Retro Roulette #90: Adventure Island 3 (NES, 1992)

A whole island. Of adventure. Can you even imagine it?

The original Adventure Island was developed by Hudson Soft as a re-skin of Wonder Boy, a platforming game published by Sega. The adaptation was a big hit for Hudson, so they developed sequels on their own, which have no relation to the Wonder Boy series. This week’s game is the third in Hudson’s series.

As previously mentioned, this is an action-platformer a la Super Mario Bros. or last week’s stupid game, Kid Kool. You play as a shirtless fellow named Higgins. Higgins! I can’t believe his name is Higgins. Over the course of the game, you can acquire a number of different weapons and other powerups, including throwing axes, a boomerang, and a handful of different dinosaurs that you can ride around. I’m partial to the one that poops lightning:

While the powerups are cool, the way the game stores them for you is arguably even cooler – if you pick up a new powerup when you’re already holding one, the prior one will be stored in an inventory that you can access at the start of every level. It’s basically the best of both Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3′s item systems, and it’s sweet. Having an axe or boomerang is very important (especially because you can’t jump on enemies to kill them, generally), so having a few spare one is immensely helpful.

The levels vary an acceptable amount, though they’re never especially complicated. Despite that, they’re very enjoyable to work through, without being overly hard or insultingly easy. You’ve got your standard “in the sky,” “underground,” and “under water” sorts of things, the latter of which has a very cool Nessie-esque helper in some levels.

So. Cool. If I could sum up Adventure Island 3 in one word, it would be “pleasant.” It’s a fun little ride with a bunch of cool toys/dinosaurs to play with and that never asks too much of you. None of it is overly difficult or complicated, but it looks good, is fairly fast-paced and has a decent variety in level design. Plus, his name is HIGGINS! Ahhhhh. Also the plot involves aliens, in a way I don’t quite understand.

The Adventure Island series continued onto the SNES, with a couple of Super Adventure Island releases to go with the NES originals. A reboot of sorts, titled Adventure Island: The Beginning, was released via WiiWare in 2007, and is about as good as you think it is. I’m mildly surprised this hasn’t gotten some neo-retro revival like a lot of franchises in this vein have (including Wonder Boy, on which the first game was based).

Somewhat unfortunately, Adventure Island 3 itself is a bit hard to find – it was released in late 1992, well after the NES’s prime, and so its print one wasn’t as big as a lot of the console’s staples. Between the low print run and decent quality, a cartridge copy still sells for about $50. If you’re really into NES games, it’s arguably still worth picking up. It’s a lot of fun. Higgins!

Next week’s game is yet another NES game, and this one’s based on a TV show. I have incredibly low hopes for this, so you’ll probably want to check back and see how it went.