The Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is a lovely thing, I think, but a lovely thing that arrives in a fairly ugly situation. This new collection of Wonder Boy games comes out just half a year after the last one. That one had four games, and this one has six – although when you factor in the different platform versions included this time, you’re actually getting 21. Anyway, confusing things more, I gather that the two new games that weren’t on the previous digital version were included on an exclusive physical copy. I don’t think there’s an upgrade path if you bought the previous collection, either.
Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection
- Publisher: Bliss Brain
- Developer: Westone, LIzard Cube, SEGA
- Platform: Played on Switch
- Availability: Out on Switch, PS4 and PS5
This is pretty poor treatment of the fan community for a series like this. It’s also – and I appreciate that this is not all about me – personally annoying, because I have to kick this piece off with a bit of grimness, whereas I really want to just say how much I love these games and how good it is to have them all in one place. But it is grim, and I do also love them. What a situation.
The four games from the previous collection are Wonder Boy, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World 4, while the two new ones are Wonder Boy 3: Monster Lair and The Dragon’s Trap. Details of its release aside, if you can put it aside, it’s undeniably a nice package. Alongside the games themselves, you get those different versions, and you also get extras like galleries and image options. The collection’s also got a bunch of maps for the levels, which I would have committed murder to get hold of when I was eleven. I would never want to get into Digital Foundry territory, but I’ve been playing the games quite a bit over the last few days and the emulation seems fine – they are just as I remember these games playing back in the day.
Hopefully the release issues are relatively clear now. Anyway. Here is the point where I have to leave objectivity behind and wallow in nostalgia. Apologies. The thing is, I love these games, and I suspect I love them for a very specific reason. This collection should probably not have arrived in this manner, but I can’t duck the fact that I’m having a pretty fabulous time with it, and I haven’t even played all the games in it yet.
Wonder Boy was the guy you got excited about if you went to a SEGA school rather than a Nintendo school in the 1990s, and if all your friends had Master Systems. This is pre-Sonic SEGA, pre-Mega Drive Sega, so you had Alex Kidd, Spy vs Spy – if you were discerning – and Hang-On and Wonder Boy. And a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember as well but which I know was important and beloved. Anyway, in our school Wonder Boy was the king.