Man, Wonder Boy III - The Dragon’s Trap on the Sega Master System is one of those games that just sticks with you. You start off as this warrior who gets cursed and turned into a freaking lizard-man, and suddenly the whole game changes—you’re not just swinging a sword anymore, you’re breathing fire and figuring out how to use your weird new body to climb walls and survive.

The levels are these compact, puzzle-like zones where you’re constantly backtracking once you unlock new forms (mouse, lion, hawk—each one feels totally different). And the music? Absolute 8-bit bangers that’ll get stuck in your head for days. It’s got that old-school difficulty too—no hand-holding, just you, some cryptic NPC hints, and a lot of trial-and-error.

If you’ve got nostalgia for the Master System era, this is peak stuff. If you don’t? Still worth playing just to see how much personality they crammed into such a tiny cartridge.