Wonder Boy goes down in history alongside Alex Kidd as one of the biggest mascots to appear on the Sega Master System, the unappreciated middle child of late ‘80s game consoles. With three presentable Master System action titles to his name (four in the PAL empire, where the console was far more popular), Wonder Boy could have been a modest success in North America had he ever appeared on Nintendo's highly popular, competition-crushing NES. And if that had happened, his second game, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, might have borne a better cover than this.
Most Sega Master System releases had limited box art that placed a few images against a boring gray-on-white grid, but Wonder Boy in Monster Land bears a particularly disquieting choice of illustration. Of course, there's nothing extraordinary about showing some armor-clad hero striking a sword from his enemy's hand while bats flit about in the background. It's standard issue for a cartoonish fantasy action game, you might say.
No, the true horror of this cover lies in the eerie, glazed expression of triumphant malice on Wonder Boy's face. Stare at it for a few seconds and tell me that there isn't something unsettling about that gleeful, Caligula-esque visage. Wonder Boy appears to be taking excessive joy in the simple act of knocking a foe's sword aside, which may suggest that he's doing more. Perhaps the back of the falling knight obscures a gash in the front of his armor, from which his blood and organs are spilling out to the mad delight of that perverse and murderous fiend, Wonder Boy.
It's not hard to imagine a child looking at this box for a moment too long, catching a glimpse of the hero's freakish grin, and then fleeing back to the sanctity of a store's Nintendo section, where the most disturbing game cover was that of Mega Man. And so the Sega Master System loses one more potential customer. We hope you're happy, Wonder Boy.
Next: Wonder Boy in Indecent Exposure Land
