Adventure Island II

Developer: Now Production    Publisher: Hudson Soft    Released: February 1991    Genre: Platformer

Adventure Island was a decent game on its own merits.  But through no fault of its own I did not like it.  True, I was never fond of Wonder Boy, which it was essentially a reskin of.  But I think my own misplaced excitement for it led to my ultimate disappointment.  Adventure Island II is a far better game all around and begins the process of making the series truly distinct from the one it spawned from.

Adventure Island II is more of an evolution than a revolution.  Master Higgins is relatively unchanged from the prior game.  There have been some slight tweaks to mechanics to make this a better playing game.  The most significant is that fruit restores more of your life bar.  There are fewer instances of extreme close calls this time (for a few more reasons too) and it allows the designers to be more clever in spacing out fruit.  You no longer have to pull weird controller shenanigans to do the high jump either; Master Higgins will always reach the same height regardless.

The biggest additions are a Super Mario Bros. 3 style inventory of items and dinosaur companions.  Next to the skateboard one of four animal companions can hatch from an egg.  Each has a specialty, such as the Elasmosaurus’ faster swimming ability or the two Camposaurus tail attacks and fiery breath.  The most useful is the Pteranodon, who can fly.  Completing a level with any of these helpers intact lets you store them for later use.  But along with the good comes the bad; you can no longer upgrade the tomahawk but that is of little concern.

Structurally Adventure Island II is very similar to the original.  The game is still composed of eight islands.  Except now they feature more than four sublevels, going as high as seven or eight.  While it sounds like a lot that number is a bit deceptive.  One of my biggest criticisms of the first Adventure Island was that the levels were too long and dragged on.  The levels are shorter this time, often half as long as the first game.  To make up for their brevity there are no checkpoints because they are unnecessary.  Individual levels focus on one theme or element, such as navigating using springs or featuring one specific enemy type for the duration.  The change is for the better as the game is able to present new challenges on a consistent basis.

The variety in stage type applies to the islands themselves.  Every island has its own theme, be it desert, ice, volcano, or even the sea.  True, they are the basic platforming tropes, but they are consistent and offer diversity.  The first game had about five stage themes that were recycled for all of its thirty two levels and it grew old fast.  Here two ice levels are never truly the same although they share the same tile set.  Secret areas abound and the game is fairly generous with extra lives.  There are also unique boss encounters for each island as well rather than the same body with a different head.  Someone at Hudson were paying attention as Adventure Island II more or less fixes all the flaws of its predecessor to make a better playing game.

One could argue that they simply followed the Super Mario Brothers 3 template in much the same way the first game followed Nintendo’s original NES classic.  The similarities can’t be denied.  Both games feature an inventory of items, are broken down into eight islands/worlds, and have “bosses” that move to different parts of the map if you die.  Even some of the power-ups are similar.  The Pteranodon is essentially a P-Wing and as in that game it can be game breaking but isn’t infallible.  I don’t blame them for it either; if you are going to copy you might as well take from the best.

Unfortunately just like that game Adventure Island II doesn’t allow you to save progress.  Adventure Island II is not a difficult game but it is asking a lot to finish it in one sitting.  Even though the levels are shorter there are still a lot of them.  The game is pretty generous with extra lives and you can amass a giant inventory of items to ease the burden.  But it still would have been nice to have passwords for the beginning of each island.

In Closing

Progression foible aside Adventure Island II is a massive improvement over its predecessor and a solid game.  The elements introduced here would go on to define the series and give it its own identity, helping it stand out against its competition. This is an example of what a sequel should be.