In terms of the wider Adventure Island series, Super Adventure Island is a bit all over the place. The graphics are among the best in the series, and the music is smooth and sounds very crisp for SNES. Like New Adventure Island, it dispenses with AI2 and AI3's dinosaur mounts and inventory system, but it also distinguishes itself more from the NES games by moving at a slightly slower pace and introducing more types of jumps. The hunger meter rarely decreases much and you're never short for weapons, but the actual level design can be brutal as ever before too long. There's also a more novel variety in the levels, such as the one where you're swimming through the insides of a whale.

This would be above New Adventure Island for me if not for one glaring annoyance: two continues. Run out, and it's back to level 1. That game had infinite continues, and even Adventure Island 1 had a way to activate infinite continues, so there's no reason for this game to be kicking me back to the start. This game's not quite good enough to get away with that.

Being an adaptation of Wonder Boy for the NES, the original Adventure Island did nothing to fix the repetitive and boring nature of that original game, and thus suffered greatly for it, but in terms of Adventure Island II, that one was a bit of a different story. It did still carry several issues that the original game had, such as how it lasted way too long, and the levels did start to repeat themselves with little added to justify that, but it did make up for a lot of the other issues the original game had, while also adding several additional elements that make the game a pretty enjoyable time all around. So, it was clear that now that Hudson Soft had found a proper formula for this series that works, they would do what they do best and keep pumping out these titles like nobody’s business. However, instead of making a direct follow-up to Adventure Island II next, they would bring on Produce!, the company who would go on to be known for making The 7th Saga and several Bomberman titles, to bring the series to the next generation of consoles, and they would do this with the generically named Super Adventure Island.

Before playing this game, I had seen it in action before through a playthrough of it on YouTube, and based on what I had seen at that point, it didn’t look like anything all that special. Just another Adventure Island game, except now it looked and sounded a lot better, so there was no real reason for me to want to jump on it as soon as possible. After some time though, I figured I would go ahead and give it a shot, and yeah, it was basically exactly what I expected it to be. It was still a pretty good game though, and it did make some changes that I would say benefited the series as a whole, but it did omit several things at the same time that did also drag it down.

The story is basically the exact same as the ones from the previous two games, where while Master Higgins and his girlfriend Tina are enjoying a lovely night together, the evil Dark Cloak comes and puts a spell on Tina that turns her into stone (because…. I dunno, I guess he just wanted to be a dick), so it is up to Master Higgins to go stop him and restore Tina back to her normal self, which is as generic as a plot for one of these games go, but repetition if the name of the game for Hudson Soft, so it was to be expected. The graphics are pretty good, obviously being a massive step-up from the original two games, and despite it being an early SNES title, does have plenty of great environments and sprites for the characters, enemies, and bosses to look at, the music is pretty good, having plenty of catchy and funky beats, with some sounding like they were ripped straight out of the 90’s, and I love them for that, the control is mostly what you would expect from one of these games, but there are some new features that are added that makes it feel a lot better to get a handle on, and the gameplay is very close to the previous game, while again, managing to tweak some things around to make it more and less enjoyable at the same time.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of Master Higgins yet again, go through a set of five different worlds, each one having three stages and a boss fight each, defeat plenty of enemies along the way using whatever weapons you may find lying around the place, gather plenty of weapons, different power ups, and food items to help you out and to keep your hunger bar from dropping down to zero, and take on several bosses that provide a decent enough challenge, while also being able to be beaten pretty quickly if you are good enough at the game. Most of it is what you come to expect with not just an Adventure Island game, but a 2D platformer in general, which could lead to people not wanting to seek it out, but for what it's worth, it still manages to be a pretty enjoyable time, even with its lack of major changes.

For starters, alongside your trusty axe weapon, which works in the same way as it always does, you can now acquire a new type of weapon in the form of a boomerang, which is better than the axe in just about every way. Not only can you throw it forward in a straight line rather then an arc, but it can also be shot in four different directions, which was very helpful in plenty of situations, and it made the weapon my preferred weapon for the entire game, making me try to avoid the axe at all times like it was the plague. In addition to this, you also have a super jump that you can perform, which is pretty neat, and there are also several bonus stages that you can find along the way that can grant you extra lives, and that can be pretty helpful when you are in a bind.

With all that being said though, like I have mentioned several times earlier, there were several things that were greatly improved in this game, but at the cost of several other features. Two of my biggest problems with the original two games, those being the repetition and the length, have been fixed here, where all the levels feel different when paired alongside each other, and the game is now much shorter than either of the previous games. In fact, I would say the game is TOO short this time around. Yeah, it’s ironic, but you can beat this game in around 25 minutes if you know what you are doing, which kinda sucks, but hey, I will gladly take it over what the other two games gave me. And finally, some of the advancements that the second game made, such as the dino companions and the inventory screen full of items, are completely gone here, which also sucks to see, because both of those things were pretty great additions to the series. None of this completely ruins the game, but it does make me wonder what was going on in the development studio to make them want to get rid of so much stuff, while fixing other issues.

Overall, despite some missing features and a lack of change as a whole, Super Adventure Island was still a pretty good game at the end of the day, improving on the base gameplay enough to where I had a really great time, and it did a great job at bringing this series up to the next generation of consoles. I would definitely recommend it for those who were fans of the previous Adventure Island games, as well as those who are fans of old-school platformers in general, because while there isn’t much here to enjoy or latch onto, it is enough to be a nice breather playthrough before you take a swing at your next big game. But hey, even with everything said and done, there is one thing that we can all agree on: the universe hates Master Higgins’s guts, and it just will not let him find love without something getting in the way. That is a sad way to live.

Game #497