Super Adventure Island II (SNES)

Interesting choice to have all the bosses front and centre.

And yet another game that was reviewed by the Clan of the Gray Wolf. A bit simpler this time compared to the RPG:s. Master Higgins together with his wife Tina is on a honeymoon cruise (on a raft) in some tropical islands when a storm struck, separating the lovers and causing both to have amnesia. And then Tina is saved by the king and wants to marry her, but on the wedding day a giant buzzard appears and kidnaps her. And Master Higgins just happens to appear as an adventurer and gets the job to rescue Tina. So he travels through the 6 islands until he can climb the mountain on the last island where he rescues Tina from the buzzard but some alien space scorpion is behind it all so you... is sent back to the starting island where they heal you up and then you gotta climb the mountain... again, to fight it... I think it's called padding in the industry. Save Tina and both fly away on a balloon afterwards as credits roll. 

The game plays like a Metroidvania, Wonder Boy or Zelda II if you like. Begin with your bare fist and then collect weapons and armours, some of the weapons you need to solve puzzles or get past obstacles. Mostly fun, but it tends to pad out things I feel when you need to flip switches on different islands and such, and do it several times.  The maps aren't that useful either, would gladly have seen the passageways to different islands to make travel a bit easier. The worst problem though is to me the controls. Not how the games play, but damn menu controls. Don't know how many times I pushed back and forth to do what I was supposed to do. And why couldn't they map the map to L or R or even some quick change of weapons since I constantly had to go in and change for certain bits. Just annoys me. 

Overall it wasn't a bad game. Short enough so that it doesn't bothers me that much. Could also be that the beginning game was much harder up until I found the casino and rolled the slots with some save scumming to get triple 7:s and buy the best equipment, which made the last couple of bosses maybe a bit too easy. But I don't care really. Great music in some stages like the ice island and the final level. Sad thing is actually that this game was released on the Wii Virtual Console, but I didn't get it since I didn't care that much for these kinda games at the time and when they closed the Virtual Console down I was unemployed and had no cash to go on a shopping spree to pick up maybe good games. Would probably have saved me the 100 € or 100 $ I payed for the physical version.