Play Adventure Island Online
Dodge bees, ride dinos, and desperately grab fruit before you starve—this Game Boy port keeps the NES original’s brutal charm with tighter controls and some smart tweaks.
Adventure Island on the Game Boy is one of those games that looks cute but will absolutely wreck you if you're not careful. You play as Higgins, this little dude in a grass skirt who's always one missed fruit pickup away from starving mid-jump. The first level tricks you into thinking it's all tropical vibes and riding dinosaurs (which, yes, is as fun as it sounds), but by level 3 you'll be sweating over pixel-perfect jumps between floating platforms.
What I love is how the Game Boy version keeps the spirit of the NES original—same frantic egg-throwing, same terrifyingly fast bees—but makes it feel fresh with some clever tweaks to fit the smaller screen. The controls are snappy, though I still occasionally faceplant into spikes because I mistimed a jump. And those dinosaur rides? Absolute game-changers when you're getting swarmed by enemies.
It's the kind of game where you'll die a lot, but each run feels fair, and you can practically hear the cartridge taunting you to try "just one more time." The music's still stuck in my head, too.
Download Adventure Island ROM
You can download this ROM to play Adventure Island offline using an Game Boy emulator (Top Emulators).
*This ROM is provided for backup and educational purposes only.
