A Maddening Dash through a Faux-Paradise
Adventure Island is essentially a NES port of the arcade game Wonder Boy with some character changes. Instead of playing as Wonder Boy, you play as the focus faced Master Higgins. An evil witch doctor has taken Princess Tina off to some remote tropical island, but I'd like to think Master Higgins fell asleep on vacation, she wandered off and he's in a panicked frenzy scouring the island to find her. That's the goal though, find and rescue Princess Tina, running, jumping and maybe hurling a projectile weapon along the way through eight areas with four stages and a boss to cap off every fourth stage. Sounds familiar, like Super Mario Bros. familiar.
Mechanically speaking, Adventure Island, like Super Mario Bros. is strong. Some of the tweaks to the formula seem like good ideas. The first few stages flow really well before it becomes apparent what the game really is. It's a game with plenty of checkpoints, the less lenient time restriction at first seems like a good way to keep the player moving and unlike Mario, Master Higgins cannot jump on his enemies, and is only able to throw axes to clear them from his path. This tense high speed don't stop for nothing game of keep away seems promising at first. As the game gets more difficult and jumps require more and more precision, the time restriction starts to feel like an unnecessary obstacle, the checkpoints start to feel too few and far between, and respawning without axes only kicks you when you're down. The honeymoon phase ends, you start to notice the grating music, that none of the enemies are particularly interesting designs and there isn't much to look at.
It is undoubtedly an arcade game, complete with unexpected enemy spawns and cheap tricks. Powerups spawn in eggs, but there's also a curse in some eggs that almost ensures a lost life, and you'll never know what's inside an egg until you crack it open. Sometimes there is a skateboard within an egg. A skateboard provides interesting tradeoff, as it allows Master Higgins to take a hit, but Master Higgins cannot come to a stop. Sometimes these skateboards appear in locations where being forced forward makes a jump impossible unless you break the egg, then activate the moving platform(s), then go back for the skateboard while timing the now moving platform(s). In a game with pretty harsh time constraints, it's rarely going to be worth your time. Not unlike this game in a general sense.
Its promise quickly fades and what follows is a game less about skill and more about trial and error. Towards the end, the level design doubles down on its unfair enemy spawns, adding them to shake up some already pixel perfect jump timings. It's constantly devolving; when it started off promising it turned frustrating and continues to get worse until it becomes the stuff of nightmares. Master Higgins' journey through Adventure Island is a maddening dash through a faux-paradise.