If you have never played any of the Wonder Boy / Monster World games, then Monster Boy is merely a vividly colorful, beautifully animated metroidvania with a long quest, tons of varied areas, great puzzles and action, charming characters, fun abilities and a killer soundtrack.

But if you have played the prior games, Monster Boy is all that plus richly realized love letter to every game in the series, packed end to end with homages and references to the earlier games, right down to new versions of nearly every classic tune from the series, plus a ton of original tracks from an array of great composers, including some banging tracks from my personal favorite game composer, Yuzo Koshiro. I'll never forget the feeling I had when the delightful new rendition of the Side-crawler's Dance (the beach theme from Wonder Boy III) started playing at the beginning. Or the delightfully frenetic running animation of pig-boy in a wind-swept field under the sun while euphorically joyful music jams. Or the hilarious prison escape sequence, solving the big secret in the volcano, or the series of cascading epiphanies that result in clearing the haunted mansion.

A beautiful love-letter to one of my favorite series, it's one of those games that feels like it was made just for me. Monster Boy is everything I love about videogames.