SEGA of Europe announces English localization of Monster World IV
In 1994, the Genesis game Monster World IV came out. Part of the Wonder Boy/Monster World metaseries, it was only released in Japan. The game is bright and colorful and beautiful, with large sprites and great animations. It’s quite an enjoyable romp.
The internet game news blogodrome was abuzz in February because the game was rated by several overseas rating boards for console download release: the U.S.’s ESRB, Europe’s PEGI, and Australia’s ACB all published ratings online for it. Being rated doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all, but I admit it was hard to contain my excitement because the game rules.
Well! SEGA of Europe announced on their blog on May 12 that the game is being released as part of a pack of five games on the PlayStation Network and Wii Virtual Console! Translated!
SEGA is proud to announce that the next edition of our Vintage Collection series is headed here in late 2011 and early 2012, to PlayStation Network and Nintendo Wii Virtual Console! This collection features favorites from the Wonder Boy series as well as some other gems from that era, including one of the first titles produced by legendary designer Yu Suzuki.
The biggest news of this bundle is that we are releasing a fully localized version of Wonder Boy in Monster World IV, which has never had a previous release in the West – it has previously appeared only in Japan.
Here’s everything that’s on the way:
- Monster World IV (Genesis/Mega Drive)
- Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Arcade)
- Revenge of Shinobi (Genesis/Mega Drive)
- Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Master System)
- Wonder Boy in Monster World (Genesis/Mega Drive)
These are all pretty good games in one way or another, but I’m positively giddy over the MWIV news.
Radek Koncewicz of Significant Bits wrote a nice long post about the game in 2009. The text contains some plot spoilers, but at the very least just skim through the images to get a sense of just how gorgeous this game is.