With Super Adventure Island 2, it fixes most of the issues with the first game. Higgins is way more fluid to move with, the stupid food gorging is gone, and you have lengthy multi-leveled areas that require exploration and problem solving.

You are absolutely correct on the shovel! Great idea, I was excited when I got it, but it was such a chore to constantly select it, and then there’s areas where you need it, then you have to climb a vine, where you have to unequip it, THEN you need to use it again! Annoying!

But other than that, it’s a great game. It’s depressing that this entry essentially killed the franchise, when it should have completely revitalized it. Perhaps it was other outside issues such as the popularity of other platformers such as Donkey Kong Country, but nonetheless it should be a game that is remembered and appreciated.

I enjoyed the open-ended, nonlinear nature of this game though I do agree that accessing the menu every time you needed to change weapons as opposed to the shoulder buttons like you suggested is a bit redundant but luckily you can save anywhere in the game (beats using passwords) plus the gameplay is really good.

It’s funny: the original Adventure Island started off as a port of Westone’s Wonder Boy but with plenty of changes where obviously both series would head in different directions with Adventure Island’s sequels maintaining the simplistic action-oriented gameplay while Wonder Boy’s sequels would go on to keep the action-oriented gameplay but add RPG elements in the process. It’s rather refreshing for this Takahashi Meijin/Adventure Island iteration to embrace the RPG elements like the Wonder Boy follow-ups before it did. =)

I like that this game serves as a direct follow-up to New Adventure Island where Master Higgins and Tina married at the start of that game but in the end after he saves her they try to ride back home by raft, exactly how this game begins. It’s one situation after another, but I appreciated that (even though it bypasses the 8-bit sequels in that you don’t ride on Takahashi Meijin’s dinosaur friends).

The areas were fun to explore, I liked that you could find various equipment and weapons as well as how certain ones would be required to overcome specific obstacles (like the Fire Sword which breaks the ice to name one), and it was largely fun until it lasted; not my favorite of the series (that would be New Adventure Island) but it comes close.

Keep up the great work, and take care