The History of Adventure Island

A licensed game, an unlicensed hero, and a marketing man in a grass skirt.

Adventure Island reached the Famicom and MSX on September 12, 1986, and the American NES in September 1988. Underneath, it is Sega's arcade game Wonder Boy, developed by Escape, the studio later known as Westone Bit Entertainment: the same skateboard, the same stone axe, the same ever draining vitality meter refilled by fruit. What it is not, legally, is Wonder Boy. Escape had already signed the Wonder Boy name and characters away to Sega. Hudson obtained partial rights to the game itself, the levels and the system, but not to its hero.

So Hudson invented a hero out of its own staff. The new protagonist was modeled on and named after Takahashi Meijin, Master Takahashi, Hudson's own spokesman and the most famous games demonstrator in Japan. In Japan the game is literally Takahashi Meijin no Boken Jima, Master Takahashi's Adventure Island. For the Western release, Takahashi became Master Higgins. Takahashi's own account of the moment, given to 1UP, is disarmingly casual: the character being built already somewhat resembled him, the vice president looked at it and said, you are a celebrity, it makes no sense not to make this game about you. The full story of the man is on this shelf's question page.

THE GAME ITSELF

Thirty two stages of managed starvation

The errand

The Evil Witch Doctor has kidnapped Princess Tina. Higgins crosses eight areas of four rounds each, cracking eggs for axes, fireballs, skateboards, and the occasional eggplant that drains his life instead.

The clock inside

The vitality gauge drains constantly, even standing still. Fruit is not a bonus in Adventure Island, it is fuel, and the game's famous difficulty is mostly this meter wearing a platform game as a disguise.

The boss

Each area ends with the same witch doctor wearing a new head and a longer health bar, eight hits for the first form, twenty two for the last. One strategy, eight exams.

TWO SERIES FROM ONE GAME

Where the family split

The split that created Adventure Island kept splitting. The Wonder Boy sequels moved toward action RPGs, while Adventure Island mostly kept the original's pure running and eating. Hudson also picked up the rights to port the Wonder Boy sequels to the TurboGrafx-16, retitling and redressing each one, so the Japanese PC Engine version of The Dragon's Trap is, confusingly, itself called Adventure Island. Meanwhile its own line grew on home ground: Adventure Island II and 3 for the NES, Super Adventure Island for the Super NES, New Adventure Island for the TurboGrafx-16, and a Japan only fourth Famicom game in 1994 that holds a genuine record. Adventure Island IV was the final licensed game released for the Famicom.

The hero outgrew the games. Takahashi Meijin fronted an anime, Bug tte Honey, which ran 51 episodes in 1986 and 1987 with a theatrical film, and a CoroCoro Comic manga ran alongside. Reception for the original game itself has always been respectful rather than adoring: GameRankings averaged the NES version at 62 percent, GameSpot called it a fast paced, challenging platformer, and GamesRadar ranked it the 23rd best NES game ever made, praising a difficulty that comes from level design rather than from flaws. It is widely regarded as one of the hardest games on the system, which, for a game about a spokesman in a grass skirt, is its own kind of monument.

Who was the real Master Higgins?

The History of Adventure Island

THE GAME ITSELF

TWO SERIES FROM ONE GAME

THE FIRST WORD