Reviews

I have strange feelings about this game: it seems a mediocre effort, with the usual monochrome graphic, ugly sprites, a scrolling that seems terribly laborious, frequent slowings of the animation, non-existent music and sound effects(in the 48k version)and maybe too easy to play - although the third level is a full immersion in a bright blinding yellow that makes it difficult to understand what's going on.

Yet, on the other hand, its easyness is not absolute, but it is of that kind that makes you think that you can nimbly finish the game with a little more effort - it's amost the opposite of those forceful, frustrating Dinamic's games: in spite of all its flaws, it is pleasantly relaxing.

So, in the end, I must say I like it: I like jumping killer snails or kill them with an axe, skateboarding through the forest, jumping from cloud to cloud and all that - in the relatively quiet pace of the game.

Not memorable, not considerable, not a marvellous conversion, and technically a bit bad for a 1987's release, but, anyway, a little, nice jerky [multiload] platform.

A decent conversion of an average Sega coin-op. Graphics are rather detailed and reminiscent of the original albeit being monochrome, and sound is only available on the 128K version, which also loads all levels at once. Passable but not great.

Sega's classic arcade game is ported to the Spectrum with mixed feelings. Its still the nice platformer we all know and love but its a bit let down by the monochrome graphics and the slow gameplay. I had this back it the day and liked it, but it could have been much better really, not so much with the colours, but with the speed. Not all bad though.

Wonder Boy was one of those platformers everybody wanted to play back in the day . The Spectrum version is rather poor , though .

I´m one of those reactionary minds who think that the Spectrum was not the best machine for coin-op´s adaptations . Wonder Boy and its sequel are two of the numerous evidences of that way of thinking .

This is a classic game but the Speccy version leaves a lot to be desired. Monochrome graphics strips away its cuteness, Wonder Boy resembles my 8 year old son Rocco but here he barely resembles anything human. As well as that its horrid frame rate and terrible scrolling spoils its charm. Very poor and very disappointing.

1987 Activision (UK)

The addictiveness is still present, but the rest of the game can hardly be compared with the arcade version, except maybe for the graphics.
It's easier to enjoy the game if you make no comparisons, but boy is it difficult...