Adventure Island (1987)

 Adventure Island (1987)

Can a video game be frustrating to the point of being impossible, but also be great and fun at the same time?   For me that has always been the case for Hudson's Adventure Island.  I remember playing this game as a kid, and I always loved it, for me as a kid though anything with skateboarding was something that I absolutely loved, and though I have great memories of spending hours upon hours playing this game, I realized as I played it this past week, that I had never been past the second part of the first level, I'm not sure if I ever even got through the first stage of the first level as a kid.   But I was never frustrated with it, I loved playing it.    Can you be absolutely terrible at something and love it?  Yes, I think so.  So I put serious effort into this game this past week and I realized something, it is terribly frustrating to the point of me having to admit that for me it is impossible (I didn't even make it to the second boss, very very close, but didn't even make it to him). 

Adventure Island was released in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and was produced by Hudson Soft.  The game is an adaptation of the arcade game Wonder Boy, originally developed by Escape for Sega.   Adventure Island was first released in Japan on the Famicom in 1986, before being released in North America for the NES, but PAL versions of the NES in Europe didn't see Adventure Island until 1992.   The artists that worked on Adventure Island was Susumu Matsushita, who created this adorable cartoon look for the game, and part of what I love most about this game and other Hudson Soft games are the great cartoon looking characters that they created.  The cutesy soundtrack to the game was created by composer Jun Chikuma, and though the music is cute and enjoyable, after playing a level for the 20th time while super frustrated it feels like the soundtrack and the cute game design is mocking you, saying "look at this cute kids game, that is absolutely frustrating and hard."  The game is a first person side-scrolling platformer, and your character "Mr Higgins" or "Takahashi Meijin" in Japan shoots projectile weapons that he must find, and also there are various bonuses and power-ups that he finds in eggs, both hidden and exposed throughout the game.

The game looks good, I find no fault in its looks, I love the way this game looks, and will always come back to it, because of that.  However, I have some major issues with this game!   First of all, I get irritated by any game that makes you have to look for a weapon, just give the player a base weapon from the start.  This isn't so terrible in the beginning of the game, but everytime you die you lose your weapon, and then must find a weapon again, and in some levels that might mean that you face a gauntlet of enemies before you can even find your weapon.   Also, why the hell did they think it was a good idea to make unlimited continues a hidden thing a good idea.  No I'm not kidding, if you don't jump in the right place at the end of level 1-1 just before you reach the goal and find the hidden egg that contains the Hudson Soft Bee then you get 0 continues, and only three lives.   Oh and look at that screen shot that I Googled, you might think that there is a life meter, so you can take multiple hits before dying, and if you think that you are absolutely wrong.  1 hit = DEAD!!!   That thing that looks like a life bar, is an life or energy meter of sorts, basically anytime you stumble over a rock, or as you go through the level and don't get fruit fast enough then you lose bars on that meter, and if you lose them all, then you are dead.   Yes, just like in Gauntlet, if you are familiar with that game, you lose health by just moving about, or even just standing still on the screen, it is almost like a cross between a health meter and a time meter, and it is frustrating, when your meter is full but still one hit by an enemy or an enemy's projectile kills you dead.   If one hit kills isn't enough then let's add in platforming levels, which I swear is why so many 80's kids have trust issues, because your are jumping along, and suddenly the platform drops and kills you, or suddenly it decides to move without warning just as you are jumping onto it, because why not make the simple act of jumping from platform to platform harder by making it so you can't trust anything and put you into situations of a jump becoming impossible, all because an enemy got in your way, or you didn't react fast enough, and your dead.   The common theme of this game is that you are dead, everything kills you, and if you didn't get that damn hidden bee at the end of level 1-1 then you go all the way back to the beginning of the game after three lives.

I want to love this game, it is cute, it has fun fast paced action, but it stops being fun and just becomes a frustrating chore after you have spent two hours trying to get through one area, but you can't not because of your own limitations but because of the way the game is designed, the forest in the last area of level 2 (level 2-4), if you had the misfortune of dying and having to repeat this stage, then I pity you, because you get no weapon, and you must go through one of the most frustrating gauntlets of enemies before you can even find a weapon, making it so frustrating that it becomes pointless to even play the game, all the while little Master Higgins with his cute character design, and the cute music is mocking you for being so pathetic that you can't even get through the second level of a cute kids game...THIS IS NOT A CUTE GAME!!!!!   Not when you've spent a week playing it in 2-6 hour increments and can't even get past the second level.  It doesn't have to be this hard, it really doesn't!  But you character's legs never stop moving, you jump he has a forward momentum when he lands dumping you off the platform, like the little bastard is covered in KY Jelly, and it is doubly bad in ice stages.  Not only that, but you better know that you need to push both the A and B buttons when you jump, because otherwise you aren't making the jumps, and even then the power jump combo of pushing both the A and B button doesn't always work, and sometimes you do wimpy jumps when you really needed to do a big jump.  Also if you jump while shooting your weapon, there is a fraction of a second after you hit the ground that you are unable to shoot your weapon, and guess what, it is long enough of a pause to get you killed.   Oh and that weapon, that damned weapon that you aren't even given, but have to hunt for suffers from one of the most irritating weapon flaws on the NES, and that is that it shoots in an arc, weapons should never do this, it makes the game unnecessarily frustrating, when you can't hit an enemy because of the way that the game is designed. 

I have read in reviews that the game is challenging, but not because of bad design.  I kind of disagree with this, the game shouldn't be this hard, none of the enemies are hard because of them being a challenge, the enemies are hard because of their poor placement, or because of something else that the game design does rather than because they are challenging enemies.  100% of the times that I died in this game was because of issues of the way that the game is designed, the forward momentum of the character when jumping, inconvenient placement of enemies that if you get to a place at the wrong time might make a jump impossible for example, lack of weapon when you need one the most, things being hidden that should just be designed in as part of the game not as an Easter Egg, and one hit kills by enemies, when you are in situations that sometimes getting hit is unavoidable.   Also you lose your weapon if you die, and sometimes you aren't able to get another weapon until after you clear the stage that you are in.  

Is it possible to love a game that is so frustrating that it makes you want to take it out and throw it out the window and light it on fire?   Yes, I think so.   I have so many issues with this game, but it is also fun, and very cute.  The game looks amazing, especially for 1987, the game play when it is good and not being too hard for no reason, is actually really good.  There is a story to the game, you are trying to save the princess, but sadly I don't think I will ever see her, other than by watching a playthrough of the game online, or if I can somehow get my hands on a Game Genie...I think I really want to get a Game Genie at this point, to have a better chance at some of these overly hard games.   Keep in mind, I am playing on an original console, I do not use emulators, just like most of the films that I watch are on DVDs that I own, I do not subscribe to any streaming services, so every game you will see me talk about on this blog will be NES games that I actually own.   I am not the Angry Video Game Nerd and I am not attempting to only play frustrating and bad games, some of the games I will talk about will be really great games, and really well designed games, some that I loved as a kid, and some that I didn't discover until much later.   I don't know that I ever owned Adventure Island as a kid, but somehow I remember playing it a lot, I think it was one that I rented a lot, or one that one of my friends had.

Overall, it is a great game, and if you are better at side scrolling platformers with some very challenging elements, I think that this game might be really fun for you.  I am a casual gamer, I am not an expert, I just love Nintendo games, and have been playing them since 1988, but that doesn't mean that I am good at them.   So I wrote this after actually really trying hard to get as far as possible, and that is why I found it so frustrating, because I wasn't just goofing while playing it, but trying to seriously defeat the game, if you are just killing time, and don't mind repetition because you have to repeat a level dozens upon dozens of times, then the game is fun, but if you are trying to defeat it, that can get frustrating and annoying.  Someday I will get further in this game, I am sure, but for now I need to take it out and set it aside for a while.  So if you have never played Adventure Island, I do recommend checking it out, but be prepared for a challenge that can at times feel unfair and frustrating, but it is still a fun game.  So I do recommend it.