Wonder Boy III - Monster Lair (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis) - Stages 1A-4A

Whooo! Long time since my last playthrough... main reason was a lack of time and also the crappiness of this game. If you expected Dragon's Trap for Wonder Boy III then I have to disappoint you. There are two games named Wonder Boy III and this one was released earlier - at least in the arcades. The Mega Drive/Genesis port was done after Dragon's Trap. So I decided to chronologically do my playthrough of all Wonder Boy games.

If you have never heard of Wonder Boy III - Monster Lair then it's probably because it deserves do be lost in history. This game does not continue the adventure path set by its predecessor. Instead, the developers tried something new: Make it a shooter. Yes, each level consists of two sub-stages. One is an autoscrolling platforming stage where you shoot with your sword and the other is just shooting while you fly on the back of some dinosaur.

Graphics and sound would be awesome - if it was a game for the 8-bit Master System. The Mega Drive/Genesis surely is capable of much more than this. Gameplay is shallow as well. I'm always up for trying something new, but this combination of a platforming part that is mediocre at best and a shooter that just sucks results in a waste of time to play this game. One interesting thing, though, is the fact that it supports two players simultaneously.

I played this game at regular difficulty. Usually, I play at the highest difficulty for my playthroughs, but it wasn't possible for me. It seems that "Expert" difficulty is made for the two player mode because especially the bosses take forever to kill.

Next will be Wonder Boy III - Dragon's Trap. I've recorded that months ago before I even decided to do a full Wonder Boy anthology, but I will leave a few days in between so I don't flood people's subscription list with 20 movies.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Wonder
• Boy
• Monster
• Lair
• III
• Sega
• Mega
• Drive
• Genesis
• arcade
• adventure
• playthrough
• walkthrough

[vjpearce]

I agree with you here. I hated the mega drive/genesis version. The arcade game was fun though. It was one of only two video games that was 2 player at the time, at the arcades I used to go to.