Adventure Island II

About Adventure Island II

Adventure Island II (1991) is Hudson Soft's NES platformer in which Master Higgins rescues Tina across eight islands, riding four dinosaur friends and managing an inventory of hammers and mounts.

Adventure Island II in Depth

Master Higgins' girlfriend Tina has been kidnapped by the followers of the Evil Witch Doctor, whose monster minions control eight perilous islands. Four friendly dinosaurs will ally with anyone brave enough to take on their common oppressors, and Higgins sets out to rescue her. The rules are those of the first Adventure Island, with an inventory system as the main addition: before each stage the player chooses which rescued dinosaur to bring and whether to take one of the stone hammers stored up. Because of this, collecting a second hammer no longer upgrades Higgins to fireballs but adds it to the inventory instead.

Checkpoints are gone, so dying means restarting a stage, but stages are much shorter than before. A different sound reveals where a hidden egg lies, and bonus areas are reached with keys found inside these eggs, some leading to item rooms or shortcuts to the next island. There are underwater and vertically scrolling stages, Higgins can backtrack a little, and finishing a stage lets him pick one of ten spinning eggs for points. Each island's boss waits on a set stage, but if Higgins loses to it, the boss moves elsewhere. The dinosaurs, summoned by playing-card suits inside eggs, are a blue camptosaurus that tail-whips and walks on ice, a red one that breathes fire and crosses lava, a pteranodon that flies and drops stones, and an elasmosaurus, the only one that survives underwater.

Making Adventure Island II

Now Production developed it and Hudson Soft published it for the NES in 1991 as the sequel to Adventure Island. While the first game had adapted Sega's Wonder Boy, this one, like most later Adventure Island games, was an original design. Its main innovations were the inventory of hammers and dinosaur friends, keys hidden in eggs, and bosses that relocate after a defeat. AllGame's Skyler Miller preferred it to the original, praising its "improved graphics, a map screen, and most importantly, four dinosaur buddies for Master Higgins to ride, each with their own special ability". Cover artwork for the packaging was illustrated by Shelley L. Hunter.