Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a 2018 American [|superhero] [film|comedy film] directed by [Mitchell (director)|Mike Mitchell] and written by Paul Hernandez and [|Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie] creators [Schooley|Robert Schooley] and [McCorkle|Mark McCorkle]. The film stars [Angarano|Michael Angarano], [Panabaker|Danielle Panabaker], [Elizabeth Winstead|Mary Elizabeth Winstead], [Preston|Kelly Preston] and [Russell|Kurt Russell]. Good monsters never die, and neither do game franchises. Wonder Boy is proving this with its first new addition in two decades, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.

Plot
A boy named Jin discovers his Uncle Nabu using magic to spread chaos across the kingdom, turning everyone, including his brother Zeke, into animals. While trying to stop Nabu, Jin gets turned into a pig. Learning from the king's court magician, Mysticat, about a way to return everyone to normal, Jin goes on a quest to recover five animal orbs from across the kingdom. Upon doing so, however, Mysticat takes the orbs from Jin and uses them to open the gateway to the Dark Realm for his master Lord Xaros, who had been manipulating Nabu to do his bidding. Venturing into the Dark Realm, Jin confronts Xaros and, with the help of his friends and the spirits of past Wonder Boys, manages to defeat him, restoring the kingdom to normal.

Development
In January 2015, FDG Entertainment and Game Atelier announced the development of an official sequel titled Monster Boy and the Wizard of Booze. The development team includes Ryuichi Nishizawa, one of Wonder Boy's original developers, and a co-founder of Westone. The soundtrack was composed by Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, Keiki Kobayashi, Takeshi Yanagawa, and Haruka Shimotsuki. The developers chose the name Monster Boy due to Sega owning the rights to the name Wonder Boy. The game originally began development as an unrelated game called Flying Hamster II: Knight of the Golden Seed. In July 2015, the name of the game was changed to Cursed Kingdom after criticism of the original subtitle, Wizard of Booze.

In E3 2018, a massive graphical overhaul was shown off. The in-game graphics received a much more fluid, hand-drawn style, and the character designs themselves were much more polished. Along with that, a completely different intro movie was shown off, with a new opening song, unique to both the English and Japanese versions of the game.