It’s clear a lot of development time and effort was put into their next big title, but let us not forget that Westone also released a couple of other games during this time. It took a total of two full years until their next game was released, hitting stores in Japan during the October of 1991. The company was to build on the strengths of their previous title, while also adding in some brand new features and mechanics to help make their new product feel unique. Soon after the release of The Dragon’s Trap, Ryuchi Nishizawa and the team got straight to work on the next game in the series. The small Japanese studio was enthralled at the response they were getting and the path forward became clear to them expand upon the open world adventure style of game established in Monster Land and put the pressured side-scrolling action of Wonder Boy to rest. ![]() It wasn’t long before word spread, leaving critics and gamers everywhere immersed in Westone’s open world marvel. In the December issue of 1989, Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded the game with the prestigious title of “Game of the Year” and other publications such as Game Pro and The Games Machinewent on to provide in-depth coverage and high review scores. ![]() The Dragon’s Trap received strong positive reviews across the board. Keeping these advantages in mind, Westone crossed their fingers and launched The Dragon’s Trap during 1989, hoping that SEGA’s next generation mammoth wasn’t to over-shadow their big release. The Mega Drive was expensive too, just like any new hardware is upon initial release. Their advantage of releasing The Dragon’s Trap late in the Master System’s life was that it had a much larger install base than the big blue’s new swanky 16-bit system. Meanwhile, Westone were still developing for 8-bit SEGA hardware. The system did a decent job at emulating the arcade experience, but the quality of ports did vary depending on the development team. Popular arcade titles such as Altered Beast, Afterburner and Space Harrier had all launched alongside the system in Japan ten months earlier, during the October of 1988. It was the arcade experience at home, or so SEGA was so proudly stating as part of their advertising campaign around the time of the systems launch. SEGA’s brand new 16-bit console, the Mega Drive had launched under the name Genesis in the west.
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