Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap

The third Wonder Boy game for the Master System, the second one in the Monster World spinoff brand, and the fourth one overall. No longer constrained by the arcade trappings of the previous entries, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap is a true free-roaming adventure in which Bocke Lee Temjin (hero of Wonder Boy in Monster Land) gains the ability to change into one of five anthropomorphic forms, each allowing him to gain access to different areas of the game's world.

Dragon's Trap was ported to the Game Gear (minus the "III") and heavily retooled for the TurboGrafx-16 as Dragon's Curse.

Block in the final dungeon#

In the final dungeon, a block is known to be impossible to break, due to being in the right corner of the screen. However, the block actually contains an item which is a potion of life. Also present in the 2017 remake.

Special Password#

The password WE5T0NE 0000000 starts the game just before the final boss with the hero in Hu-Man form, with all forms and equipment unlocked plus maxed-out gold. This also works in the Game Gear port. As this does not properly map to the game's password format, an alias for it is hardcoded into the game's code at $3F43.

Previous games in the series offered these effects with their Test Modes.

Regional Leftovers#

A Japanese release was planned under the title of Monster World II, but it was canceled due to the sudden discontinuation of the Sega Mark III/Master System in its native market. However, playing Wonder Boy III on Japanese Mark III hardware will change the title to Monster World II and enable enhanced music if an FM Sound Unit (an add-on released exclusively in Japan) is detected, although the text will remain in English.

Monster World II later saw an official localized Japanese release as a Game Gear port in 1992 (oddly enough, released a few months after its own sequel, Monster World III), but this version did not include FM audio support. However, FM sound emulation for Monster World II was included in the PlayStation 2 compilation Monster World: Complete Collection, released in Japan in 2007. The FM sound would also be included as an option in Lizardcube's 2017 remake, based on the Master System release, alongside the PCM music and a newly orchestrated soundtrack.

Regional Differences#

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this. Specifically: Compare every "-man form" with the characters from the Mônica version.

The Brazilian release of Wonder Boy III was altered in many ways to make it into a licensed game based on a local franchise titled Turma da Mônica, from adapting the script and plot to fit the franchise's setting to changing some of the sprites for the characters. This was actually the case with the first three games of the Monster World series, and it has to be seen to be believed.

Turma da Monica em O Resgate (which can be loosely translated as Monica and Friends in: The Rescue, more or less in the same fashion as most of the franchise's comic story titles), alters the title screen and replaces the transformations with Monica's friends:

• Hu-Man form: Mônica and her deadly blue plushie doll Samson (Sansão).
• Lizard-Man form: Chuck Billy (Chico Bento), a country kid with a fireball-shooting shotgun.
• Mouse-Man form: Blu (Bidu), a blue dog. Why bother?
• Piranha-Man form: Jimmy Five (Cebolinha), the boy in a green shirt and with five strands of hair.
• Lion-Man form: Maggy (Magali), the girl in a yellow dress.
• Hawk-Man form: Angel (Anjinho), Mônica's guardian angel.

Furthermore, the shopkeeper is replaced with Smudge (Cascão), a dirty boy in an orange shirt, and the final boss, Vampier Dragon, with Captain Fray (Capitão Feio), a filth-obsessed supervillain.

References#