I played Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap

Both the original Wonderboy 3: The Dragon's trap and the remake.
Actually, one of the cool things about the remake is that the passwords you get by reverting the game to retro graphics and visiting what would be the password house work in the original game. I tested this by pulling out my old Sega Master System (try hooking one of those systems to an LCD display without a television hookup. It's not easy,) plugged in my cartridge and put in the password. This made me smile.
Okay, so there's not much back story, in the remake I played you're basically a treasure hunter. But ultimately you're tossed right into the a dungeon and you're making your way towards the end. It's an easy platformer maze and you've got more than enough HP and defense to handle the monsters in your way.
Hack and slash and keep going, eventually you find yourself face going through a surprisingly high tech area for the medieval fantasy setting. The confusion only compounds with the boss, a highly advanced robot dragon. Jump around, smack it's nose with your sword and try not to die and you get rewarded with gold coins popping out of the air. But there's also a blue flame trying to touch you, and once it does you are now a dragon.
You get kicked out of the boss room and find out that it was a load bearing boss. Get out of the collapsing castle and to safety just in time to watch the castle crumble in the distance.
And this is where the game begins. The next scene is your dragon self in town with only one heart for HP, and checking your gear you learn that you've got none of it just some basics. How you lost all of that is never explained, just get going and try to fix the curse.
Now for game play, it's a platforming adventure game: Keep an eye on where you're going and kill the enemies. Jumping feels good in both, while not always effective the jump attack is useful and for the dragon form your attack can actually deflect some ranged attacks, which is very useful.
You get new forms with each boss you fight, but you can't switch freely between them. And the times you can switch between them is predominantly for utilitarian purposes.
Dragon-man has no shield, but has a ranged breath weapon. There are limits to how you can use the breath weapon, it's range is short if you spam the attack button but if you don't it can go across the screen, and you have to duck to attack low. But again, it can deflect some ranged attacks.
Mouse-man is small and sticks to certain blocks. Of course being small means short range, but he has a shield so you don't have to worry too much about ranges attacks. In fact, Dragon-man is the only form without a shield.
Piranha-man is back to being normal sized and can swim, but not duck.
Lion-man has a huge swing that reaches both above and below him, allowing him to destroy blocks he's standing on.
Hawk-man can fly by repeatedly pressing the jump button (or rapidly pushing left and right if you feel like being strange as myself and my brother sometimes do,) and is hurt by water.
Most of the game changers come from items, a bracelet that lets you destroy certain blocks (normally with a sword, Dragon-man breaks blocks with his head,) a sword that creates blocks in certain areas, armor that lets you walk in lava, and an armor and shield combination that heals you once when you run out of HP (Hades Shield and Heavenly Armor.)
And in the remake there are several dungeons added for each specific transformation that are pretty hard. I haven't been able to get through those yet.
And when you die, but before taking you back to town you get a roulette to see if you get a potion that auto heals you a bit. While I don't like the roulette, since I don't have to rely entirely on it for potions it's more an inconvenience when I don't get a potion.
As for graphics, the remake has lively colorful and smooth animation along with very well done interpretations of the classic pixel graphics of the Sega Master System. The characters have personality and the backgrounds are great. Boss rooms used to be a black room with plain floor and ceiling, and you and the dragon you're fighting. Not in this version, there's backgrounds and designed floors and ceiling. It's very satisfying to look at.
The Master System's graphics were great for their time, with functional backgrounds in the levels and diverse characters. Even a cut scene at the end. Admittedly not much compared to the remake, but that's the nature of things.
As for music, there's not many songs. In the original it get's repetitive, though they did a good job of having the limited music fit for the situations. The remake has the same music but redone with great effect. They remixed the dungeon theme for each dungeon to more uniquely fit their place. Despite being ultimately the same tune, each time it comes up it's completely different.
Ultimately, this was a very faithful remake of the original, and the original was a welcome change to the series. The first Wonderboy game was little more than Adventure Island (seriously, same game different name. Sega owned the name but not the code and Nintendo picked it up and made their own version) And Wonderboy in Monster Land would eventually be brought to the Genesis as Wonderboy in Monster World (another great game) The Dragon's Trap made changes to the mechanics of Monster Land that set it apart and is quite fondly remembered.
Go ahead and pick up the remake sometime if a fantasy adventure platformer appeals to you. If you want to play the original, you can find a Sega Master System and pick up the game from a collector and locate a CRT tv to hook the system up to, preferably one from the 80's (or one of the other work arounds). Or just pick up the remake and hit the L and R bumpers on your game pad and Boom, you're playing the original. The remake is that faithful that playing the original is just a couple button presses away.