Dan Geeks Out: Video Game Review #357: Adventure Island

Adventure Island

Nintendo Entertainment System

Nostalgia Factor:

I've known about Adventure Island for the longest time. I regularly saw ads in the game magazines for this when I was a kid. I recognized the main character. When I saw him I could identify him with the Adventure Island franchise. I always thought the game and its sequels looked like a lot of fun to play, but as fate would have it I'd never end up picking any of them up over the years.

Until now. My last review from 1987: Adventure Island for the NES.

Story:

I'm not in possession of this game's manual, and nothing plot wise is ever explained in-game. I was able to gather that this is a simple "man rescues princess" plot that we've seen dozens of times before from other games.

Gameplay:

If you approach this game the same way you would any other 2D platformer, you're going to quickly find yourself in a world of hurt. Quite often as I played this game my character would just die, completely out of the blue. I'd be running across a bridge, collecting an item, or in the middle of a jump when all of a sudden I'd keel over without an enemy in sight. And this happened to me multiple times. I was almost convinced my copy of the game was broken, and that some glitch was making enemies invisible.

I put them game down out of frustration and took a break from Adventure Island for a few days. I remember reading some reviews on the game when all of a sudden it dawned on me what I was doing wrong: I wasn't collecting enough fruit as I made my way through each level. See, there's a timer on the top of the screen that is hard to notice if you aren't paying attention. Collecting fruit adds more time to the timer, which is constantly winding down as you play. When it winds down to the end: you die. I had approached Adventure Island like a Mario game. I was taking my time. I was checking stuff out. I was being extra cautious around enemies. And as a result, I kept running out of time. That's why I was mysteriously dying all the time.

Once it clicked I began to enjoy the game a little bit more. You have to make your way through each stage very quickly, collecting as much fruit as you possibly can so the timer doesn't run out. Since time is of the absolute essence, you have to constantly move to the right, taking very few breaks to catch your breath. Go go go is the name of the game. Although they are two very different games, in a way Adventure Island has a lot of similarities to Black Panther, which I just got done playing not too long ago.

As you make your way through the game you can pick up items, like a hammer that you throw to kill enemies or a skateboard that increases your speed and allows you to get hit an extra time before you die (normally one hit kills you). Since you don't want to stop very often due to the timer, you are going to find yourself holding the right button, jumping over obstacles and killing enemies in as smooth a motion as you can pull off. It almost begins to feel like a rhythm game or a musical stage from Rayman Legends after a while.

Not to say you won't have to stop moving from time to time. Some jumps are extremely precarious, and you want to make sure you've got your next move planned out before you make it. Remember, one hit kills you in this game. You also have a limited amount of lives you can use, and no continues. Once your lives are gone, you have to start the entire game over again. Seeing as how this is such a long, brutally difficult game, I had no qualms about using save states to make my way through this. Sure, I could have sat down and attempted to master this game, but then I'd be playing it for weeks and like I've said many times throughout this blog: I don't have time for that shit. I've got a back log of hundreds of games and I've also got a soon to be two-year-old taking up most of my time. The most I'm willing to devote to Adventure Island is a couple days, then I have to move on.

Things get progressively more and more difficult as the game goes on. You have to be so, SO fast. You can't get touched even once. Your jumps have to be pixel-perfect. If you screw up even once, you die. There's a particular point near the end of the game that has a ridiculously difficult jump that I must have attempted 50 times before I finally nailed it. And that was with me using save states. I can't possibly imagine only having three or four lives for the entire game, and then burning them all up in the matter of 30 seconds after playing for an hour and then having to go all the way back to the beginning of the game again. It would have infuriated me.

Another thing that adds to the difficulty level is the fact that some item drops are actually negative for your character. There's this little flying blue creature you'll occasionally pick up who drains your timer about three times faster than it would normally drain - and most of the time you end up dying because it drains so fast. So these "items" are basically an instant death sentence. To make it worse is that you don't know what each treasure chest (represented by a giant egg in this game) contains, so it quickly becomes a game of trial and error. If you accidentally pick one of these guys up, you simply have to remember not to crack open the same egg your next time through - and then remember to avoid that egg on each subsequent playthrough. This game is tough enough. The random element and the constant threat of knowing that you could be unfairly killed by opening a treasure chest is just too much.

Graphics:

Adventure Island is one of those games that doesn't look like much by today's standards, yet still retains a massive amount of retro charm. Sure, the graphics are simple, but they are fun to look at. I like the animation of the character running. I like the design of each stage. The whole game has this funky, off-beat feel to it.

A random part of the visuals I enjoy is the design of the brick castle where you fight against the boss characters, and how it changes colors as the game goes on. It just screams classic NES, and I love it.

Sound:

Adventure Island's music is okay. It's nothing iconic like you'd find in Legend of Zelda or the Mario games, but it does its job. That said, be prepared to hear the same thing over and over again, because there isn't much variety to be found here.

What I like more are this game's sound effects. They match the whimsical tone of the game quite well. Some of the sound effects you can tell are pulled directly from the Mario series, and I thought it gave the game quite a bit of personality.

Overall:

I like this game. I appreciate what it tries to do. I'm not gonna lie and say it's one of my favorite NES games of all time, however, because it's not. While I did enjoy this game (for the most part), it has a LOT of flaws - the difficulty being numero uno.

Part of me wants to give Adventure Island a free pass because it is such an early NES game. Compared to some of the crap you'd see for the 2600, this game is virtually a masterpiece. No doubt it was an influential title for its time and a real trendsetter as games began to morph from "who can get the highest score" into challenges that could be completed and beaten.

I just wish the game was more accessible. I like its gameplay and I like the concept of the game, but it is brutally difficult, crossing the line into unfair territory time and time again. I guess if this was the mid 80s and I'd received this game for Christmas, I would have had to make do with it. I can see myself sinking hours and hours into this game, for sure.

But by today's standards? Ehhhh... This game does a lot correctly, don't get me wrong. And I did have an overall favorable experience with it. But make no mistake about it: I am not coming back to this game. I checked it out. I sated my curiosity. I beat it (using save states, of course). And now I see no reason to play this game again. There are so many other games out there - Adventure Island's sequels among them - that render this game fairly obsolete in my mind.

I'm glad I played it. I'm glad I finally know what the original Adventure Island was like; where the franchise began. It's a fun game, sure, but not on the same level as some of the top-tier games for the NES console. Let's move onto 1988.

THE GRADE:

C+

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1982 reviews:

1983:

1984: