The Dragon’s Trap is one of my all-time favourite video games.
I became a Wonder Boy fan the instant I played the first installment in the arcade when I was seven or eight years old. I used to call the game “Little Tarzan” (guess I didn’t bother to look at the title screen) and couldn’t wait to play it at home. Thankfully, a Commodore 64 port was released pretty quickly, which I played extensively.
After I received a Master System for my birthday, it didn’t take long before I noticed a copy of Wonder Boy in Monster Land in a store and knew I had to get it. It was a much different game than the first installment, but I loved it all the same.
When I got The Dragon’s Trap I was immediately blown away by the fact that the prologue level was a retelling of the final level of the previous game. Then, the rest of the game happened and I fell in love: the graphics, the music, the gameplay, the transformations, the level design… everything about this game was perfect. Truly a legendary game.
I’m glad more people got to experience this masterpiece thanks to Lizardcube’s remake.
The Atari 2600 was my first console and Ghostbusters was the game I received along with it. I was too young to read the manual, so I just tried to find out what to do while playing the game. I enjoyed the game (trapping ghosts was a fun gameplay mechanic), but I didn’t understand how to complete it. Alas, I never got to face the Marshmallow Man in this version.
A few years later, a friend gifted me the Commodore 64 version (I loved the digitized voices!) and I was determined to get a bit further in the game. After countless attempts I was finally able to reach the Marshmallow Man, but sadly my crew got trampled to death by the big guy.
The Master System port does look rather nice. Also, the finale seems to be greatly enhanced compared to the other versions: zapping ghosts while climbing the stairs of the building, followed by a fight against Gozer on the rooftop. Quite epic!
I’ve been catching up with the Battle of the Ports videos and I must say I’m really enjoying them! Especially the ones about arcade games that received tons of wildly different home ports. The Commodore 64 fanboy in me always gets a bit giddy when that version comes out on top, heh heh.
Anyway, just wanted to say: keep up the good work!
I had no idea about the Master Sytem one. I played the crap outta the C64 version back when I was younger. Thought getting past the marshmallow man was impossible until I fluked the timing one day 15 years later…
I loved that you could choose different cars and colours. Being a Transformers fan, I was often going for the VW. And also very cute that the ghost vacuum looks like an actual house vacuum cleaner.
Sure, it isn’t a quality game, but I had a lot f fun with that. I will give the Master System version a crack I think, just to check it out.
Some of the differences seem very intriguing. Like the computer version have diagonal shooting streams whereas the consoles have a direct up stream. I wonder what the reason for that change was.
Going back to one of the few Japanese studios that have not been blended in to another, Falcom and their classic action RPG, Popful Mail, on this week’s Battle of the Ports.
It is but you must add a custom Firmware because the one that comes as standard truly is awful.
Adding a custom Firmware is really easy though. Basically you just flash a Micro SD card then install it in to the RG351MP.
