Community Review: Adventure Island

By grey walrus — February 12, 2011
Tags: blog nintendo-entertainment-system review

I got to thinking about that story that somebody posted a while back asking what our first gaming addiction was. I answered Spyro the dragon, but quickly realized I was wrong.

This was my first gaming addiction, and I decided to review it even though probably none of you guys have every played it or ever will.

Let's start with the box-art.

Just look at this. How awesome does this game look? When I was a kid I would look at the cartridge see this, and have no hesitation in popping that sucker in. And as is the case in a lot of NES games the only story you're going to get from this game is either from the box-art or from the instruction manual. You play as this little guy with a tomahawk on a quest to save your beloved from...some crazy dinosaur thing.

Music/Sound effects: Back in the days of the NES we didn't quite have the fully orchestrated music that we have in games today, but we had some 8-bit goodness. This game is no exception. I love all of the music in this game. (What I heard of it at least) The title screen and the first stage being the most memorable for me.

Gameplay: Adventure Island is a pretty typical platformer. You just keep running to the right dodging/defeating enemies and obstacles until you can't possbly run anymore. Instead of a health bar you have a hunger bar. You gradually get hungrier and hungrier as you continue through the level or trip over rocks. To prevent starving to death you collect various pieces of fruits such as apples, bananas, and melons. Much like the origianal mario bros, the gameplay is extremely addicting.

Graphics: Being a game from the NES the graphics in Adventure Island are nothing to write back home about now, but back in the day I thought they looked pretty good. Better than Mario Bros. With a game this outdated in such a department I don't really have much to say. Some people don't like sprites at all some people can't stand anything even slightly out-dated. In my opinon the graphics are still good for the game that they represent.

Difficulty: Unfortunately the screen depicted above is one that I never got to see. This game is ball bustingly hard. I only ever managed to beat the first or second boss. I'm not even too sure how many there are. I challenge everyone here to get to the end of this game. That being said though this game has tons of replayability. I still come back to it from time to time to see how much I've improved. If you've never played it and happen upon a copy of it. Check it out.

Final Verdict: BUY IT! This is one of my favorite NES games of all time, and never leaves me dissapointed. even if I've never beaten it.

Comments

Please log on to comment.

Community Review: Adventure Island

Trending Video Games