is available on the Switch as well as Playstations 4 and 5, and it includes two of the three versions of the game: the original arcade release, as well as the Mega Drive one. Sadly, the Mega Drive one is suboptimal, as everything was redrawn for it, and looks a little… off. The Turbografx CD edition was far closer to a perfect port of the arcade edition — albeit without the parallax scrolling of that System 16 release — but it did come with a Red Book audio soundtrack that sounds excellent to make up for it. It’s a shame that the Wonder Boy collections haven’t put their Hudson-produced cousins in there along all of the Sega-affiliated ones, but that’s how rights issues go, and also what emulation is for.
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