I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to anyone who’s played Journey to hear that it holds up incredibly well. The wonderful art design, the gorgeous soundtrack, and the joyous, minimalist gameplay are just as impactful to me now as they were when I first played it over a decade ago. In my eyes, this game sets the standard for what an “art game” should strive to be.

That being said, I do have two nitpicks. First, having the camera be controlled by motion controls is a terrible idea, one born in an era where everyone thought motion controls were going to be the future of video games. Second, I feel like the online aspect kind of diminishes the experience a bit. The story, scant as it is, feels very personal, and having some other schmuck in the frame having the exact same personal experience as you at the same time just lessens the impact to me a bit.

But overall, a must-play in my opinion.

Things have a strange way of working out. While waiting for Incscryption to unlock on my PS5, I had time to kill and decided to boot up Wonder Boy and try it out. I was not expecting to essentially binge through it and spend the entire day on this game. Wonder Boy is a ton of old school fun.

Wonder Boy does my absolute favourite thing that remasters do; which is to have a controller mapped button to toggle between the old and new graphics. And in this game, I ended up using this feature very frequently as I was in awe of what the team achieved visually. The remastered graphics feel like they're ripped out of a children's fantasy book. The soft and water paint-y colour works really well to create this whimsical vibe. And likewise, the remastered OST is simply extraordinary. I LOVED how there are so many different renditions of the same track. In the original game there was basically one main song you heard for the entire game. Now, in this version, they have different versions of that tune for the different areas. A spooky version, a desert version, a forest version. I found this to be a really clever solution.

The gameplay is quite simplistic which is to be expected for a game built on a 30 year old foundation. That being said, Wonder Boy still plays surprisingly well. The metroidvania-esque progression is fun although sometimes maybe a bit too confusing for it's own good. I died A LOT but that was part of the fun. I enjoyed learning the routes to the different bosses by heart as I'd fail and fumble my way towards them. Eventually I knew I'd succeed. And when I did, it felt great! I should mention that I did have a lot of issues with enemy hitboxes. I felt it was frequently difficult to gage if my sword would hit an enemy or not. And this did often lead to me dying.

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is exactly how you remaster an older game while remaining faithful to the source material. I think the game could have been made even better had they made some gameplay or level design modifications. But this is as good as it gets short of doing that.

The way everything feels with the new graphics and sound design really make Wonder Boy shine. Highly recommended for anyone in the mood for a short (sub 5 hour) old school experience.

Almost exactly the kind of remake you'd want for any 8-bit game. The visuals aren't just lovingly recreated, they're reimagined with so much new detail and gorgeous animation. The art style is a bit different than the original intent, but it looks so good I don't mind, and if you do mind then there's a button to instantly switch to the old graphics. The soundtrack, which was just alright in the original game, got equally gorgeous remixed orchestrations that elevate them quite a lot, and there are even multiple situational remixes of songs that were originally re-used identically in the original game. If you miss the original soundtrack's energy and percussion, the original audio is also a button press away. In terms of presentation, this is a remake that manages to have more personality than the original game, and that is highly commendable.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is left mostly untouched except for slightly better controls. If you were already a huge fan of the original, this must be perfect, but there were just a couple aspects that didn't age well that I wish could've been addressed. One is that a very useful item is hidden behind holding up on the D-pad in a random dead end, which I absolutely would not have discovered without a guide. Another is that the enemy balancing is very inconsistent. On the same screen there will be enemies that barely chip you and enemies that take you out in two hits. The Japanese temple area features red ninjas that throw shurikens at you which you block with your shield, then later you find identical red ninjas that throw identical shurikens which, for whatever reason, are unblockable. Aside from stuff like that, this game is really pretty easy, especially the final boss which was a joke.

Also, the way the Tasmanian sword works is a little annoying. You have to keep switching to it if you want to change between forms. Earlier in the game, you get an item that allows you to break blocks with your sword, and you can do that with any sword instead of having to equip one specific sword, so why not have transformations work that way? This is a nitpick, but this and the aforementioned enemy balancing could've very easily been solved, as this is a remake after all. I guess they really wanted to stick as close as possible to the original, and that's certainly better than if they'd have went too far and dumbed the game down. But those changes definitely would've made the game better for me.

This is still the best way to play the best Sega Master System game, which was quite an ambitious game for its time. The design of the interconnected world is generally great, and having different forms you're cursed into throughout the game is really cool. I didn't really like walking my ass all the way back to the area I was in whenever I died, but at the same time the game's world would probably feel tiny if it had checkpoints. Overall, recommended if you like this type of game.

Extraordinarily frustrating. For much more good than bad in the end, but I really did need to talk with others about it, it was like "i'm going to destroy a pillow" with the feelings I had left in the brain stew.

It's in one way, fucking ridiculously well written. Delilah is talk on "not real" escaped to relationships as well as an explicit message on confronting memories. Henry is a "failure" and "cowardly" who cannot confront the pains around him ultimately thrust to realize he has to go back home and come to terms with life. Other characters, their relationships and stories whether surrounding Henry or being left behind to be found by Henry are also failures, painful retellings of this conflict with specters these people saw as real. It's all set to this sunset painting, this growing sense of longing shared by all involved for a sunrise we will never see come up for us on screen. We're denied even the beautiful, serene sunset as it goes up in smoke.

But on the other hand, there's actually too much catharsis. Too much foreground, really. What I loved most of what I was playing was how these background elements intersected, how I was left to feel that pain and wince in real time rather than when the reins were clearly torn from me. I don't mean to say that the cuts were bad, in fact they were perfect, it's more how this structure intrinsically needed to throw the perspective in someone else's agency for us to look at and realize we can't become the sludge trapped in the park. A lot of potential really is left to the cutting floor by this move, a timeline where we never feel a bit of catharsis by a mystery left unsolved, or one where we watch ourselves fail again by Henry's own hands, etc etc. This is what's extremely thorny to talk about though. Like can you imagine just walking up to a work, and going, "you know this works really well but it'd be better if you actually just flipped the whole structure to lean the other way thank you". Like who asked? It works for me not for you?

But the result, at least on my end, is that I ended up decoupled from Henry and Delilah's story for a good portion because the disconnect from the first hour and a half to the latter hour and a half set me ablaze. The dialogue and delivery was still incredible but my emotional investment was missing, at least mostly. Mercifully the background actually never left, as the finale to Dave left me moving away from my desk and pushing myself into a pillow for a good minute.

It's ironic really. I think the idea that this "huehue should've been a movie" has things so backwards (and also it's just really fucking bankrupt, like i'm not taking you seriously). There's so much here to add to, via additional player agency, without even taking away from the narrative focused on. I ended up exploring the whole map completely unintentionally, on the way and a couple times off the beaten path just to finish what qualifies as "the side story". I ended up fishing for a while too. In the end the release I'm looking for needed more 'play,' albeit, I'm no editor. This story still has volumes to speak for what it is, like I ended up discovering not through my own hands how Henry's parasocial relationship has an even bigger relevance as we are today.

I do hope there's a dawn for Campo Santo somewhere down the line. They made something truly special here.