Wonder Boy, from the arcade to the Amiga and the Mega Drive

Not a remake, a conversion. This one is by ShinobiZ, and it brings Sega and Escape's 1986 arcade game Wonder Boy to the Amiga and the Mega Drive. The developer says the game logic was taken from the arcade machine's own program (Sega System 1) and then rewritten from scratch in 68000 assembly for both machines. That is where the difference comes from. The credits carry a note saying "with Claude's help", and the page has the AI-assisted code tag. It has no connection to Sega.

The game is free on itch.io (you can pay what you like if you want to). It came out at the start of October 2026 and is now at version 1.5 on the Mega Drive and 1.2 on the Amiga. Both versions have eight areas, 32 rounds, two-player alternating play and a high score table. The Amiga version wants an OCS/ECS machine with Kickstart 1.3 or later and 1 MB of memory. On the A1200 and A4000 an AGA mode switches on and gives you the arcade's colours exactly, and the music plays in 6-voice stereo.

Now for the weak spots. On the Amiga the screen updates at 25 frames a second, and one reader found the scrolling in the video choppy. The bosses attack in a different order from the arcade. Most of the comments on itch.io are about sound and sprite problems on real Mega Drives, and later patches have fixed some of them. If you have an Amiga, don't pass this one up.