The fourth and final Adventure Island game for the NES/Famicom was only ever released in Japan, in 1994. Now – thanks to the magic of fan translation patching – the game can be played by people who don’t read Japanese. In fact: Adventure Island IV has been translated into more than just English. It’s also patchable into Spanish, Polish and Arabic, thanks to the efforts of various fan translation groups.
Category Archives: Now Production
Adventure Island II, Game Boy
Adventure Island II on the Game Boy is actually a port of Adventure Island III on the NES/Famicom. The Game Boy Adventure Island numbering scheme ignores the first game in the series and this 1993 handheld conversion is the rather excellent part three for the NES/Famicom, but re-titled as part two for the OG Game Boy. Because it’s always fun to confuse people with mismatched titles in a series…
Adventure Island III, NES/Famicom
Developed by Now Production and published by Hudson Soft in 1992, Adventure Island III is the third outing of Master Higgins, the cave boy hero who is the star of this game and a number others, and who started out life as a port of Wonder Boy in the very first Adventure Island game.
Adventure Island, Game Boy
Thankfully this is an adaption of Adventure Island II on the NES/Famicom, rather than a port of the original Adventure Island. I say “Thankfully” because the original Adventure Island was nothing more than a port of the Sega‘s 1986 arcade game, Wonder Boy, and Adventure Island II on the NES/Famicom was a step towards something a bit more substantial. Which is what we’re getting here.
Adventure Island II, NES/Famicom
Adventure Island II is the sequel to Adventure Island, although whereas the first Adventure Island was an adaptation of the Wonder Boy arcade game, this second title in the series is an original game in its own right and features a number of improvements over the first Adventure Island. Adventure Island II was developed by Now Production and first published by Hudson Soft in 1991.
Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, NES
The Famicom/NES version of Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu was developed by Now Production (who made Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti and Splatterhouse 3, among others) and was published by Hudson Soft in 1990. It’s a side-scrolling beat ’em up with platforming elements based around the famous movie actor Jackie Chan.
Splatterhouse 3, Megadrive/Genesis
Splatterhouse 3 takes place five years after the events of Splatterhouse 2 and is another horror-themed beat ’em up with gruesome enemies and bosses, except this time with slightly different gameplay.
Splatterhouse 2, Megadrive/Genesis
The official sequel to Namco‘s classic Splatterhouse was released exclusively for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis in 1992; it did not appear in arcades, like the original.
Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, Famicom
Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti is a spin-off from the infamous Splatterhouse series and was a Japan only release, published by Namco for the Nintendo Famicom in 1989.
Rather than take the gruesome approach of the original game, in Wanpaku Graffiti the characters are “super deformed” (and made cute) and the game takes a comical approach to the presentation and gameplay, which was obviously deemed to be more fitting to a Famicom audience.
Rolling Thunder 3, Megadrive/Genesis
Rolling Thunder 3 is a Sega Megadrive/Genesis exclusive. It was developed by Now Production and published by Namco in 1993. It did not appear in arcades, like its predecessors did.
The King of Grabs 