Review Fix Exclusive: Inside Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap

Review Fix chats with Lizard Cube’s Omar Cornut, who lets us know all about the development and goals of the recently-released Wonder Boy remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. From their relationship with the game’s original creator and the ton of visual and audio touches that allow you to play it beautifully on a current generation console and the way it was when first released, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap is easily one of the best remasters in recent memory.

Review Fix: Why do you think so many developers are interested in the Wonder Boy series?

Omar Cornut: I can’t speak for others, but personally I always dreamed I’d do something with Wonder Boy. In 1997 one of my earliest game project (and earliest programming failure) was an attempt to make a sequel to Wonder Boy III. In an alternate timeline of video game history, Wonder Boy could have become as big as Zelda. That it has been left as-in, untouched, pristine for decades makes the imagination potential even bigger.

Now, realistically I don’t think “so many developers” are interested in it. But aside from us there’s at least the team at Game Atelier, who are currently working on Monster Boy. They happen to also be in Paris! Sega 8-bit consoles fared nicely in Europe, so maybe that’s where a lot of the fans ended up being? I was in computer science school with the co-founder of Game Atelier, I had brought the jamma board for Monster Land and we played it together at the time.

Review Fix: How intense was the development process of this game?

Cornut: Making a game is often a leap of faith, we had no idea where we were going when we first started. We start prototyping and research things for months and there are so many unknowns. Will we get the IP rights from Westone?  Will we get the Wonder Boy trademark from Sega? How about funding, and a publisher? Will we make a game that’s good enough? How are we going to do the music? Will people care about the game at all? There’s so many questions, if you start by focusing on the questions on Day 1 it just makes you want to give up. So instead we just played it optimistic and worked for a while with no answers to any of those questions. It was a risk to take, but it was worthwhile because when we went and talked to Sega about the project we already had a decent prototype to show them. And that speaks way more than showing up with a bunch of powerpoint slides. So for like a year we were working without no guarantee that the game would be called “Wonder Boy.”

Review Fix: Bottom Line, Why should someone play this game?

Cornut: I think the game is a good reminder of how simple designs can be satisfying when polished. We lost some of that simplicity over the year. The game is hard but simple, whereas modern games are often easy but complex.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite new feature?

Cornut: Ironically I guess everyone’s favorite new feature are the old features: the fact that we can switch to the old graphics and music, that we can use old passwords. It really grounds the project, to be able to compare the difference 28 years can make, and to consider the context it was originally context. I’m happy we also added all those chat lines, item descriptions, and the extra secret bonus, they are relatively small things but they flesh the game a little more

Review Fix: How do you want this version to be remembered?

Cornut: I’d be happy if this is remembered as the definitive version of The Dragon’s Trap! When you start making changes to something that’s loved by many, it’s very easy to disappoint people. So far the feedback from retro players have been overwhelmingly positive. So based on that only, I want to believe that the project was a success. Whether the game sells or gets good reviews from game medias is sort of secondary to making the fans happy.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Cornut: We don’t know yet! Short term we are working on making the Steam version and wrapping up a few things, maybe making blog posts, etc. I think we’ll need to step aside from the franchise to consider what we want to do next. We are of course considering the possibility of doing another retro game remake, but we’d have to find something as cool as Wonder Boy III, that everyone in the team loves, and that we can get the license for. Or maybe just return to making original games and incorporate some of that retro design flavor we’ve learned.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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