Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

released on Apr 18, 2017

"A modern version of cult classic Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap! A close collaboration between Lizardcube, DotEmu and legendary series creator Ryuichi Nishizawa, based on Westone Bit Entertainment's original masterpiece. How many more transformations can one hopeful body survive as it turns into a Lizard, a Mouse, a Piranha, a Lion, and a Hawk... The six different forms of our shape-shifting hero make up the cast of this non-stop action-adventure platformer!"


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Obra de arte hecha con mucho amor.

Nossa... Nem sei oque dizer direito. Esse jogo é incrível de mais, os gráficos são encantadores, os personagens e inimigos são muito carismáticos e ao mesmo tempo o jogo tem um grau de dificuldade MUITO mais elevado do que eu imaginava. Esse jogo consegue se disfarçar de fácil e tranquilo, porém só quem joga sabe o quão pilantra ele é. Isso não torna ele ruim, porém me surpreendeu de uma forma inexplicável, com o tempo peguei o jeito e terminei essa maravilha de jogo.

O game design é meio fudido mas o level design e foda e o jogo é MUITO carismático e divertido
E difícil pra caralho também

Played through the Switch version and collected all upgrade-related items before clearing the game. Later cleared the game a second time with classic graphics/music toggled. Tried the hard difficulty but did not have a good experience, so I will leave it at that.

Continuing to go through the large pile of games I have sitting among my Steam, Twitch, and Epic libraries on PC, I decided to finally play through this little gem. Originally a Sega Master System game, I played through around half of the TurboGrafx16 version of this game back on the Wii Virtual Console when I was a kid. I got stuck and couldn't progress back then, but I had really enjoyed my time with it. I figured it was high time I finally put this game to rest, and what better way to do it than with an excellent PC remake? It took me around 3 or 4 hours to beat the game on normal mode with a game pad, and I only had to look up where to go next a couple times ^^;.

Dragon's Trap is the third game in the Wonder Boy series, kinda, as it's a super confusing flow chart of confusing sequel names, but that's not important. What IS important is that the game starts out, the titular Wonder Boy (or Wonder Girl, as the remake gives you the option to choose :D ), right at the end of the adventure: The entrance to the Mako Dragon's castle! You barge in, beat up the guards, and kill the dragon easily. But as the game's title suggests, in death, the dragon has the last laugh! A blue flame emanating from his body hits you and morphs you into a disgusting lizard man! And so it is that Wonder Boy/Girl must begin their quest to return to their normal form!

Along the way, they'll battle another five dragons in their castles and gain another four monster forms as well! You'll get to be a mouse, a mer-man, a lion, and a bird! Although you can't switch between them at will (you need to visit a special transmutation hut that's hidden in certain areas of the game), each form has different special abilities that will help them get to the next area you need to go to, and they even have different specialties of what weapon they're best with. As you collect more swords, shields, and armor, it pays to check over your equipment in your inventory once you get a new form to make sure that what was previously your best equipment actually still is ^^;. But you have super deep pockets, so thankfully you never need to go and re-buy any equipment. All you gotta do is just swap the toggle in your inventory.

The actual gameplay of Dragon's Trap is more like a 2D Zelda, but without the overworld sections of something like Zelda 2 on the NES. The entire world exists along a 2D plane, and you go through it via scrolling left and right, falling down, flying up, and going through doors to access new areas, dungeons, and shops. The dungeons and bosses are challenging but fair, and even though your attack range is short, it never feels like you're underequipped for the job at hand. Each form controls differently enough that you'll likely develop a favorite among them, but not so different that it's like leaning a whole new game. The controls are great and there are secret weapon shops and heart containers scattered all over the world for you to find. The only real issue with the game design is that, in grand retro adventure game fashion, the signposting can be a bit rough in places, and having a playthrough up on YouTube to reference when you need to will likely ease the frustration of wandering around forever ad nauseum X3

You can jump and swing your sword in front of you, and you can even use special consumable weapons you find along the way if the opportunity calls for it, but that's pretty much it. Even though this is a remake, it's also just as much of a port as it is a remake. It's even running along such similar lines that you can press the trigger buttons on the controller to toggle between the old 8-bit graphics and music respectively whenever you want!

But although even though that retro goodness is cool (and in some places makes the environments a little easier to see hidden blocks in because it's not hidden by the foreground anymore), the remake takes the old graphics and music and cranks them up to 11. The new orchestrated soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, and basically every track in the whole game is a real banger. The new art assets are beautifully hand-drawn (or at least styled that way) and have really pretty and fluid animations. However, I think the real star of the show is the music, as this game has some of my favorite music I've heard in a game all year.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. To paraphrase my friend AJ, Dragon's Trap is at the same time the best game on the Master System but also totally not worth playing on it due to superior ports, and this is definitely the best of those ports. It may be an adventure game that's over 30 years old at this point, but it holds up fantastically well. It's certainly a bit short, but if you like action adventure games at all then this is a fantastic time to be had that won't have you pulling your hair out at the difficulty despite its age. Not many games this old can feel so new with only a fresh coat of paint, but Dragon's Trap is absolutely a game capable of that feat.

Açıkçası sözde bir kaç saatte biten bu metroidvania'da, beklenmedik şekilde eski NES zorluğunu güzel güzel iliklerimde hissedince sinir katsayım epey bir arttı bazı yerlerde. Rage geliyorum demez.

Hele ki son boss'a nasıl ulaşacağımı çözemedim diye, oluk oluk bir güzel sövecektim ki... buldum sonra :)

Onun haricinde çok güzel bir yeniden yapım. Görsel dizayn ve teknik özellikler açısından tabi. Yoksa oyunun kendisinin öyle çok çok büyük bir albenisi yok. Ama yine de, sadece görsel yenilenmesi için bile denenebilir. Ki arada çok tatlı müzikleri de promosyonun yanında ekstra.