Review: Adventure Island

Developer: Hudson
Publisher: Hudson

My love of Adventure Island II is well-known. It's a very fun platformer with bouncy, well-made music, solid controls and some neat mechanics, like your ridable dinosaur friends.

Adventure Island for the Game Boy (and now for the 3DS Virtual Console) is pretty much the same thing as Adventure Island II with a few differences and exclusions.

Adventure Island keeps the same difficulty level as the NES version with one major exception: The levels in the Game Boy game are much smaller than the NES game. That's a blessing and a curse, since the smaller levels mean that the Game Boy game is much shorter than the NES game, and yet the reduced difficulty means you can get much farther without reaching the "Game Over" screen.

There's no overworld in this version, so you can't really tell how close you are to the end of the game. The level flow doesn't really tell you much either. I didn't know I was on the final level until I beat it. Finally, the music and graphics are about the same as Adventure Island II, but streamlined for the Game Boy, which means that the sound isn't quite as good as the NES game and there are fewer frames of animation.

For a fan of Adventure Island II, then Adventure Island for the 3DS Virtual Console will probably be just fine. If you're not an Adventure Island II fan, then this won't change your mind. At least it's cheap.

Final Rating: C+