Adventure Island (MSX) Playthrough
157A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1986 platformer for MSX computers, Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima (高橋名人の冒険島, "Master Takahashi's Adventure Island).
Hudson released the original Adventure Island (https://youtu.be/vL3urZJBkQM) for the Nintendo Famicom on 12 September 1986, and it quickly went on to become yet another of their many console hits that sold over a million copies in the mid 80s. Anyone who knows the NES knows Adventure Island. It's a total classic, but it didn't come into the world alone. That very same day, Master Takahashi's Nintendo game appeared alongside a twin - a little known MSX title of the same name. A (very) fraternal twin.
Shipping on a 32K BeeCard (the precursor to the PC Engine's HuCard format), the MSX version of Adventure Island is quite a different beast from its Famicom brother. It's still based on Wonder Boy, but owing to the MSX's limitations, the game is more a liberal reinterpretation of the arcade game than it is a faithful recreation.
The basics are the same: you still control Master Higgins as he platforms through the jungle, collecting fruit as he chucks prehistoric tools at snails. Skateboards, extra points, and invincibility items are still found by breaking open eggs, and a big boss still awaits at the end of every fourth stage.
However, there are only eight stages in the MSX game; hidden eggs, bonus areas, and weapon upgrades are nowhere to be found; and the graphics and sound have been heavily downgraded, but for the hardware its running on, this is pretty good. It retains the look and feel of the original game far better than Sega's SG-1000 version of Wonder Boy ever did, and it manages to be a fun little bit of diet arcade-style action in its own right.
Hudson's least-known, least-loved entry in the Adventure Island series clearly can't compete with the NES classic, but it is a thoroughly respectable effort that I thought deserved some recognition.
Congraturations! Yattane, Takahashi!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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