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SUPER ADVENTURE ISLAND Company: Hudson Released: April 1992 Genre: Side-Scroller Graphics: 8.0 Control: 6.0 Sound/Music: 7.0 Storyline: 6.0 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 SUPER-NES.COM

I've always been a huge fan of the Adventure Island series of games. Having been such a fan of the Turbografx-16 version of New Adventure Island, I was very excited when I first heard this game was in development for the Super NES. Nothing, however, could prepare me for the dissapoinment I experienced the first time I finally got to play this game. Not only did Hudson change that control of the game, which was easily my favorite part of the TG-16 version, but the game just doesn't' have that something special the turbo version had. I'm not sure what Hudson's intentions were when it came to the way they set this game up, but what they managed to do was take an outstanding platformer and turn it into a very mediocre outing for the Super Nintendo that just left a bad taste in my mouth. This was probably my first area of dissapointment with this game. I honestly expected Hudson to blow the roof off with the graphics in this new rendition of their popular side scroller. Most of the foregrounds in the game look good enough, but the backgrounds in most levels are just plain and bland for the most part. I could have understood it if there had been multi-levels of parallax scrolling, but with just the one background level and very little detail at that, the visuals of this game just come off very 8-bit looking in most places. Master Higgins, the main character, looks better than ever but for the most part that's about the only thing in this game that eclipses the Turbografx version of the game. Maybe Hudson didn't want to outdo their TG-16 version, because I just can't think of any other reason for a company of the caliber and talent of Hudson Soft to ever release such a below-average looking game for a system clearly capable of so much more. You may notice a few nice areas in this game but don't get too used to them as they won't last. The music in the Adventure Island games has always had a very trademark sound to it. It's never been that outstanding, but with the tight gameplay and serious challenge of the previous games, it didn't matter too much. I have to admit that the music in this game is one of its' few high points. It has that familiar sound to it only this time it's got the powerful SNES sound chip behind it. Very upbeat and catchy tunes play throughout each level and it makes me wonder why Hudson couldn't come up with a better game to match this well-done soundtrack. Luckily the good old Adventure Island sound effects are back and they too sound better than ever. This is the area of the game that made me long to be playing the Turbografx-16 version of this game. For some strange and unexplained reason Hudson chose to make some major changes to their patented tight control system of past Adventure Island games. The main thing that I missed was the ability to run. In this game, Higgins moves at the same speed throughout the game and no longer can you use the run move to to aid in your maneauvering. Another thing I also found a little annoying was having to move in one direction for a certain distance in order to be able to jump higher. You could perform the newly introduced "super jump" but it's awkward having to constantly crouch down and hold while pressing the jump button just to get a decent jump. It made it difficult to make high jumps quickly as is needed in some parts of the game. The difficulty is all over the map in this game as some levels are insanely easy and others are terribly hard. There's just no rhyme or reason to the sporadic changes in difficulty. One area where there's no real lack of difficulty is the boss fights. In past Adventure Island games most of the bosses had a specific pattern that you could decipher in order to beat them. In this game there were a couple of bosses that were just plain cheap in their attacks and downright frustrating to beat. Nobody wanted this game to be great more than me, but even being as big of an Adventure Island fan as I am it would be difficult for me to recommend this game to anyone. I could have overlooked the lack of graphical prowess in the game if Hudson had just left the play control the way it used to be, but as it is this game is not much fun to play at all. I wish I new what Hudson was thinking when they made the changes to this game that they made. My dissapointment stems more because of how much I've loved all of the previous Adventure Island games so I can't sit and say that this game isn't worth playing at all. It's actually not as terrible as I've made it sound throughout this review, but for fans of the Adventure Island series, this one will most likely dissapoint you as it did me. A decent platformer for a system that has a lot of side scrollers that are honestly much better.