A drastic departure from the original, Wonder Boy in Monster Land thrusts our hero into a medieval world, and replaces the tomahawks and grass skirts with swords and shields. (Rather embarrassingly, you spend the first few levels in the arcade version fighting monsters in your underwear.) You now have a single life and a heart meter, though at the beginning you are granted a single use resurrection potion. In the Japanese version, the hero is named Book, though he is unnamed and just referred to as Wonder Boy in all other versions.
Monster Land is a unique game because it combines linear level-based gameplay with RPG elements. Each of the eleven stages is fairly brief, although they are heavily populated with shops, bars, and other folks. Conversations are shown in the first person, with the denizens of Monster Land ranging from bartender lizards to demonic fortune tellers to cuddly teddy bears. You can buy new equipment - armor to reduce damage, shields to deflect projectiles, and boots to run faster and jump farther - while more powerful swords are found through optional boss battles. You can also spend your hard earned cash on some booze as well, which both restores health and offers some helpful hits. Getting higher scores will also increase the maximum number of hearts. Certain enemies also drop a variety of magic spells, each with limited use, that include fireballs, tornados, and lightning zaps. However, they are dropped in a queue and automatically cast, so you can't choose which one to cast. Certain items also temporarily increase your offense and defense.
Gathering cash is also a bit unusual. As expected, fallen enemies yield gold, but only the first time you kill them - after respawning, they simply give score items. This means you can't just stand in one place and grind for money. Instead, most cash is found in hidden caches sprinkled throughout each stage. (Once you find them, there's an exploitable glitch where you can wiggle the joystick and milk them for substantially more cash than you would normally get.) Yet, the game actively discourages such exploration, due a constantly ticking timer. Perhaps a leftover from the original game, an hourglass quickly ticks down, which will deplete one heart from your life meter unless you can find replenishments.
There's also a fair amount of hidden and optional stuff. One of the major stages is a spiked-filled pyramid. At the end is the Sphinx, who asks you a randomized question. (Some of these are characteristically silly - he likes salad and his favorite Sega game is apparently After Burner.) If you don't know these beforehand, you'll have needed to have visited a specific bar earlier in the stage and obtained the info for the barkeeper. If you guess correctly you'll win the fight automatically, but it's quite a tough battle otherwise.
Furthermore, if you want to properly equipped for the final battle, you'd best uncover as much of it as possible. The ultimate goal is to find all of the Legendary equipment - the character sprite actually changes depending on what you've found. Throughout the game, there's a running subquest as you play messenger for various people, most in secret locations. If you successfully complete it, you'll be given the option to pick from two secret items: a bell and a ruby. The bell will help you navigate the labyrinthine final stage, which, due to the time limit, is almost impossible to conquer unless you either have it equipped or know the exact directions beforehand; the ruby will take the incredibly difficult final battle a little bit easier. But again, the speedy, "rush rush" feeling of the action makes it too easier to miss these quasi-essential items, because it's impossible to go back to completed levels if you miss a step, thereby essentially screwing up your whole game. Essentially, the game expects you to have attempted to play it several times, have all of the secrets and quests memorized, and have an optimal route planned all throughout.
There are some slightly silly things, like the ability to explore underwater areas without the need for any type of diving equipment, nor any real changes in the game physics. The finale also takes a turn for the bizarre. After completing the final dungeon (which includes a maddening section where you need to jump back and forth between two blocks, several times, in perfect rhythm, lest you fall and get tossed back to the entrance), you discover that the penultimate boss is actually an entity from outer space, the nefarious robot being MEKA Dragon. This sudden change from fantasy to sci-fi became a hallmark of many of the later Wonder Boy games.
The graphics are repetitive, expected for an arcade game from 1987, but colorful. Many enemies, like the snakes and octopi, bear some resemblance to their forms from the arcade game, but otherwise the visual style is entirely new. The enemies have rather comical expressions on their faces, with bulging eyes or contorted faces, an amusing recurring element in the series. Annoyingly, in the arcade version, a huge chunk of the screen is taken up by the status window, which makes the action feel cramped. It's also a tough game. Your sword attacks are short-ranged and not particularly fast, while many enemies are much more agile than the hero. Coupled with the timer and the multiple playthroughs required to get much of anywhere.
The arcade version of Wonder Boy in Monster Land was officially only published in Japan, for the Sega System 2 board. However, there are two bootleg versions translated into English that were distributed around the world. The official English version of the arcade game was not released until 2012, when it appeared on the Wii Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network as a downloadable title. An English version was originally made by Westone back in 1987, but Sega chose not to release it. The translation is the same one used in the European computer ports.
Due to the awkward distribution of the arcade game, Monster Land is mostly known for its Sega Master System port. Like most SMS ports, it keeps much of the original's gameplay, downgrading the graphics only slightly, and even getting rid of the obnoxious status window. All vital data is now at the top of the screen, with all equipment located in the pause menu. The artists were nice enough to give Wonder Boy some clothes at the beginning of the game too. The physics have changed slightly, especially in regards to taking damage - in the arcade game, if you are hit multiple times in succession, it resets the invulnerability period and allows you to be juggled, though without taking damage. This is not present in the Master System version. The multidirectional screen scrolling is also gone, replaced by flip-screen movement, and your armor does not visually change as you get new equipment.
In the arcade game, any enemy that took multiple hits had a life indicator, but in the SMS version they are deserved for boss monsters. Most of the pop-up text, like the ones describing enemy names or item pick-ups, have been removed. And unlike so many video games that have been censored to remove references to alcohol, you can still buy pints of ale or mead. The level order has changed slightly, and there's one totally brand new stage featuring a largely abandoned town, only inhabited by a couple of new bosses, including a Wizard and Medusa. Roughly half of the soundtrack is missing as well, with the same songs used in multiple areas.
The game is technically a bit easier since there are less enemies throughout the stages, and the boss patterns are substantially simplified, but ultimately it's more frustrating because, unlike the arcade and PC Engine games, you can't continue. At all. You get a single revival potion, and can buy replacements as the game goes on, but death comes too easily, and restarting from scratch each time is a vast annoyance. Oddly enough, despite the package reading "Wonder Boy in Monster Land", the cartridge carries the name "Super Wonder Boy: Super Monster Land".
The PC Engine port, only released in Japan by Hudson, is a pretty close port to the arcade. It was tied in with the popular 80s property Bikkuriman, which was a "sticker collection" series that spawned a manga and anime series. All of the sprites have been changed, including main character, all of the bosses, and shopkeeper graphics. Otherwise it is very close to the arcade game, missing only minor details, like the door opening animations and the post-level bonus screens. You can also continue through the use of a code. There are several other Bikkuriman games (ranging from the Famicom to the Gameboy Color), although none of them are related to the Wonder Boy/Monster World series. There is also an English fan translation available.
Wonder Boy in Monster Land was also ported to the Famicom, though with a totally different title and altered characters, under the name Saiyuuki World, and published by Jaleco. Based off the old Chinese legend, you are the monkey king Goku, off to save ancient China. While the graphics and music are entirely different, the gameplay is almost exactly the same. Most of the enemies are similar, including the mushrooms and snakes, though the bosses are entirely new, and the crabs are replaced with alligators for some reason. After many boss battles, you also free a prisoner, who congratulates you for your efforts. Some of the level designs have changed a bit, shortening many of the areas, and adding many more shops. Money is also easier to come by. Unfortunately, it's hard to shake the feeling that it's a sloppy, hacked together product. The new music is atrocious, and enemies can juggle you infinitely while still dealing damage, making one hit kills from bosses frustratingly common.
There was a Saiyuuki World II released as well - it was released in America by Jaleco as Whomp'Em. In the localized version, the main characters was changed from Goku to an Indian, and many other graphics were altered to fit the Native American theme. It's actually a pretty good Mega Man-style action game.
Activision once again published a number of home computer ports in Europe. All of these were based off the arcade version, rather than the Sega Master System version. The ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions are practically identical, and suffer from slow action and the usual lowered color palette. The Commodore 64 version is a definite step up, although it's still on the slow side. However, the Atari ST and Amiga versions are pretty decent. The colors are a bit off, the action is slightly slow, the scrolling is a bit choppy and the load times are awful, but until the 2012 digital console releases, these were the best official way to play the game in English. The European ports are notable for both the abhorrent box art, and the frankly embarrassing title screen, the latter depicting poor diaper-clad Wonder Boy taking off on his adventure.
Perhaps the most bizarre version out of all of this is the mobile version, first developed in 2006 by Hudson in English under the name "Super Adventure Island (no relation to the SNES game of the same name), and later released in Japan in 2010 under the name "Shin Takahasi-meijin no Boukenjima" (not to be confused with "Takahashi-Meijin no Shin Boukenjima", the PC Engine semi-sequel to the original Famicom game.) This version replaces Wonder Boy with, of course, Master Higgins/Takahashi Meijin. The swords are now hammers, though they act the same, and while the standard monsters are the same as always, all of the bosses are brand new, at least from a visual standpoint. The shopkeepers are different too as well. The graphics are all new and pretty decent too.
