Super Adventure Island Hands-On

Master Higgins, Hudson's iconic caveman/surfer-dude, is leaping across many years of time and space to land on Verizon's LG VX8000 mobile phone. Super Adventure Island, a port of the classic platformer, looks like it will satisfy gamers looking to relive this curious antiquity of a game. We certainly enjoyed our time with the colorful preview version.

Super Adventure Island hasn't changed much in the decade-plus since our last visit. Master Higgins is still wearing his signature jaunty ballcap, jumping over spike pits, dealing with bellicose birds and snakes, and collecting stone coins to buy goods from his fellow islanders. This 2D platformer's levels are sprawling, multileveled affairs with lots of ladders, moving platforms, and doors. These portals can lead to shops where you can buy various types of armor, shields, and special items with your loot; on occasion, they'll teleport you to another section of the map, which could be a subterranean cavern or an aquatic sequence. At the end of each level, you'll have to take out a huge boss character to get the special silver key to unlock the grating to the next level. These nasties don't usually present much of a problem, thanks to your trusty, upgradable boomerang hatchet.

So far, the mobile version of Super Adventure Island appears to enjoy the same simple, fluid gameplay that made the original games into classics. It's easy to maneuver in midair after a jump, so the game's platforming elements are much less frustrating to manage than they are in comparable titles. Plus, many action-oriented mobile games suffer from generalized jerkiness that impedes control over your character. This is not so in Super Adventure Island. The game runs very smoothly on the speedy new LG VX8000, even when playing loud, catchy MIDI tunes over the action.

Overall, Super Adventure Island's high frame rate, bright colors, and manageable controls are in line with what you'd expect to see from a cart-based video game. Hudson needs to squash some bugs before it takes the game golden--for instance, we inexplicably hovered in midair above a few pits during our play-through--but we have high hopes for the final product, which should go on sale in a few months. Keep your browsers glued here for more details!