Adventure Island By Hudson Soft


Well, for a bit of nostalgia for Thursday - I wonder how many 1980s to 1990s children played this. In my case, I NEVER got the chance to finish this game not, especially after our Famicom broke, we bought a PSX for Christmas, and I never had the chance to play it again until the digital age came to restore a lot of old school stuff. This was a game that I thought was by Nintendo, I called Higgins as "Mario", and there was this badass-looking rhinoceros monster in the artwork. So, it's basically inspired by Mario (in a way) except with what I'd call a lack of diversity and lower-grade graphics. That would probably explain why Adventure Island II had given Higgins a lot of dinosaur companions while Yoshi was only introduced in Super Mario World for the Super NES.

I could remember the basic mechanics of this game. You collect food along the way to charge your energy (or starvation meter) or lose a turn. The whole game is tedious especially there was NO password system, controls can be really weird, and I really have to admit the stage design is pretty weird. Also, I never made it past the third stage as a child. It was one game that made me yell in SO MUCH frustration.


So the Rhinoceros-Headed beast was just the first boss? It turns out that King Quiller IS the Witch Doctor who kidnapped Tina. I guess Leilani was the Japanese name huh? What would be very interesting to note is that the witch doctor appeared with a different head and didn't do much. The final boss was that of a cat's head for the Witch Doctor. I decided to watch Youtube since I have no other means to play the game. I would really still thank players out there for finishing what I couldn't.

The game eventually had a sequel called Adventure Island II and Adventure Island III which were all follow-ups. The second game had the remnants avenge King Quiller (though the Japanese introduced a new villain known as Beelze-Fly (the giant fly that leads the monster creatures) and the third one was about aliens? I don't know what entered into the head of Hudson Soft not to make King Quiller a regular villain. Maybe, the reception for the first game wasn't so good so they wanted to forget about King Quiller.


However, the remake called Adventure Island: The Beginning was available in the 2000s era or the sixth-generation consoles. It turns out that instead of King Quiller attacking the hero eight times - he deploys seven generals to help him destroy the hero. Apparently, Hudson Soft wanted to fix the mistakes of the first game. King Quiller appears as the rhino-headed boss like he was supposed to be in the NES box art.

What are your memories of the Adventure Island franchise?

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