Wonder Boy Remake Coming to the Switch and Let’s You Change From HD to 8-Bit Graphics

The developers over at Lizardcube are remaking Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap for current-gen consoles and PC. This classic platformer action game originally came out in 1989 on Sega platforms and received pretty high review scores. In June 2016, indie developer Lizardcube and publisher DotEmu announced a remake of the title which they’ve been working on since 2013. The game has an updated visual style but it still has the same level design, story, and gameplay that the original had. The developers have updated us on the game via their blog, where they announced new features and a brand-new trailer.

Here are the big changes that they have added to Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap:

• You will able to change between 1989 retro graphics and 2017 modern animated graphics anytime, anywhere, at the press of a single button!
• You will able to change between 1989 retro music/sfx and 2017 modern music/sfx anytime, anywhere, at the press of a single button!

• You can mix and match: retro graphics + modern audio, modern graphics + retro audio. You can also can mix and match modern music + retro sound effect or vice-versa.
• The retro modes are running in widescreen, 60 FPS (contrast to the original Master System version running in 4:3 ratio with a refresh rate of 25 or 30 FPS depending on your console region). So the scrolling and physics are now smoother.
• We worked very hard and implemented some crazy underlying technology to nail the game details so that it would feels just like the original, down to random drops. For those technically inclined, we hope to describe some of the technology we created in a future blog post.
• Tech trivia: for a same given object, the pixel resolution has been multiplied by 6 on each axis. In the original version the “blocks” were 16×16 = 256 pixels, in the new versions they are 96×96 = 9216 pixels each. So the amount of pixels for a same object has been multiplied by 36! The game is rather heavy on texture data.
• The game will accept your original passwords from the Sega Master System and Game Gear versions of the game! So you can effectively load a “save” from decades ago.
• The game will be able to emit new passwords that will work on the original 1989 and 1991 versions. You can also use those passwords to transfer your game across any platform the game is targeting.

The game will be coming out sometime in Spring 2017 on the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. The PC version will release shortly after.

Are you excited for yet another indie title to be coming to the Switch? Let us know if you’ll be picking up Wonder Boy once it launches this spring!

CHECK OUT MORE

• Over 1,000 Games are in Development by ID@Xbox Devs
• Elder Scrolls Online Has Sold 8.5 Million Copies
• How Many Downloaded Games Can You Actually Fit on the Switch?