Wonder Boy 1 playthrough comments

This is one of those extremely simple old platformers. I love this kind of simplistic, but tight platforming. Every obstacle is designed so there's a relatively easy way to avoid everything even when you don't have the hatchet attack... but if you do have it you can make things easier, or screw up and die while trying to do so...

The skateboard powerup is always useful to have when you can get it... You are way more likely to die by getting hit than by falling in pits in this game, and while the skateboard makes it more likely for you to fall off if you aren't careful, it also protects you against a single hit.

The Tawna bonus rounds you get from the accessories only appear once, and if you restart the level from a continue they're gone.

The bosses at the end of each level are all exactly the same, it's just a matter of hitting their head a variable number of times while avoiding their slow attacks.

This game starts out very easy but it ramps up in difficulty very consistently through the 10 worlds (called Areas). Area 4 is where I had to start being more careful. I was still keeping most of my lives at that point though... Area 8 is where the game starts to get serious.

8-4 is a cloud land with lightning, bees, and birds dropping rocks.. the lightning isn't as bad as the volcano/waterfall rock eruptions though. This is the kind of difficulty I really enjoy

Started getting a few game overs at 9-1, an ice level with spiders and boulders and stuff... At this point the levels take a lot of trial and error and memorization to beat them.

9-2 wasn't bad at all.. another water cloud level...

9-3 a very tricky cave level... had a few more game-overs there, and couldn't find the doll...

9-4 Took a few gameovers before I could learn how to beat it. The first 1/4 section if you're just starting from a continue, you have to avoid a bunch of spiders without a hatchet. That's the hardest part of it. I have to take back what I said earlier about how "you can always avoid everything even if you don't have the hatchet"

I don't even know if I got all the dolls... Nope... got the message at the end of world 9 saying that I needed to collect all the dolls to get to the real ending.

Played through it all again, using a guide to collect all of the dolls this time... it's a lot easier when you look up the level on youtube first and then you know what to expect and how to avoid everything... of course that wasn't an option back when this game came out.

I thought Area 8 and 9 were hard enough, but then I made it to Area 10.

10-1 and 10-2 have NO axe powerups, so you have to avoid enemies and go really slow and carefully but also fast enough to keep your vitality up. 10-2 is especially bad if you don't have an axe, it's full of jumping water enemies that would've been easy with the axe, but without it it's insane...

10-3 and 10-4 actually gave you an axe in the level so they weren't that bad.

I've finally 100% completed this game with all dolls, but I used a lot of continues. I bet I could 1cc this game with enough practice...