// PC GAMER — GAMING
Steam Week in Review: The curious case of Wonder Boy in Monster Land's dubious PC debut
All the interesting Steam facts for the week ending October 11.
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Wonder Boy in Monster Land released in Japanese arcades in 1987 and for the Sega Master System the following year. Its success led to numerous ports, including to ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari ST. Oddly, it never received an official PC port, though that long absence appeared to have come to an end on September 28.
The Steam listing for Wonderboy in Monster Land raises one immediate red flag: note the rookie error of "Wonderboy" versus Wonder Boy. The developer and publisher is Retro Maniac, whose only other Steam game is Street Hoop, or Street Slam, an old Data East arcade game from 1994.
To bring you up to speed: LAT Corp owns all IP and assets once belonging to Westone Bit Entertainment, the creators of the original Wonder Boy games. But at the same time Sega, confusingly, owns the Wonder Boy trademark. In other words: LAT Corp owns the games, Sega owns the name. Both parties would need to OK any Wonder Boy re-release bearing the Wonder Boy name.
While the "Wonderboy" misspelling is damning, a Wonder Boy game appearing on Steam without SEGA or LAT Corp prominently displayed isn't unusual. Wonder Boy Returns Remix, which is a "remake" of the original Wonder Boy, lists CFK Co., Ltd as developer and publisher. Not only was it officially licensed, but series creator Ryuichi Nishizawa was involved. Meanwhile, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a thorough remake of the 1989 Master System original, developed by Lizardcube and published by Dotemu. It's also officially licensed. Each listing discloses as much in the Steam page fine print which appears under system requirements.
There's also the wider confusion around the name Wonder Boy itself, which reared its head with the release of Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom in 2019. Since rights to Wonder Boy games are split between LAT Corp and Sega it's necessary to get an OK from both to publish a Wonder Boy game with a Wonder Boy name. But what if you can only get the blessing of one? This dynamic was in play with Monster Boy, which is definitely, spiritually a Wonder Boy game—it had Nishizawa's handprints all over it—though publisher FDG Entertainment didn't license the Wonder Boy name from Sega, hence the name.
To confuse matters even more, the original arcade version of Wonder Boy released as Adventure Island in the United States, spawning a parallel line of unrelated follow-ups.
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So what is a Wonder Boy game, then? Very few but diehards know off the top of their head, and if this new arcade "port" is illegitimate, it's probably released with full knowledge that this confusion will help it fly under the radar.