Growing up, I was never a Sega kid, my gaming history is tied to Nintendo, but the Wonder Boy games always drew my attention when I went to visit my cousins, who were Sega kids. Now, after many decades have past, I got a chance to experience a full game in the series, with the remake Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, but has time been kind to my memories, or is this stuck in the past.

Asha in Monster World tells the story of Asha, who one day hears cries of help from mysterious spirits and then makes the decision to leave her home and go help them. This journey takes her through a ancient tower, where she discovers a magical lamp and the genie contained within, using the power of the genie, she is whisked away to the palace where Purapril XIII bestows the title of warrior on Asha and then asks her to help find and save the four elemental spirits, the same that cried out at the start of the game. The story isn’t anything special, while there are some interesting characters, most of it is by the numbers and seems like more of a means to get you to push forward, rather than impacting you directly.

Once you have become the warrior and obtained your Pepelogoo, which unlocks a few new movement options for you, you are all set to head out to the first location and save the world. The game is mostly a 2D platformer, but with some action elements mixed in, Asha can attack and defend with her sword and shield respectively, but for everything else, she needs to make use of her Pepelogoo. Combat is mostly straight forward, you attack and defend as needed, the only time things can become a real challenge is when you have to deal with the boss fights, as they can do significant damage to you. There are some enemies and bosses, where you will need to make use of your ability to swing your sword up and down, but they are not common, though even when you do encounter them, you can still get away with just regular attacks. The issue with combat, is that the primary mode of attacking, is just pressing a button, changing up the type of attack, requires you to push the control stick in the direction you wish to attack, that would not be a problem, except pulling the stick down, also activates your shield. There are two buttons for attacking with your sword, but to shield yourself from damage, you have to use the stick, which is a bad way of doing this.

Thankfully, most of the interesting ways to interact with the world are done with Pepelogoo, from double jump to activating switches and even providing some protection from falling objects. My only issue with this method is that each time you want to use your sidekick, you have to summon it, which means if you are worried about falling down or being hit with something, you have a finite amount of time, and waiting to have Pepelogoo come to you, can be a pain. There were times when I would be attempting to double jump, only to be knocked back after landing, due to an enemy, or platform moving away, but I would fall faster than Pepelogoo would come for me, so it would either end in my having to climb up again or die.

Outside of exploration and fighting enemies, the rest of the game can seem pretty shallow by comparison, there is a town that you can explore, but there is very little to do within its walls, for the most part, you will only interact with the shop, where you can purchase new swords or shields, or the lady who buys gold bars. I do want to say that things are polished all around here, but that is not the case, there were countless times when speaking with people, when I would see that the text was missing formatting, or a few minor spelling mistakes. In addition to that, the towns people only seem to have a few lines of dialogue that they all use, so if you see one character, the duplicates of them are going to offer the same lines.

The most frustrating part of the game though, is the save system, or I should say the lack of save system, you can manually save at any point you desire, but there is no auto-save. This may not be a problem for you, if you have conditioned yourself to save frequently, but for those more recent gamers, or folks who just get absorbed into the game, it will bite you hard. The first time I encountered this, was during my fight with the first big boss, basically they kicked my butt, which wouldn’t be a problem, except the game only allowed me to load up my last save, which was about 3 hours earlier and as the game is not a fast moving one, that meant I had to do everything all over again. In the original games, there is a Sage character that pops up randomly and interacting with them, allowed you to save your status, while they are still showing up here, interacting with them does nothing.

On the side of things that do nothing, we need to discuss the games audio, because it is a horrible mix of repetitive beats, that quite frankly, having had to hear them so much, made me turn the music off. On their own for a few minutes, they are catchy and fit the location the game is in, however as they loop a lot, but the dozenth time you hear the same melody, you will want to turn it off as well. Looking at things that are very well done, the games visual presentation is stunning, the game features a cel-shaded look, that is equal parts charming and colourful. The character designs are very similar to what you might expect from a game made in the early 90’s but the new looks given to them, are enhanced by the cel-shading applied to the world. Asha has lots of charm, from laying down bombs to opening chests, but as time goes on, seeing the same animations replay, over and over, does get a little tedious.

Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World is a unique take on remaking a classic game, it has keep the old school design, but provided a new look that makes it feel very modern. The problem is the old school design, with no auto-save, clunky controls and combat that feels very repetitive, overshadow the bright and colourful visuals. Fans of the series will likely enjoy revisiting this game, but for people who have no nostalgic connection to the games, may find themselves more frustrated then satisfied.

The digital version of Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World can be purchased from the Nintendo and Sony stores and is published by STUDIOARTDINK.

The boxed retail version of Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World comes exclusively with the original Monster World IV published by ININ Games