Few gaming franchises have evolved in the way Wonder Boy has.

This incredible Anniversary Collection really shows you the drastic changes this series has made – starting out with a barely clothed, axe throwing boy, who relied on fruit for vitality and a skateboard for speed, then watching the series become a groundbreaking action RPG that still continues to influence all kinds of games today.

Featuring six games, recreated in various different forms, you get to see the broad, developing picture of a franchise that probably doesn’t get enough credit for its impact on the industry, but has been a direct influence for titles like Shantae, Hollow and Shovel Knight, Dead Cells and probably tons more as it’s among one of the original Metroidvanias. Y’know, apart from Metroid and Castlevania, themselves.

This franchise has had a massive impact on the platforming genre, making it more than just collecting items and climbing to new heights, but letting you spend on upgrades, items, conversing with townsfolks, completing quests. It’s the original Action RPG and you could play it as far back as the Master System.

And it’s interesting because I’ve also been looking after the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series as well, and while each of those games also had marked changes, they were less obvious over a period of time than what you see in this collection. Wonder Boy is radically different from Wonder Boy in Monster Land, which is also different from Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair.

The franchise then converts to Monster World to account for direct sequels, a change in style, story-driven focus and eventually, a protagonist. Quite fascinating.

It’s a great collection, all told. You’re provided a base menu screen to access each of the games, with a further gallery which lets you look at individual components such as collection sketches, level layouts, artbooks, soundtracks and credits.

The level layouts, in particular, are a great inclusion. As they essentially work as mini walkthroughs, for some of the games showing the paths you shouldn’t take and in others, giving you a good view of what lies ahead. It’s a neat feature.

You’re then presented with various ways to play each individual game. The original Wonder Boy, for instance, has six different variants, including original Japanese translations, Game Gear and Master System ports and original System 1 and Mark III adaptations.

That’s an incredible treasure trove that works out around 21 different versions across various formats. And absolutely the definitive way to experience the classic games. This certainly seems to be a bone of contention for many, though, following the recent Wonder Boy Collection that only had four games – with the other two only available via physical release and no option for an upgrade path. Which is a bit upsetting and disappointing, frankly.

But if we’re basing it on what we have here, you cannot find a better way to play these world-class adventures between the save state options, filters, borders and optional extras. You can customise the shader style for various intensities and sharpnesses and even tweak the display for a true resolution or slightly modified view. In this regard, the level of customisation is second to none.

You can also make use of a rewind button which lets you retry certain sections if you lost a life, made a mistake, hit a glitch, or if you want to recreate certain scenes.

The price tag is a bit steep, though, and its hard to justify this release to someone who bought the previous collection with two additional games – which many might feel bereaved they didn’t have access to before. You certainly won’t want to bother with that collection now anyway.

But as someone unaffected by that, I absolutely adored playing these games in various different ways, exploring their ins and outs, uncovering their secrets, tackling their challenges head on. And for the most part I find most of these games impressive and they age pretty well.

Visually, some versions of the different games are timeless. The gameplay loops are all good, for the most part, and they fit the Nintendo Switch really well, both for control schemes and optimization.

It’s also a great way to see how a game plays in various different ways, what limitations a particular set of hardware had and how close the home ports were to the arcade originals. Not many collections give you such valuable insight.

It’s not a perfect preservation portal, with the UI and menu a bit lackluster, and some versions feeling a bit too similar to others or not feeling particular great on modern hardware. But this collection is a wonderful celebration of one of gaming’s often forgotten classics and the best way to experience them on today’s platforms.

Verdict

Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is a brilliant homage to a fantastic slate of games with some great options that really optimise it for modern platforms. The controversy of it following a stripped back version, plus containing content originally designed as an exclusive for a physical collection cast a bit of a dark shadow over this collection and mean it probably won’t make for an attractive purchase for people who already own it. However, what we have here is a great selection of products that have aged well and are treated with great regard and respect.

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Pros

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Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is out now on Switch and PlayStation

Code Kindly Provided by ININ for review purposes

Played on Nintendo Switch