Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap 9+

This game is such a beautifully and lovingly made remake of one of the (in my opinion) all time greatest games ever made. For me, you can tell the developers are fans of the original. The artwork is phenomenal, the gameplay- after one gets used to the controls (iPhone works better than iPad imo- albeit sometimes one’s thumb does obscure important action!)- is smooth and faithful to the original. The music is absolutely perfectly realised. I bought the soundtrack on Bandcamp and have some tunes like ‘The Last Dungeon- Encore’ and ‘The Dragon’s Trap- Staff Roll’ on repeat in my music library.

A few bugs need reporting and squashing. And in one case the bug is significant. It is true that sometimes, seemingly without the ‘two finger left to right’ motion, it swaps to retro graphics mode (or worse, partially swaps). But most frustratingly of all I have had to start taking screen prints of the ‘retro’ passwords every time I play as the game will sometimes crash and then cannot be opened again without complete reinstallation!

Inputting the retro password is a nice touch but *massively* fiddly on a touch screen. Not to mention I have to maintain a huge library of retro password screen prints. This is a high impact defect- please resolve. And if a stop gap measure is needed please consider allowing a simple iCloud enabled save game function, or at least allow keying of the retro password using the iPhone keyboard.

Poor and sluggish controls make this game almost unplayable. Don’t be fooled by the hype ,this is bad. Save your money. Can I get a refund . One star because I can’t give zero.🤬. **update*** Sorry guys ,I have since how to alter play buttons etc after my first review. Might I suggest you put control sensitivity instead of dead zone. I have amended my star rating to four stars.😀

This was the best console release a year or so ago. Now it has finally been made available in the App Store. This game looks, sounds and plays beautifully. This is a must have purchase-if all games were of this standard -tablets would easily begin to rival consoles. If you have never played this game -get it. You won’t be disappointed. Stunning.