Just when you thought it was safe to have a fruit based action platformer those crazy kids over at Now Production and Hudson changed it up on ya!
That’s right, this Adventure Island ain’t your grandpa’s Adventure Island. A Japan only release (till it was translated in rom form), Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island IV plays more like an adventure game than an action game. More like that fabled Wonder Boy series we talked about earlier. Or Metroid. Or Ufouria. It’s a pretty big change.
Remember that Eggplant from the first game? Well he finished up his dissertation at Wizard School and he’s now an honest to goodness Eggplant Wizard. Instead of using his evil eggplant magic to turn angels into eggplants with legs he has decided kidnapping dinosaurs is much more of his thing.
That’s right. Tina doesn’t even need rescued in this game. It’s like they had a whole book about how to Adventure Island and just threw the damned thing out the window.
So. This time Higz Bosen needs to explore the entire island one screen at a time looking for items, upgrades, bosses, and solving some minimal puzzles to rescue his Dino Pals from the Purple Menace.
There are mini games all over the place that you’ll have to compete in, and win, to get the items and abilities you need to proceed. The inventory system is still here, and it has to be to cover all the different weapons you’ll get in the game. There’s warp system that’s been added that… well isn’t very good. And the health system has been revamped to a not quite so good system that has hearts. But to refill a heart you have to fill a secondary meter with fruit to get part of a heart back. 8 pieces of fruit equals a segment of a heart. It takes forever to get health back is what I’m saying.
As the whole idea of the game has changed here, the gameplay has adapted a bit as well. Less is the emphasis on running and platforming and Higgsly now has to do more climbing and crawling and exploring. It’s a nice change and the controls work pretty well. He’s not nearly as slippery as he was in the first three outings. Platforming still isn’t really fun, but it is less frustrating this go around for sure.
Graphically this is the best of the bunch. The color scheme in some areas is a little questionable, but Higgins and Tina have never looked better. Same with the bosses and enemies.
Listening to the music while I’m writing this, as I did with the last game, I can say for sure that this game also has the best music of any of the Adventure Island games on the NES. Is it still on par with Mega Man, Metroid, Mario, Zelda, etc? No. But it’s good.
As this never made it across the pond in any direction if you’re gonna play it you’ll need to emulate. But if you like the world of Adventure Island and you also like games like the few I mentioned above then I absolutely recommend this game.
TLDR, here’s some numbers.
| Plot | 7/10 |
| Gameplay | 7/10 |
| Graphics | 8/10 |
| Music | 7/10 |
| Overall | 7/10 |