In terms of the wider Adventure Island series, Super Adventure Island is a bit all over the place. The graphics are probably the best in the series, and the music is smooth and very crisp for SNES. Like New Adventure Island, it dispenses with AI2 and AI3's dinosaur mounts and inventory system, but it also distinguishes itself more from the NES games by moving at a slightly slower pace and introducing more types of jumps. The hunger meter rarely decreases much and you're never short for weapons, but the actual level design can be brutal as ever before too long. There's also a more novel variety in the levels, such as the one where you're swimming through the insides of a whale.

This would be above New Adventure Island for me if not for one glaring annoyance: two continues. Run out, and it's back to level 1. That game had infinite continues, and even Adventure Island 1 had a way to activate infinite continues, so there's no reason for this game to be kicking me back to the start. This game's not quite good enough to get away with that.