Hudson’s Adventure Island (1988) Review: Master Higgins is About to Make You His [Expletive]

Hudson’s Adventure Island
Developed by: Hudson Soft
Published by: Hudson Soft
Released in: JP (1986), NA (1988), EU (1992)

Hudson Soft – a Japanese game company whos history dates back to the 1970’s – was a big deal in its native land. Like, huge, even. A prolific PC games maker and one of the most popular third-party developers for the Famicom, many cartridges they put out for the system frequently smashed past the coveted “one million copies sold” landmark. They were so popular, in fact, that they held an annual Japan-wide tournament involving their games for fifteen years in a row, with amazing turnouts and big-time hype.

Indeed, Hudson was on top of the world in the 80’s and 90’s, releasing their own console in the PC Engine/Turbografx and standing toe-to-toe with Nintendo in terms of popularity and success… in Japan, at least. The poor ol’ Turbografx never found any footing in the West, despite being rad as hell. 2 kool 4 skool 90’s kids were more drawn towards the rude ‘tude of the Sega Genesis and everyone’s 16-bit darling, the Super Nintendo.

Even once they bowed out of the rip-roaring console race that kicked off the decade, Hudson would continue to be a prolific software business for many years to come, until eventually being bought out by Konami in 2012. Of course this meant the kiss of death for any and all of their franchises (save for Bomberman because he’s still marketable I guess), since Konami doesn’t do anything besides rip huge, disrespectful farts on their own games, let alone someone else’s.

To sum things up, Hudson was synonymous with video games for a Japanese generation. While the company is probably posthumously best known for the Bomberman series, they had many more franchises under their belt that have long since fallen by the wayside. One such line of games was the Adventure Island series, which had its roots far, far away from Nintendo.

To make a long story short, another game studio called Escape made a successful arcade game called Wonder Boy. Sega quickly snapped up the rights to the franchise, sticking their tongues out and going “nyah-nyah-nah-boo-boo” when Escape voiced interest in developing a port for Nintendo’s console. There was a loophole here, however; though Sega had bought the rights to the Wonder Boy name, they didn’t own the game’s design. With the original game design burning a hole in their pocket, Escape and Hudson struck up a partnership and, with some fancy footwork, retooled Wonder Boy to be Adventure Island. Wonder Boy is actually one of my favourite series – I’ve completed the first one in the past, so I was expecting to breeze through Adventure Island, hoping that my previous experience would make it a walk in the park.

Ha ha ha…

Starring a stoutly little dude named Master Higgins (who’s fascinating history and ties to a real-life figure we’ll explore in the next AI game so this post doesn’t become 82 pages long), Adventure Island had a stock “save the princess/girlfriend/damsel in distress” plot that was commonplace back in the day. It’s not going to rock your shit with its plot twists, but if you’re playing an 80s-era platformer for the story, I think you’re already doing something wrong. Regardless, Adventure Island was another smash hit for Hudson in Japan, and went on to perform well in the West, too. It’s fondly remembered as… as…

…

Okay. I’m sorry. I can’t hold it in any longer. Adventure Island is hard. Adventure Island is soul crushingly, mind bendingly, curb stompingly HARD. I’ve finished a lot of difficult games in my day (Kid Icarus, Sky Kid and King’s Knight being just some of the tough as nails NES games I’ve beat prior to making this blog), but Adventure Island is, by far, the most difficult I’ve ever played in all my life. How it doesn’t make more of those vapid “top 10 hardest games ever made” clickbait lists is beyond me. Adventure Island is going to put hair on your chest and tear it right back off. Adventure Island will spit in your face and kick you while you’re crying on the floor. Adventure Island fucked your mom, my mom, and the mom of anyone within a 20 mile radius of a copy of it.

Thank you for letting me vent. I appreciate it. Now let’s continue to talk about Adventure Island in a calm, orderly fashion.

Adventure Island is a platformer that came out in a post-Super Mario Bros. world. Releasing just shy of a year after Mario’s game changing adventure hit the market, the influence is obvious – but I don’t mean that as a negative by any stretch. The run ‘n’ jump game mechanics feel very similar to Nintendo’s plumber, but with its own unique spin on things. Rather than item boxes, Master Higgins smashes the life out of giant eggs with goodies inside, ranging from a TUBULAR skateboard that doubles your movement speed until you get hit, a stone hammer (or some fireballs if you’re a lucky ducky), and bottles of milk that’ll tack precious seconds onto the game’s brutal timer. The graphics are crisp and colourful, and each “type” of level has its own catchy BGM that only grows tiresome if you spend a lot of time on one level. Which you probably will. Because it’s so hard.

The way the game forces you to play by a rhythm feels wildly satisfying; when you hit your stride and get into the flow of a round, you can clear the whole thing in a matter of seconds. However, Adventure Island uses that flow to expertly prey on your expectations. Just as you’re set into the rhythm of a level, they’ll pull the rug out from under you and laugh while they do it. Here’s a hypothetical to show what I mean by that: “I just jumped over two enemies in a row, so a third is probably coming up.” You instinctively hit the Jump button a third time, only to find that there’s a strategically placed pit you’ve just fallen down. You can kiss one of your hard earned extra lives goodbye, sucker!

To be totally honest, this game isn’t that hard until you hit Area 7. Whoever they got to design the last eight levels must be a sadist of epic proportions. The kind of guy who, if his group of buddies was debating on where to eat that night, would cheerily suggest they all go to Burger King, or Waffle House or something equally as hazardous to your wellbeing. Friends don’t let friends go to Burger King. Anyway, a now infamous example of the game’s latter half being so unforgiving lies in the Game Center CX episode it featured in. On that show, when the host, Arino, can’t complete a game in the time limit he’s given, they hand the title in question off to one of the ADs on staff so they can show off the game’s ending. It took the poor dude twenty eight hours of sitting in front of a real Famicom to beat the game – 21 of those hours were spent on Areas 7 and 8. And we all know how skilled Japanese game players are at games. I don’t like those statistics. They scare me.

Despite the life ruining difficulty, Adventure Island is good. Really good. It’s a master class in design – Adventure Island is genuinely some of the smartest level design I’ve seen in any game, bar none. If you’re a budding game dev who has any interest in making a platformer game, I strongly urge you to play through this game. It’s clear that the developers watched people playtest their game, took note of the most common patterns of play they saw unfold, and went back to the drawing board to fine-tune each level into an experience that’s either built around fluffing up the players ego with an easy breezy easy win, or breaking them down with sneakily placed enemies and obstacles until there’s naught left but dust and tear ducts. Need I remind you that Adventure Island exists to make you go bald from stress? No? Good.

So that’s Hudson’s Adventure Island. Only play this game if you’ve got nerves of steel, have a ton of time to practice up, or if you’re looking for one hell of a challenge. Or just have yourself some fun working your way up to Area 6-4 and never go beyond that. I won’t tell anybody. Honest.

Initial Interest Rating: 7/10
Final Rating: