YMMV / Adventure Island

• Awesome Music: Many of the tracks in Adventure Island II and III are this. Some examples here.
  • Every single track from Super Adventure Island. Not surprisingly, it was composed by Yuzo Koshiro.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The literal spiders (aka Zigmos) can make some of the later levels unwinnable if you lose your weapon. There's also those pesky frogs/Kellos, who jump in a very high but brief arc that makes them hard to hit with an axe and hard to jump over. The literal Goddamned Bats can be particularly demonic when platform jumping. And the jumping swordfish come at you almost-nonstop in the later ocean levels.
  • Also, when you see a red flower prominently sitting in the background, get ready to jump; it means a Coyote is about to come running at you from behind, and they are fast. You can be quicker and kill them, but it takes two hatchets to do the trick.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Rocks. Bounce, bounce, bounce, die, throw your controller.
  • Bassers, which are bats, which often qualifies.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series was very popular in Mexico in the 80s and 90s, partly because the in-game sprite of Master Higgins/Takahashi in the first game looks a lot like the late Mexican comedian Gaspar Henaine aka Capulina, and he's even called as such by Mexican players.
  • The series is also very popular in Eastern Europe, because it was very common game series to appear on unlicensed Famiclones on multi-game cartridges. Moreover, gamers from former Eastern Bloc consider the series to be "true rival" series to "Super Mario Bros." games, unlike Sonic, because in early 90s few people could afford even cheap unlicensed Mega Drive clone and there was no marketing war between Sega and Nintendo.
• Moral Event Horizon: Unlike the other villains, Dark Cloak doesn't kidnap Jeannie Jungle at all and turns her into stone, for laughs. What a massive jerk!
• No Export for You: Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV, especially sad due to being the final official Famicom game ever made. At least a Fan Translation exists.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: Made by the creator of Wonder Boy, and the first games are nearly identical.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The first game, while not a terrible game by any means, had borderline Platform Hell-levels of difficulty, and some questionable level design choices (such as the sparing appearance of any weapons) could make a number of levels (especially levels late in the game) Unwinnable. Adventure Island II, however was made more reasonably difficult (while still Nintendo Hard), added new gameplay mechanics (such as the rideable dinosaurs), made it possible for Master Higgins to take more than one hit (when he's riding one of the aforementioned dinos), and basically expanded on the first game's good points. Then Adventure Island III further improved on II by upgrading the gameplay (such as making Higgins able to duck, for example) and improving the level design.
• That One Level: Although the whole world 8 in the first game is very hard, the world 8-3 is especially noteworthy due to a segment which requires pixel-perfect jumps and firing.

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