As a fan of the game for the Sega Master System did its remake

Ben Fiquet spent a lot of time in his childhood wandering through the outlandish worlds of the 1989 game Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap . This game made a big impression on him. Many years later, these children's sensations returned when Fike began working on her remake. He had the opportunity to bring his ideas into the game, which he loved a long time ago.

“I think I wanted to make this game since when I first saw it,” he says. "In essence, this is a living and beautiful world in which you can easily get lost."

But how to convey the very feeling of a miracle that experienced in childhood? And how to recreate your favorite game, while retaining in it what you loved? The difficulty was in maintaining a balance between introducing a new one and preserving the spirit of the original. But for Fike it was an interesting challenge. In his work, he sought to express gratitude to the programmers and artists of the original.
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Where to begin?

“When we started, it was like an amateur project,” Fike says. “We did not know that it would become a reality. So I didn’t even think much about it and just started drawing what I thought was most appropriate for the game. But I knew that I wanted to bring something new and unique. ”

He tried to grasp the feeling of childhood joy, which arose in the study of fantastic worlds. “I wanted new players to get the same impressions as me as a child,” says Fike.


Fike's illustrations were inspired by anime and French comics.

Therefore, he partially returned to another fictional world that he studied in childhood: comics and cartoons.

“I grew up on French comics and manga with anime, and I think it influenced the design,” says Ben. “Like many other French children, I spent my childhood for the anime that came to us from Japan without any filters. I think I understand the mood of Japanese visual design of the time. So naturally, I tried to recreate this anime sensation from the eighties, but with the addition of my own style. Thoughtlessly copying style makes no sense. ”

He also used the rich history and variety of French comics ( bandes dessinées ), which were also important to him in childhood. “For most people in the world, this is foreign art,” Fike said. “And in my opinion, this is good. In French comics there is subtlety and variety. Nothing repeats, each comic is unique in style and history. I think that the arrogance of the French, who always strive to leave their own mark, has affected it. But thanks to this variety has arisen. Perhaps this creates important differences. ”


Such a sense of childish surprise was associated with these artistic styles. Therefore, Fiquet used them to give the game its own style.

Connection with the past

Although Fike knew what caused certain feelings in him, but of course he did not seek to add these artistic styles to the original game without thinking. In the new work it was important for him to keep as much as possible from the original Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap . "I wanted to keep this feeling of a bright, benevolent magical world."

In addition to the transfer of a style that arouses a sense of surprise, the same tile artistic style was used in the remake. “Since the game is based directly on the original, we made the most of its graphics. Therefore, we have saved the tile system in the new game. ”


Comparison of original and updated versions

The tile system allowed developers to save memory while creating the original Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap , but today saving tiles contains a certain artistic risk. If you put the same tiles on each screen, then there is a danger that the graphics will seem repetitive, monotonous and tiring player.

“So I needed to work with these tiles, but at the same time, to develop their idea. I tried to control them, so that the player seemed that there were no repetitions. ”

Fike came up with a few tricks to hide the repeated tiles of the original game. “The simplest way is to create large textures, up to 1920 pixels. Thus, the player will not see repetitions until he passes through the entire screen. But then he will already forget how the texture looked at the beginning. I guess it’s not necessary to say that programmers didn’t like this method at all. ”


Phike did not want to upset the programmers, so he came up with other tricks for tile graphics. “Another trick is visible parallax. If repetitions occur, you can use different elements (front or on the background), which are not the same as the main texture. Fog, a few clouds or a slightly different arrangement of objects give a sense of the uniqueness of each step. ”


By adding scrolling elements or other objects, Fike risked confusing the player and divert his attention from the original tiles to other objects. Therefore, he used other tricks. “I used artificial lighting and shadows. I added layers similar to layers in Photoshop with multiplication (for shadows) and addition (for lighting). Having strategically arranged them, I managed to achieve the impression of uniqueness, despite the fact that the textures remained the same, ”says Fike.

Tiles are not the only restriction that Fike applied in his work. “I had to stay within the limits of the original game’s animation. Even if I made ten times more frames, the duration of the animation should have been the same as the original one. ”


Fike animations had to match the animations of the original, only in a more modern form. If the character walked in a certain way, then in the new game he should walk like. However, this does not mean that the animation can not be made more smooth, like a cartoon.


“Very much adds the presence of a large number of transitions between animations. With the same control, you can create a completely different feeling thanks to the preparation for the movement and the overrun of the action. This gives the game a much needed sense of smoothness. ”

For Fike it was a real pleasure to create smooth animations, because he loves to achieve naturalness in the movements of the game characters. “I wanted to make frame-by-frame animation, because I see true beauty in it. I'm a big fan of Dave Perry and his work from the era of the Genesis console. Games like Aladdin , Cool Spot and Earthworm Jim had amazing animations. Over time, this skill is gone, but I am a passionate lover of animation, so I could not miss the opportunity to implement it in the traditional way. ”

Limit Creativity

Fiquet drew inspiration from his own childhood, so he sought to create a completely new experience in these digital worlds. But even so, he managed to set himself a limit to preserve the spirit of the original game.

“Sometimes it was difficult, because I couldn't rely on anything. The original game due to technical limitations in places looked empty. I could do everything I wanted, but at the same time it was impossible to forget what the developers wanted to see in the original game. ”

Although from a technical point of view, these places were empty, but in childhood memories they are filled with something important. “It’s hard to say how it worked. In this game, it seems to me, it was a combination of nostalgia and the charm of the game itself. The player sees a small village, pyramids, lava, jungle, etc ... He has the feeling that he is participating in an adventure, exploring the vast and rich world. ”


The original art of the boss Captain Dragon and its new version



Ben Fike needed to fill these worlds with his own imagination, but taking into account the limitations of the artists of the original version, in order to understand the feelings that they experienced while creating the landscapes of the game. Fike had to put himself in the shoes of artists who inspired him as a child, and reward them with their own creativity and sense of wonder.

“I feel I’ve added something new to the Wonder Boy story. We met with game artist Nishizawa-san in Kyoto last July. He said that he liked the contribution that I made to the game, and it really touched me. Not every day it is possible to pay tribute to childhood memories and get a reward for it. I don’t think he wondered how much he had influenced two children from another part of the globe. ”