Wonder 3

"3 arcade games, you will remember none of them!"

Some games are good, some games are bad, and some just fall right in the middle. Wonder 3 is one such game that is rather mediocre, and not “wonderful”, but a rather boring game. The game is a collection of 3 older Japanese arcade games by Capcom and none of them really stand out at all. The first is called “Rooster”. In the game “Rooster”, you play as an elf that walks from left to right and shoots arrows at the enemies. When your character gets hit once, he looses his cloths and walks around in his underwear. The next hit your “elf” receives kills him, but you can find your cloths in treasure chest that are scattered throughout the game. You eventually reach a large and very stupid looking boss that will try to kill you (he doesn’t try very hard though) by touching you. The game is over in a few easy levels and after killing a few simple boss characters. Some of you may thank this game sounds a bit like “Ghost & Goblins”, if you could imagine a cutesy Ghost & Goblins with fairies everywhere and rainbow colored levels abound, you may have some idea of what to expect. This game is just not that fun after you play through it and beat it (this may take you 2 days at the very most) and even with a 2nd player, this game offers very few thrills. The next game is a horizontal shooter called “Chariot”. This game takes place right after Rooster, because when you beat that game, your little elves get flying machines and are told to fly into the sky and rescue the princess… again. This game plays like a very bad rip off of every other horizontal shooter you have played before this one. Mash on the A buttons, shoot the occasional missile with the B button, <yawn> but a rather boring game indeed. Perhaps worse than the game play is the fact that there is NO auto fire. Not since Golf had I played a shooter without auto fire! There’s not even an option to turn on auto fire in the options menu (read: none!). The graphics and sound are no different here, if not worse. The sky is blue, enemies are the same stupid trolls from the last game, there are stars in the background; but little else. The final game on this disk of mediocre games is some type of puzzle game where you play as either a rabbet or a squirrel, and push blocks at your foes (the same dinosaur over and over that has been color coated differently on each level), I guess I should just use the word foe. This game isn’t much worth going into detail over, because to be quite honest; that is all there is to the game. You just kick blocks at a dinosaur and don’t touch him.

Game play: 5 All the games on this disk are 1 or 2 buttoned games that are very simple. None of these games are very fun, and all of them are very average.

Story: 4 save the princess… good God, how original! How did they ever thank of that?

Sound: 5 your average happy generic arcade tones from the early 90’s. There are the occaiosional bleeps and bloops, but not one song you will remember when the game is over, the disk is put away, and you are busy playing an import Saturn game that is worth checking out (Vampire Savior anyone?)

Graphics: 6 they are colorful, I will give the game that. However, the animation is very choppy, and you can only see so many 2d trolls and dinosaurs before you break into a yawn.

Replay value: 3 Here is where the game is at it’s worse! You will beat this game in 1 or 2 days, and you will set this game aside and let it collect dust when your done playing it.


This game comes packaged in a double c.d. case, but is only 1 disk; the extra room is used to fit an extra instruction booklet in. This 2nd booklet is about 40 pages of screenshots and detailed instructions (in Japanese of coarse) on how to beat this game, I don’t remember the game being so hard that I had to look in this book, so I doubt you will either. The games on this disk are all very dated (1994 or so) and it’s really hard for me to consider any of these games “classics” since I didn’t grow up playing them. The reason I bothered writing a review for it is because I know there are still die hard Saturn collectors out there who will see this game on ebay in the near future. Please do yourself a big favor and pass this one up. There are plenty of good action games (Metal Slug), shooters (Parodious, Gradius), and puzzle games (Columns Arcade Collection) out there on the Saturn, and you can do better than this. It would not be worth more than 8.00 at the very most (that’s being very generous).

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/00, Updated 09/06/00