Jeremy Parish

NES Works #87: Hudson's Adventure Island & Milon's Secret Castle (Patreon)

Published:

2022-01-26 13:43:01

Imported:

2024-04

Tags:

hudson nes nes works wonder boy

Content

Last week, we looked at Wonder Boy. This week, we take a step away from SG-1000 to... also look at Wonder Boy? Except it's not Wonder Boy. But yeah, it totally is.

Hudson's Adventure Island is also Hudson's NES debut, more than four years after first appearing on Famicom. By this point in history, Hudson already had its own console to manage over in Japan, the PC Engine. And yet here they are on the competition's hardware, strengthening Nintendo's lineup! What are you doing, Hudson? I guess the obscene stacks of cash money the NES's heyday represented were just too tasty for the company to pass up.

As noted in the video description on YouTube, I very openly used Game Genie cheats for both of these video recordings (infinite lives for Adventure Island, invincibility for Secret Castle). Life is way too short for me to deal with the shenanigans present here. I have to say, Adventure Island goes from infuriating and cruel to challenging but not unreasonable when death always sends you back to the nearest mid-stage checkpoint rather than the beginning of a world! I highly recommend playing this way.

Files

Hudson's Adventure Island & Milon's Secret Castle retrospective: The Hudson proxy | NES Works #087

Famicom mainstay Hudson finally makes its American debut this week with two sizable hits from Japan. First, Adventure Island brings a little taste of Sega to NES by converting Wonder Boy with a thinly veiled graphical overhaul. Milon's Secret Castle goes a different route, abandoning linear action for a hunt-and-explore adventure inside a castle full of monsters and annoying hidden objects. Both games share a single trait: They're designed to be obnoxiously difficult without cheat codes. Yeah, I Game Genied my way through this episode. I am very old, and there's just not enough time left in my life to deal with this nonsense. Production note: NES footage captured from @Analogue Nt Mini Noir. Arcade footage captured from MiSTer (special thanks to @MiSTer Addons). SG-1000 footage in this episode was captured from a combination of Sega SG-1000 II with (with Card Catcher; RGB amp mod by @iFixRetro ) and @Analogue Mega Sg with card adapter module and DAC. Video upscaled to 720 with @Retro Tink 5X. Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more! And don't miss the latest Video Works books, freshly published by Limited Run Games: Virtual Boy Works Vol. I (https://limitedrungames.com/collections/books-board-games-and-more/products/virtual-boy-works-book)