Wonder Boy[a] is a 1986 platform game published by Sega and developed by Escape (now known as Westone Bit Entertainment).

A high definition remake of the game, titled Wonder Boy Returns, was developed by CFK and released on Steam on October 12, 2016.

The player must remain aware of the vitality meter, which constantly runs down at a steady pace and can only be refilled by collecting food throughout the level.

Once defeated, the mighty lord's mask flies off and transforms into an item such as a tea cup or a piece of fruit, before subsequently making his escape.

The Boy explores the island and avoids the Grim Reaper, who has set out under the command of The King to lead him to his doom.

The game ran on Sega's proprietary System 1 hardware, based on a Z80 processor running at 4 MHz.

The version of Wonder Boy for the Master System and Game Gear was a direct port of the arcade title, with some minor reductions to accommodate the more limited hardware.

The graphics were lifted straight from the arcade version, but the HUD was restricted to a simple vitality bar – the score and number of lives were displayed prior to starting the level.

Some Spectrum versions were afflicted with a bug that prevented the game from preloading all four levels in 128K mode – the fourth level's graphics would not load correctly, and it would be impossible for the player to move before the game crashed and the computer rebooted within around three seconds.

As a result, 128K owners were forced to boot into 48K mode to run the game, and did not enjoy the benefit of having all levels preloaded as was designed.

On March 31, 2008, Wonder Boy was made available for play on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console in North America.

[15][16] Escape had a licensing arrangement whereby it owned the rights to the game design, but Sega retained the Wonder Boy trademark.

To get around the licensing issue, Hudson Soft had the title changed which resulted into Adventure Island.

Since Adventure Island is based on the arcade version of Wonder Boy, it does not contain any of the original levels found in the Master System or Game Gear ports.

[17] The bonus stage that was reserved for collecting all the dolls in Wonder Boy is integrated in this game as a regular area.

This version featured Master Higgins as the main character but retained the music of Wonder Boy, unlike the NES Adventure Island which had a completely different soundtrack.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Wonder Boy on their May 15, 1986 issue as being the fifth most-successful table arcade unit at the time.

[citation needed] Reviewing the ZX Spectrum version, CRASH remained unconvinced, citing technical shortcomings, including poor character-based scrolling, considerable slowdown, and confusion induced by the monochrome display.