Super Adventure Island

"Mmmm .... ehhh...."

Super Adventure Island is, depending on how you look at it, either a game that showcases everyone's favorite plump island chief in style, or an enormous letdown to its 8-bit ancestors. The premise at the outset is one that has been done more times than I can count on the entire population of China's fingers and toes: Higgins is having a lovely make-out session in the island canopy with his girlfriend Tina, when an unspeakable evil descends from the skies and turns her into a rock. Vowing revenge, Higgins plunges groundward and lands in the first level, thereby beginning another adventure in which he saves the girl and gets a lot of, though not nearly enough, exercise.

Higgins admittedly looks good in sixteen bits, but this game has not aged well at all. The vibrant colors and simple level designs, while pretty, were obviously just a show of how much better the Super Nintendo looked than its predecessor. Many of the original standby items are here, like the hammer and the skateboard, but the look could have been done just as well on the NES. Also I remember there being only sixteen levels, which as I recall is a scant amount when compared with the intolerable length of the NES Adventure Island games. The sound, especially the music, absolutely tears at the fibers of my being. You cannot conceivably fit a gym teacher's whistle into a song and expect that song to be even slightly good. The game is unbearably short, unbearably horrid sounding, and unbearably dumb. Wait until I get to the control.

The aforementioned control is quite horrid as well. It's okay at first, as all you are expected to do is move forward and throw a hammer, all while remembering to not get hit and beat the clock before it runs out and you die. Most surfaces seem uncharacteristically slippery, and jumping can be a chore when precision is required. It's tough to make jump after jump after jump, and also to evade enemies that are supposedly onto you. It's like they knew you were going to do that (whatever that is).

So overall, this game actually turns out more disappointing than ever, now that I look back on it with much disgust. It's not a game I would recommend to the casual gamer or the normal Adventure Island fan. It's just not all that great. In retrospect, I enjoyed it way too much when I did an FAQ for it recently. I was going to give this title a 5, but too much remembrance can be a bad thing, apparently. That and I can't bring myself to write anymore. It's just that bad.

Score: 3

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/02, Updated 02/08/02