| Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap | |
|---|---|
 North American boxart, Master System version | |
| Developer(s) | Westone |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Composer(s) | Shinichi Sakamoto |
| Series | Wonder Boy |
| Platform(s) | Master System, Game Gear, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, Mobile phone, iOS |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Platform, action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, known as Monster World II[a] in Japan, is a platforming action-adventure video game developed by Westone as part of Sega's Wonder Boy series. It was published by Sega and released for the Master System in 1989 and for the Game Gear in 1992 as Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap.[b] It was ported by Hudson Soft and released in 1991 for the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine under the name Dragon's Curse.[c] It was also ported in 1993 by Brazilian company Tec Toy under the title Turma da Mônica em o Resgate, with the game retooled to include characters from Brazilian comic book series Monica's Gang (Turma da Mônica). A remake developed by Lizardcube and published by DotEmu, titled Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, was released in April 2017.
The game takes place after the events of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, in which Wonder Boy has been cursed by the Mecha Dragon and must locate the Salamander Cross to lift it. The game is nonlinear and features varying landscapes in which players must navigate. Players find items and clues needed to access different parts of Monster Land, and they can transform into other forms and gain different abilities.
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap received wide acclaim from gaming magazines upon its release. It was praised for its colorful and cartoon-like graphics, rich sound and diverse sound effects, and varied and addictive gameplay. Criticisms include sprite flickering in the Master System version as well as slippery controls. It won Electronic Gaming Monthly's "Best Game of the Year" award for the Master System in 1989. Reviews from gaming magazines have described the game as one of the best Master System and 8-bit titles of that era.
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