You can also replenish lost health by collecting fruit if you collect eight pieces of fruit you get one heart replenished. You begin with just two hearts in the meter, but can increase it by finding and collecting more. Your health is indicated by the heart meter at the bottom of the screen. Inside other doors are bosses that you must defeat to acquire new key items, such as the hammer (which can break certain barriers), the torch (which lights up dark rooms and can reveal hidden doors), the sprayer (which turns tiny mushrooms into big ones that you can then bounce on, allowing you to reach areas that are higher or further away), and so on. Inside some doors are minigames that you can play, and beat, to win new items or power-ups. You once again play as Master Higgins and explore large, scrolling levels, entering doors to talk to various characters. Adventure Island IV is more like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap than previous games, which is definitely not a bad thing.

It just means that you have an inventory of items that you can enter at any time and use different items to solve different puzzles. Don’t worry, though, there’s no turn-based combat or anything like that. It was developed by Now Production and published by Hudson Soft.Īdventure Island IV is more of an action adventure with RPG elements than previous games. In Japan the game is known as “ Takahashi Meijin no Boken Jima IV“, and the full English title of the game is “ Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island IV“. It’s also patchable into Spanish, Polish and Arabic, thanks to the efforts of various fan translation groups. In fact: Adventure Island IV has been translated into more than just English. Now – thanks to the magic of fan translation patching – the game can be played by people who don’t read Japanese.

The fourth and final Adventure Island game for the NES/Famicom was only ever released in Japan, in 1994.

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