the chief antagonist as a boss character. Once defeated, the mighty lord's mask flies off and transforms into an item such as a tea cup or a piece of fruit, before subsequently making his escape. A two-player alternating mode is available where each player takes turn whenever the other one loses a life. Plot In the far past, a caveman named Tom-Tom is attacked by the demon lord named Dracon. He manages to escape, but Dracon kidnaps his girlfriend, Tanya. Tom-Tom explores the island and avoids the Grim Reaper, who has set out under the command of Dracon to lead him to his doom. Along the way, he must also fight Dracon’s six advisors who wish to destroy him. After questing for ages, Tom-Tom confronts Dracon and saves Tanya. After returning home, Tom-Tom is heralded as a “Wonder Boy”. Arcade hardware The game ran on Sega's proprietary System 1 hardware, based on a Z80 processor running at 4 MHz. Audio was provided by two 2 MHz SN76496 chips with a 4 MHz Z80 co-processor. The graphics were provided by a raster video unit at a resolution of 256 x 224. The game required a cabinet that provided a two-axis joystick and three input buttons – one to act as a start button, two as gameplay buttons. Ports SG-1000 The first home version of Wonder Boy was released exclusively in Japan for the SG-1000 (Sega's first video game console) during the same year the arcade version was released. The game was released in a "My Card" format, which required the "Card Catcher" peripheral. Because of the severe hardware differences, the game was remade completely for the SG-1000 with an all new set of stages. Certain enemies, stages, and items were also omitted, such as the skateboard. Master System and Game Gear The version of Wonder Boy for the Master System and Game Gear was a direct port of the arcade title, with some minor reductions to accommodate the more limited hardware. In Japan, the Sega Mark III version was entitled Super Wonder Boy to differentiate it from the previous port, although the overseas releases dropped the word "Super" from the title. The Game Gear port in the United States was entitled Revenge of Drancon. The graphics were lifted straight from the arcade version, but the HUD was restricted to a simple vitality bar – the score and number of lives were