Three Wonders is an unusual arcade game from Capcom that was first released in 1991. What’s unusual about it is that the game is based around three separate games – each of which you can choose to play in any order, cooperatively with a friend, and that are supposedly linked by the game’s storyline and characters.

The story is about two adventurers, called “Midnight Wanderers“, who are trying to find the magical “Card of Dawn“, which will eventually give them access to “The Chariot of Light“, with which they can finally confront the evil demon, Gaia, and bring to an end the era of darkness.

Lou – the hero of the story, and Siva – his companion, must find the Card of Dawn in the demon’s castle, which happens in the first game: “Midnight Wanderers“, which is a run-and-gun platform shooter. Lou and Siva then move on to the second game, “Chariot“, which is a scrolling “bullet hell” shooter. And finally, the third game is a block-pushing puzzle game called “Don’t Pull“, which plays similarly to Pengo or Adventures of Lolo.

While the first two games do have a tentative link, the third game – the puzzle game – has zero connection to the other two games, or the characters of Lou and Siva. You play as either a rabbit (Don) or a squirrel (Pull) and must squash all the on-screen hostiles by pushing blocks at them. The gameplay is fun and the graphics and sound are jolly and well-drawn, but “Don’t Pull” really feels like the black sheep in this collection.

Midnight Wanderers – the run-and-gun shooter – is arguably the best game in this trio. Lou and Siva run, climb, and shoot at enemies in a similar way to Arthur in Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, and they can even lose their armour if they get hit, meaning that a second shot would then be fatal (exactly the same as in Ghouls ‘N Ghosts). Midnight Wanderers is varied, with decent graphics and a few gameplay surprises thrown in for good measure.

The second game, Chariot, is a fairly good horizontally-scrolling shooter, but it’s nothing particularly special.

Overall, Three Wonders is a bit of a mish-mash, and doesn’t really work as a trio of games based on the same storyline. It’s not a bad idea, compiling multiple games into one, but they should all be connected in some kind of meaningful way, which the games in Three Wonders are not.

More: Three Wonders on Wikipedia