Wonder Boy in Monster World: the original game, sound and pixels
The supplied Genesis cartridge, save controls, optional assists, a story route and recovered music, sound effects and graphics.
The supplied ZIP and BIN are preserved unchanged. This edition runs the original game through Genesis emulation. It does not claim a native game reconstruction.
Consultation with the Secret of Mana, Castlevania and Sonic preservation chats informed the separate save format, copied rewind journal, route UI and bounded publication workflow. Wonder Boy keeps its own identities and storage.
What changed
- Added the original supplied Genesis game through a self-hosted, hash-bound emulator, keyboard/touch controls and the retained shared controller reconnect adapter.
- Added external snapshot Create/Load, transactional selected-file writes, backup download/import, hover quick save/load and a save-before-restart choice. Snapshot identities bind this cartridge and core. New files, quick saves and rewind include native state, cartridge EEPROM data and its serial controller state; a guarded restore verifies them together. Legacy files require a warning and fresh EEPROM data because their missing battery data cannot be recovered.
- Added a guarded runtime header correction for the supplied [h 1] save path. The emulator maps serial EEPROM while this dump selects a parallel SRAM routine; the correction selects the original serial reader/writer. The archived ROM and the emulator source file stay unchanged.
- Added automatic selected-file updates after stable, validated original save-data changes. Read-only or download sessions show a backup reminder; background saves never request new file permissions.
- Added selectable fast-forward targets and rewind rates, with copied history cleared at load/restart/assist boundaries.
- Added separate HP, magic and no-hitbox assists plus one-shot gold buttons; archived ROM bytes remain unchanged.
- Recovered all 88 original sound-table command slots: 26 music (23 score loops, 3 finite) and 62 sound-effect slots, with separate players, original bank/header downloads and lossless recordings.
- Recovered 710 original graphics banks (22720 tile instances), 252 palettes and 781 gallery images, including seven title/opening contexts. Added pixel-preserving zoom, pan, filtering and downloads.
- Added a 48-objective left-side story route, separate Completed view, search, manual correction and independent checklist export/import.
Verification
- Original ZIP and 786432-byte cartridge hashes remain unchanged; actual browser runtime identity checks bind the mounted ROM and retained WASM.
- 142 player native/module checks passed: original collision routines, preserved player attacks, HP/magic, bounded 32-bit gold, queued native, EEPROM data and serial-controller restore, file conflicts/readback and rewind generations.
- 11 additional native gameplay checks verified a genuine assisted first-inn save, a 5000-to-4990 gold payment, exactly one observer event, and original reset/Continue reading the saved cartridge without another snapshot load. Optional assists were off during the inn service.
- All 720 graphics-loader records completed; reverse-order replay reproduced every output. All 252 palettes matched the original palette routine and 23518 active-sprite pixels matched native framebuffer captures.
- All 88 audio files decode. All 23 score-loop entries have a second recurrence check; all 65 finite sequences terminate. Original binary audio source is kept separate from newly rendered recordings.
- Browser checks reached the original new-game opening; quick save, add-gold and quick load restored an earlier checkpoint and balance. A downloaded backup decoded to 1036312 native bytes, 65536 EEPROM backing bytes and 28 serial-controller bytes with matching checksums.
- Current Chrome tests verified Create, full selected-file write/close/readback, manual updates, reopen and startup Load after a page reload. A genuine inn save automatically updated the selected external file; another selected session and the imported checkpoint stayed unchanged.
- Current Chrome measurements recorded 240 frontendframes in 2008 ms at 2×, 478 in 2002 ms at 4× and 1070 in 2001 ms at 8×. Rewind entered its selected 4× mode and returned to normal without a restore failure; exact elapsed-game-time rates are not inferred from the frontend counter.
- The browser Route/Completed transfer, retained task details, reload persistence and unchecking passed. Gallery zoom/pan and recovered music playback/loop wrap were observed.
Remaining work and limits
- The 710 decoded graphics banks are preserved tile data. Complete character animation mappings, all palette assignments, later-area compositions and full world maps remain unfinished.
- Music uses verified score intervals from new original-driver recordings. Video-frame boundary precision, fractional tempo variation and FM/PSG phase mean this is not an exact physical-chip cycle claim. Gameplay event names remain command-based.
- The 48-task walkthrough currently uses manual checks. Automatic story-event detection and a complete campaign replay have not been verified.
- No-hitbox, HP and magic behavior are verified by exact-core original-routine fixtures. Every enemy, projectile, boss and scripted-death path has not been played through.
- Fast-forward selections are target ratios. The browser/native scheduler can run above or below the selected ratio, particularly at high speeds. Rewind is sampled and its duration is bounded by a 32 MiB journal.
- Gold buttons change the actual spendable balance and report the total. The original HUD refreshes its digits on a normal pickup or purchase.
- Physical controller operation and the full campaign remain unverified. Assisted native gameplay has verified the first inn save and original reset/Continue; browser and selected-file tests are recorded separately.
Music · Sound effects · Artwork · Current coverage · Source record