Blog:Five Westone Games That Aren't Wonder Boy
CRV (talk) 04:21, 7 December 2014 (CET) [permalink]
Westone Bit Entertainment and related company Bit Angel filed for bankruptcy on September 24, 2014. Most know Westone for the Wonder Boy and Monster World series, but they did so much more. Let's take a look back at five of their notable titles:
1) Jaws (NES) The shark that terrorized moviegoers years earlier made its way to the NES, courtesy of American publisher LJN, contractor Atlus, and subcontractor/developer Westone.
According to an interview with Westone president Ryuichi Nishizawa, development took about two months to complete with a crew of three people. The final product is very much an old-school, arcade-style game that's rather easy once you get the hang of it, not to mention incredibly short. If it looped and got more difficult like many old arcade games, that might have been an improvement.
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2) Dungeon Explorer (Sega CD/Mega CD) Hudson went through a phase of bringing PC Engine/TurboGrafx games to the Genesis/Mega Drive and Sega CD/Mega CD - Mega Bomberman, The Space Adventure, Lords of Thunder. None of those conversions came out in Japan, but all of them remained true to the originals, except the Westone-developed Dungeon Explorer. The theme and gameplay may be similar, but this game is altogether different.
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3) Willy Wombat (Saturn) In the '90s, creating an overhead action game starring a caped marsupial was no unusual thing. With English voice acting and minimal Japanese text, this probably could have made it out of Japan had it not come out so late (1997). According to map designer Michitaka Tsuruta in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volume 2, Willy started out as a side-scroller for the Super Famicom. (Another Fun Fact: Willie or Willy the Wombat were early names for Crash Bandicoot.)
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4) Fish Eyes Wild / Reel Fishing Wild (Dreamcast) Westone took a crack at the long-running fishing franchise with this lone Dreamcast edition. This is a more serious simulation than Sega's arcade fishing games.
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5) Milano no Arbeit Collection (PlayStation) In this cute and colorful game, a girl named Milano takes part-time jobs (that's what "arbeit" means) so she can buy new things for her home.
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Credit to the creators/uploaders of the videos above
