Wonder Boy

Wonder Boy was a series of video games published by SEGA and developed by Westone (formerly Escape).

Most of the games that were under the Wonder Boy name in North America and Europe were part of the Monster World series in Japan. Three of the six Wonderboy/Monster World games belong in both series. There are five Wonderboy games and four Monster World games.

Wonder Boy for the Sega Master System is a direct port of Wonder Boy from the arcade and it is essentially the same game but with new original world designs on every fourth round. The game consists of 9 rounds with 4 areas each but if the character Tom-Tom manages to collect the doll from all 36 areas without missing a single one, there is an extra 10th round added to the game. Widely mistaken as the first Wonder Boy ever, Wonder Boy for the Sega Master System is actually the first Wonder Boy game to be released in North America/Europe and the second in Japan. Wonder Boy for the Sega Master is the translation of the SG-1000 Mark III game Super Wonder Boy (not to be confused with Super Wonder Boy in Monsterland which is the Japanese version of Wonder Boy in Monster Land). Super Wonder Boy is one of the few 8 bit game that is not emulated and it is identical to Wonder Boy for the Sega Master System with the sole difference being the "Super" on the title screen.

The game that bears the name Wonder Boy in Japan was the very first game created from the series and was made for the SG-1000 Mark I. Like Super Wonder Boy, the game is a straight forward 2D side scrolling platform where the character ventures through forests, tropical islands and caverns but unlike its successor, the bosses are at the end of every areas whereas in Super Wonder Boy/US Wonder Boy they were found only at the end of a round. Wonder Boy for the SG-1000 Mark I remained largely an unknown game and tends to be excluded in most reviews concerning the Wonder Boy series.

The first three Wonder Boy games were published in Brazil by Tec Toy, Sega's official Brazilian distributor. The games were translated into Portuguese and the characters were replaced with characters from the Brazilian comic book, Turma da Mônica (Monica's Gang). Other cartoon characters were superimposed on the Brazilian releases of Teddy Boy, Ghost House, Astro Warrior, Psycho Fox, and Kung Fu Kid. (The latter three forming the Sapo Xule series).