Adventure Island 2 Review

Did you know they made a sequel to Adventure Island? Well they sure did. A few of em in fact.

So everyone knows about the Super Mario Bros. sequel that became The Lost Levels. Well, this is that. Except it wasn’t lost.

Plot? Same as the first game. Except instead of the Evil Witch Doctor kidnapping Tina it was his henchmen. That’s it. That’s the only difference in plot.

As for playing the game, everything is basically the same as the first game except we’ve got the introduction of the dinosaur pals that became a staple of the games for a minute or two. There’s also an inventory system to any items you’ve collected can be equipped/stored and used later on.

Other than that, you’ve got all the same running, jumping, platforming, and fruit needing that we had in the first game.

The graphics have had a slight upgrade. The camera is pulled back a bit so we get a little more on screen at the same time. Higgins sprite has changed a bit, the enemies have changed a bit, oh and there’s a map screen that really doesn’t do anything for you at all. Yay?

I remember the music in this game even less than the first one, which is saying something because I don’t remember the first game really at all. So I went and put on the soundtrack as I’m writing this and here’s what I can tell you.

The music, like the graphics and gameplay, has also been slightly updated. It’s still not very memorable.

Sequels, I think, should go in one of two directions. Option The First: Totally change it up. Think TMNT 2, Castlevania 2, Zelda 2. Or Number The Other One: Keep all the good stuff, and replace all the bad stuff.

Adv Isl 2 didn’t really do either? I guess? A lot of it so so similar to the first game that, honestly, if there were ever an Adventure Island Collection released on Steam or something, I could see them just merging game 1 and 2 into one longer release.

So what do I think? Well… it’s slightly better than the first game across the board except for the plot which got worse.

TLDR, here’s some numbers.