Wonder Boy and Adventure Island - seperated at birth?

[Burai]

What's the deal with Wonder Boy and Adventure Island? I played AI for the first time today in anticipation of the Family Collection re-release and thought it all seemed rather familiar.

And lo and behold I realised it was Wonder Boy but with Master Higgins instead of Shion and different music. All the enemies are the same, the levels are the same, almost pixel-perfect between NES AI and arcade WB.

So the question is, which came first and how/why did Sega/Hudson get away with it?

[AllYourBase]

Adventure Island came after, I think Hudson were the co-authors of Wonderboy with Sega and ripped it off. The master system had the wonderboy series and the NES had Adventure Island

[MD]

This is going from memory, so forgive me for any holes or mistakes.

Back the mid 80s, Escape made up of a couple of ex Sega employees (hence the name Escape...) they made Wonderboy on the Sega System 1 board. Sega licenced and published it.

Escape became Westone and Westone then promptly licenced Wonderboy to Sega, however Westone did write a Famicom version, due to Nintendos licencing policy they couldn't release it so they sold it to Hudsonsoft who had to change the main character and name (as Sega owned the licence to the Wonderboy name and didn't want a third party game to have any Sega name behind it). However they did release it (With no Sega or Westone branding) and due to good sales, Hudson then promptly agreed a deal with Westone that all future Wonderboy / Adventure Island games would be released by Hudsonsoft on all non Sega Machines while Sega still had a licence to publish the Wonderboy games on the Sega machines and in the Arcade (not like Hudson had an arcade arm anyway...).

Westone would make Wonderboy in Monster Lair (World) on the Sega System 2 board (and Sega would convert Wonderboy to the System 2 board too...), then then did Wonderboy III on the System 16 board, due to poor sales on both of these titles in the arcade, Westone would concentrate on Home versions... (Note Wonderboy III on the Master System is technically Monster World 2, but Sega America decided to make it the third game as there were already two on the Master System...)

Sega and Westone thrashed out a new deal in the early 90s where Westone could use the Wonder Boy name and Sega could make Wonerboy games on the Megadrive (previously all the Wonderboy games were designed by Westone, although Hudson milked Adventure Island and quite a few updates were released on the Famicom).

This resulted in Wonderboy V - Monster World III and Monster World IV (Not Wonderboy IV....). Two of the best games in the Wonderboy series.

By the Mid 90s Hudson were doing their own thing, the PC Engine had finally hit the end of the road and Hudsonsoft were looking at doing other games on much more powerful systems. Westone were in trouble and went into recievership. Sega didn't renew the Wonderboy licence, but still retained copyright to the Wonderboy name. Hudson still had a licence to produce Adventure Island games, so hence the update on the Gamecube... Westone were reformed but have completely changed direction and have no plans to update Wonderboy (a Saturn version would have ruled....)

[Burai]

Cheers for that MD.