Monster Lair Game Sample -- TurboGrafx-CD

Original Air Date: May 20th, 2009

The ill-fated or highly successful TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine (depending on the region and your outlook) is home to many, MANY good games. If you've got a load of cash (or the inclination to download every rom/iso/etc. you can find), then this system and its successors/expansions are pretty amazing.

This is a game for the TurboGrafx-CD or TurboDuo, the North American version of either the PC Engine CD-ROM² or PC Engine Duo. Our videos will simply say either TurboGrafx-16, TurboGrafx-CD, or TurboDuo (with the usual branding such as Japanese if it's a Japan-only game, etc.) depending on what system will run them. Note that anything that runs in a TurboGrafx-16 will also run on a TurboDuo, since a person's Duo should have come with a Super System Card (3.0 BIOS) or better. Yeah, it all sounds confusing. The hefty pricetag at launch really sunk this device in the states, which is a damn shame really. Pardon my language.

For the purpose of this video, we're starting with the basics. Monster Lair, or "Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair", is one of the first games released in the U.S. to utilize the CD addition. It basically looks and plays like a simple TurboChip/HuCard game, but features exceptional audio quality that you would usually find on, well, a CD. It is a simple means to an end and perhaps criticized a bit harshly, but oh well. This game is basically Wonder Boy and Monster World smoshed together.

You play as Adam by default, who runs around with his sword and fights monsters in two different ways. The first is a run-and-gun fashion. You see, Adam doesn't slice people, he shoots stuff, with his sword. He must run and jump to grab food to stay alive and he can grab several different power-ups to improve his chances of survival. The second type of levels are mostly the same deal, except you ride a dragon and it's more of a horizontal shooter fare. This game also has two-player co-op and was also released in Japan for Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

This game was recorded on the original system for those curious. Enjoy.

Basic Format: CD-Rom² (CD-Rom2)

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Monster
• Lair
• Wonder
• Boy
• III
• Three
• NEC
• Alfa
• System
• Hudson
• Soft
• Westone
• TurboGrafx
• Turbo
• CD
• PC
• Engine
• TurboGrafx-CD
• TG-CD
• 16

[wingnut4427]

is this an emulator & if so How do you play ISO's on your emulator ?

[Vysethedetermined2]

@wingnut4427 No emulator, though you can easily load ISOs into most programs by mounting them on a virtual drive with Daemon Tools Lite and then assigning the program the same drive as where the ISO was mounted. Check Google for specifics on that.

[poopmaster13]

The neat thing about the TG16, aside from the fact that it beat Sega to the punch in both 16 bit AND having a CD attachment, was that it was essentially a souped up 8bit machine. It was like the bridge between NES and SNES, in a way. It was certainly capable of having games on par with Genesis and SNES, graphically, but at it's heart, it still felt like an 8bit machine (except for the CD part, which was naturally 16 bit).

[coliecolie110]

The only thing good about this game is the music. Definitely the weakess title out of the series.

[rang3r34]

Awesome little game here! I've said it before, but TG-16 was a severly underrated system! Thanks for posting this again!!

[alvieao2]

Nice quality music for a Turbographx-CD game. And long story short, the Wonder Boy/Monster World series is a three-way between SEGA, Hudson and Westone when it comes to owning rights to which versions of the games. Monster Lair is no exception...