To celebrate the Wonder Boy series’ 35th anniversary, Strictly Limited Games is releasing a Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection as a special limited physical release for Switch and PlayStation 4, later this year.
The collection will feature the first six main games in the series, which appeared in arcades in the 1980s and Sega consoles in the early 90s:
- Wonder Boy
- Wonder Boy in Monster Land
- Wonder Boy 3: Monster Lair
- Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon’s Trap (Monster World 2)
- Wonder Boy in Monster World (Wonder Boy 5: Monster World 3)
- Monster World 4
Yes, the titles are extremely confusing. The series begins as arcade-like side-scrolling action, then evolve into almost Castlevania-like adventures, with non-linear worlds to explore and hidden secrets to uncover.
The Anniversary Collection takes it a step further, packaging every single version of all six of those games, including arcade, Game Gear, Genesis, and Japanese releases, for a total of 21 different versions.
If you’d rather stick to the core experience, you can grab the non-Anniversary Wonder Boy Collection, which features the first two and last two games of the series in their familiar arcade or Genesis versions. It’s also coming to Switch and PlayStation 4, as well as their respective digital stores.
All versions include modern features such as saving anywhere, rewinding, and art galleries.
Wonder Boy had been a dormant series for over two decades before FDG Entertainment and Game Atelier released the well-received Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom., which is more or less a remake of the fourth game, The Dragon’s Trap.
The release date of the Collection and Anniversary Collection has not been announced, but pre-orders begin March 6.
