High above the mucky-muck, castle made of clouds, There sits Wonderboy, sitting oh so proudly. Come fly w
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap is a side-scrolling platform game and action role-playing game. You control wonder boy with the D-padd, to move Wonder Boy left or right, crouch down. You attack enemys with the buttons on the controller and you can also jump as well. (It would not be much of a platforming game if you could not jump) You as wonder boy can attack with his main weapon or with secondary weapons by holding down on the directional pad and pressing the attack button.
As you can tell from the title of this game you know that there is some form of trap that you (wonder boy) are going to fall foul of. In this case after you beat the first level (which just so happens to be the same as the final level in Wonder Boy in Monster Land) wonder boy gets turned into a Lizard-Man. From this point the game becomes nonlinear and the player has explores and finds items and clues needed for Wonder Boy to access different parts of Monster Land to help him on his quest to break the curse.
Defeating enemys in Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap gains you gold or additional secondary weapons (which the enemys drop). To pick them up all the player needs to do is walk upto them and touch them. The gold can be used in shops to buy better equipment. These shops as well as hospitals can be found in towns of caves...(why?!?!) Not only will you need enough gold to buy stuff in this game but you will also need to have enough charm...To gain more of this you have to collect Charm Stones or by equipping certain items. Not only that but on your travels you will also find treasure chests, these will hold gold and items to help you as well.
Like any other action role-playing game this game has a Status Screen. This shows the player how much attack and defense power, and charm Wonder Boy has. To improve on these stats you need to find/buy better items to improve your chances at beat the enemys back to where they came from.
Throughout Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, the player will travel through differently-themed levels. These range from underwater, desert, jungle, cave, and sky. At the end of each level there is a differant boss dragon, when this dragon is defeated Wonder Boy changes form, and his abilities change. At the start of the game you are Hu-Man, equipped with all eight hearts and the strongest equipment. When you beat the first level you take the form of Lizard-Man. At this point he loses all equipment and all hearts except one. Now that does not mean that he is weak as you can attack enemies by breathing fire at them, and he can duck (very very handy skill). As you make your way through the game other forms will come up. Mouse-Man can walk on walls and ceilings designated by checkered mouse blocks. Piranha-Man can swim freely underwater and can access underwater places which the other forms cannot. Lion-Man attacks enemies with his sword by swinging from directly above to directly below him. Hawk-Man can fly freely in the air but sustains damage if he enters water.
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap first came out on the Sega Master System in 1989. It has also come out for the Sega Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16 and the Virtual Console.
This is one of them games that is as near to oldschool as you can get...Its not perfect mind you but realy back in the day no game was. So if you have not had a chance to play this one then maybe just maybe your time is now...and maybe you will seek out what it is to be wonder boy.