What is "wonder boy"

n. a man who is unusually successful at an early age [syn: golden boy]

and the later make up a series of video games published by Sega and developed by Westone Bit Entertainment (formerly Escape).

The series itself consists of the main Wonder Boy series, and the Monster World sub-series. Games may be part of one, the other, or both. This has resulted in a sometimes confusing naming structure resulting in titles like "Wonder Boy V: Monster World III". North America and Europe received every game that was under the Wonder Boy brand, but Japan received one exclusive title that is exclusively part of Monster World.

To further complicate matters, Westone had a unique licensing arrangement with Sega whereby Sega retained the rights to the names "Wonder Boy" and "Monster Land", but Westone retained the rights to everything else. Westone, in turn, had a licensing arrangement with Hudson Soft, who created new characters and titles and ported these games to non-Sega platforms. The most well known of these is Adventure Island, which was more commercially successful than Wonder Boy was.

is a platformer video game published by Sega and developed by Escape (now known as Westone Bit Entertainment).

Originally designed for arcades, it was later ported to the SG-1000, Sega Mark III/Master System and Game Gear video game consoles by Sega, and to the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC home computers by Activision. The game is also known as for its Sega Mark III release in Japan and Revenge of Drancon for its Game Gear release in North America.

It was the first in the long-running Wonder Boy series of games and was followed up by five sequels, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV. It was also the basis for the Adventure Island series.

Wonder Boy is the name of two fictional characters who have appeared as superheroes in comics published by Quality Comics and DC Comics. The original was an alien who appeared in National Comics. The second was a time-traveler from an alternate future who appeared in Team Titans.