Long Ago In a Time of Monsters! - Playing Monster Lair For the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

Monster Lair is the next game on my TurboGrafx journey, and the second to be released alongside the TurboGrafx-CD in November 1989.

Monster Lair is also known as Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, and was originally developed by Sega as an arcade game. 

When it was ported to the TurboGrafx-CD, the "Wonder Boy" part of the name was dropped (although it was kept for the Japanese PC Engine version of the game).

Monster Lair is the third game in the Wonder Boy series, that started as an arcade game in 1986. 

While the original Wonder Boy was just a side-scrolling platforming game, and subsequent releases added additional elements. 

In Monster Lair, you still have the side-scrolling segments, but now there are multiple weapons to collect and there are auto-scrolling shmup sequences.

In between each side-scrolling segment, there is a shmup segment which culminates with a battle against the stage boss.

Monster Lair is a very good port of the arcade game, and while the graphics aren't quite arcade-perfect, it does look and play very close to the arcade version, and because it is a CD game, its music is even better sounding than the arcade version.

You can see some of the gameplay from my first time playing Monster Lair in the YouTube video below:

As for my experience playing Monster Lair, let's just say the game really isn't "for me". 

While I love old school side-scrolling platformers, there is just something about Monster Lair that doesn't excite me. I can certainly appreciate the great port from the arcade version, and I think alternating between side-scrolling and shmup levels is interesting, but ultimately I don't think this is a game that I would come back to over and over again.

You can see some gameplay from the arcade version to compare against the T-16 version, in the YouTube video below:

If I had enjoyed the arcade game more, I probably would have made the video a full playthrough, but...

I didn't. LOL.

Now that I've played Monster Lair, I've played every game released between the launch of the TurboGrafx and the end of November that same year.

Next I'll be moving onto the games released in December of 1989, just before Christmas that year, and the first game will be:

All I know about Dragon Spirit is that it was another arcade port and its a shmup. I believe there was also a port/sequel on the NES, so I'll have to try and check that out as well for comparison.

Until next time Turbo Troops!