Adventure Island II is a side-scrolling platform game developed by Now Production and published by Hudson Soft that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. It is the sequel to Adventure Island and the second game in the series for the NES. While the first game was an adaptation of Westone's Wonder Boy arcade game, Adventure Island II is an entirely original work, as were all the subsequent Adventure Island games.
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Adventure Island + Super Mario Bros. 3 with dinosaurs like Mario World. Not groundbreaking, but pretty good as far as NES platformers go.
I had first abandoned the first game because it bored me to tears and was too repetitive to my liking, but then decided to give its sequel a try...
Oh boy! It's a much better improvement over the first! Definitely was more fun, with shorter levels, unique mounts to use, better boss fights and less slippery controls! Difficulty scales properly the further you go from island to island.
Definitely worth trying out, it's one of the better titles for the NES at this point in my opinion...!
Oh boy! It's a much better improvement over the first! Definitely was more fun, with shorter levels, unique mounts to use, better boss fights and less slippery controls! Difficulty scales properly the further you go from island to island.
Definitely worth trying out, it's one of the better titles for the NES at this point in my opinion...!
Um bom plataformer, a movimentação não é das melhores, é difícil se adaptar e provavelmente você vai morrer muito por causa dela, mas o level design é decente e tem várias partes desafiadoras, pra não dizer estressantes.
A really solid platformer. Huge improvement from the original. Levels are now better designed, controls are much tighter, there is more variety to the game's mechanics. I still don't like the hunger mechanic, but it's not a dealbreaker.
Juego platinado en retroachievements.
The original Adventure Island was one of the most repetitive and monotonous games that I had ever played from the 8-bit era of video games. Granted, that in itself is more so due to it being a reworked port of the original Wonder Boy, but either way, it still wasn’t that good, having a good basic set up and decent enough gameplay, but with way too many levels and little to no variety to be seen throughout. After this failure of a game, Wonder Boy would go off to do its own thing, and as for Adventure Island, it would continue on to be its own series, taking the gameplay elements of Wonder Boy and making it its own. Again, not sure how Hudson Soft managed to get away with that, but this led to them making plenty of sequels, starting out with one helmed by Now Production, Adventure Island II.
I took a very long time to get to this one, primarily because of the really bad impression that the original game gave me, but also because I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I mean, if it was anything like Bomberman, I assumed that Hudson Soft would make little changes in between installments, meaning that I would probably hate the other games as much as the original. However, thankfully, to my surprise, Adventure Island II turned out to be a much needed improvement over the original, and is a pretty good game. Not too much about the main gameplay is changed, and some hindrances are still present, but I would gladly play this over the original any day.
The story is pretty much the exact same as the original game, where your girlfriend, Tina, is captured by the Evil Witch Doctor, so it is up to Master Higgins to go and rescue her, which is about everything you would expect from an NES game, but I wasn’t expecting anything more, so who cares, the graphics are almost the exact same as the original, although the sprites, environments, and bosses do look a lot better, so it is an improvement over the original in that respect, the music is good, having plenty of up-beat, catchy tunes for all the levels you go through, but none of them are really all that grandiose, the control is the exact same as the last game, so moving on, and the gameplay, like all good sequels, takes what the original game did and expands upon it further.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of Master Higgins, go through 8 different worlds each with plenty of levels, run and jump your way through plenty of different obstacles and avoiding enemies, gather plenty of weapons to fight off enemies, as well as plenty of food to keep your hunger meter from completely draining, and defeat plenty of big bosses that are… incredibly easy. Hey, at least they aren’t all the same one just with a different head, so that is a plus. A lot of it is very similar to those who have played the original Adventure Island, but there are a few elements introduced that do make this one much more fun to play.
For starters, you can now find several dino buddies that can accompany you on your journey, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses that can help you out in things other than just attacking. For example, the elasmosaurus can help you swim underwater faster, and the pteranodon lets you fly throughout the stage, while the other two simply just give you a stronger attack and an extra hit. While their uses are limited, they do help out a lot, especially in certain areas, and since the game still has the hunger bar, you can’t just use them to cheese through a lot of stages easily, making them strategic to use while still being helpful. It also helps that the dinos themselves are pretty fucking adorable too. Not only that, but you can take the dinos with you through levels, as upon the start of each level, you can choose which dino you want to use for the level, along with equipping yourself with an axe in case you lose one. This may not seem like much, but it is very helpful to have, especially when it comes to the later endgame parts.
However, despite me getting into the gameplay and new additions a lot more this time around, there are still some problems that are present in this game. First off, while there is a lot more variety in the levels now in terms of the themes and how you go through the stages, the stages do get pretty repetitive, especially towards the end, where stage layouts and themes are reused quite often, except now with new layouts of enemies and hazards. Again, quite a common thing with Hudson Soft games, I am starting to see. In addition, like the original, it is too long. You travel through eight different worlds, like I said, and while the stages themselves are pretty short, sometimes a world can have from 9-14 levels each, which is quite a lot for this type of game. It still can be fun, but it does drag after a while.
Overall, despite its length and the repetition still being a huge issue, this is a definite improvement over what we got with the original Adventure Island, and it is a pretty good game, having plenty of fun elements while still keeping the same fun gameplay intact. I would definitely recommend it for those who somehow liked the original game, as well as those who are fans of Adventure Island overall, because there is definitely plenty that you can love about this one. Oh yeah, and also, before I go, I guess I should mention that this game also did get a port for the Game Boy as well, where it was renamed to be called……… Adventure Island. sigh, oh silly 90s game developers. Can never develop anything without any confusing naming schemes.
Game #444
I took a very long time to get to this one, primarily because of the really bad impression that the original game gave me, but also because I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I mean, if it was anything like Bomberman, I assumed that Hudson Soft would make little changes in between installments, meaning that I would probably hate the other games as much as the original. However, thankfully, to my surprise, Adventure Island II turned out to be a much needed improvement over the original, and is a pretty good game. Not too much about the main gameplay is changed, and some hindrances are still present, but I would gladly play this over the original any day.
The story is pretty much the exact same as the original game, where your girlfriend, Tina, is captured by the Evil Witch Doctor, so it is up to Master Higgins to go and rescue her, which is about everything you would expect from an NES game, but I wasn’t expecting anything more, so who cares, the graphics are almost the exact same as the original, although the sprites, environments, and bosses do look a lot better, so it is an improvement over the original in that respect, the music is good, having plenty of up-beat, catchy tunes for all the levels you go through, but none of them are really all that grandiose, the control is the exact same as the last game, so moving on, and the gameplay, like all good sequels, takes what the original game did and expands upon it further.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of Master Higgins, go through 8 different worlds each with plenty of levels, run and jump your way through plenty of different obstacles and avoiding enemies, gather plenty of weapons to fight off enemies, as well as plenty of food to keep your hunger meter from completely draining, and defeat plenty of big bosses that are… incredibly easy. Hey, at least they aren’t all the same one just with a different head, so that is a plus. A lot of it is very similar to those who have played the original Adventure Island, but there are a few elements introduced that do make this one much more fun to play.
For starters, you can now find several dino buddies that can accompany you on your journey, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses that can help you out in things other than just attacking. For example, the elasmosaurus can help you swim underwater faster, and the pteranodon lets you fly throughout the stage, while the other two simply just give you a stronger attack and an extra hit. While their uses are limited, they do help out a lot, especially in certain areas, and since the game still has the hunger bar, you can’t just use them to cheese through a lot of stages easily, making them strategic to use while still being helpful. It also helps that the dinos themselves are pretty fucking adorable too. Not only that, but you can take the dinos with you through levels, as upon the start of each level, you can choose which dino you want to use for the level, along with equipping yourself with an axe in case you lose one. This may not seem like much, but it is very helpful to have, especially when it comes to the later endgame parts.
However, despite me getting into the gameplay and new additions a lot more this time around, there are still some problems that are present in this game. First off, while there is a lot more variety in the levels now in terms of the themes and how you go through the stages, the stages do get pretty repetitive, especially towards the end, where stage layouts and themes are reused quite often, except now with new layouts of enemies and hazards. Again, quite a common thing with Hudson Soft games, I am starting to see. In addition, like the original, it is too long. You travel through eight different worlds, like I said, and while the stages themselves are pretty short, sometimes a world can have from 9-14 levels each, which is quite a lot for this type of game. It still can be fun, but it does drag after a while.
Overall, despite its length and the repetition still being a huge issue, this is a definite improvement over what we got with the original Adventure Island, and it is a pretty good game, having plenty of fun elements while still keeping the same fun gameplay intact. I would definitely recommend it for those who somehow liked the original game, as well as those who are fans of Adventure Island overall, because there is definitely plenty that you can love about this one. Oh yeah, and also, before I go, I guess I should mention that this game also did get a port for the Game Boy as well, where it was renamed to be called……… Adventure Island. sigh, oh silly 90s game developers. Can never develop anything without any confusing naming schemes.
Game #444