Adventure Island (Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima in Japan) launched in 1986 and takes up the formula of running, jumping, and throwing axes across islands full of dinosaurs, with a vitality meter that forces you to keep eating fruit or die. It was the entry point for a long-running Famicom/NES saga, and today it plays like a demanding old-school platformer: short, brutal in its difficulty curve, and still endearing for anyone chasing that straightforward 80s pulse.
If you liked this one
