HonestGamers - Things I've Learned This Week (Video Games)

-First one, for those curious.

-A new Wonder Boy game, called Wonder Boy Returns, was released a few days ago on Steam. It looks and sounds awful.

-On discovering that a new Wonder Boy game came out, I found out there's also a remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap in the works. Additional gameplay footage. At first, I thought it was that Monster Boy spiritual successor that was just renamed into Dragon's Trap, but nope, it's its own thing.

-So, we went decades without any new Wonder Boy games, and within the span of a few months, three new Wonder Boy games came into existence. The hell?

-I thought that new Wild Guns: Reloaded remake thingy came out already as a download... However, it's apparently getting a physical release, according to this Play-Asia listing and a comment by CeeCee-Natsume, a community manager, in this GameFAQs thread. I... just hope the $30 is justifiable.

-Also, through searching for Wild Guns news, I discovered Natsume has their own eBay store where they occasionally sell older stuff. A few days ago, they sold Tail 'Gator for the Game Boy. Talk about obscure.

-Friday the 13th: The Game is delayed till 2017. That came as no surprise, especially since it was reported that the game was coming out "soon" in 2016... when there was only 2 and a half months remaining and literally no new material to see, other than the Virtual Cabin tour. Further reading of the article, it seems they're going the Street Fighter V route: multiplayer first, with a single-player mode to come later. I'm just hoping the whole thing plays decently. I just still can't believe it took someone this long to make another Friday the 13th game.

Comments 4

joseph_valencia Oct 14, 2016

Weird that they would remake the first Wonder Boy game, which is actually the original Adventure Island. (Hudson Soft basically ported and rebranded Wonder Boy for the NES, IIRC.) I don't think any of these new Wonder Boy games are officially sanctioned by Sega, which makes me wonder what the situations with the Wonder Boy/Monster World IP is.

dementedhut Blogger Oct 14, 2016

Yeah, the Wonder Boy rights has always been a fishy thing when I tried reading up on it a few years back. Sega owns only the rights to the Wonder Boy name, characters, and so on, but Westone still owned the rights to the game design/mechanics or whatever, which is why they were able to allow Hudson to make the Adventure Island games afterwards.

After reading your post, I went to Google and typed "who owns the wonder boy ip?" The first two results are of Westone filing for bankruptcy... back in 2014. So yeah, this thing sounds like a mess, and I hope it doesn't get in the way of the Dragon's Trap remake and Monster Boy's as they get closer to their release dates. On Dragon's Trap website, it states "...with the benediction of SEGA..." and a copyright at the bottom. So...... I dunno, this whole thing's a mess.

honestgamer Staff Oct 15, 2016

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the one that I've been looking forward to, as it even has assistance from a Westone guy: press site.

dementedhut Blogger Oct 17, 2016

Ah, Ryuichi Nishizawa. I also read he's supporting the Dragon's Trap remake, as well. I just hope both games come out solid on their release dates. It would be nice to see more Wonder Boy games if done right. I've never been a HUGE fan of the series, but they do hold fond memories from my Master System youth.