I’ve never been a fan of the series’ roster, all named after Tarot cards, but something about Magical Drop V’s visuals turned me off more than before. I couldn’t stand to look at any of the characters. The drawn artwork looks far too clean and lacks personality. This is how it’s always been, but the visuals and sound of Magical Drop V lack the charm of the original. Gone are the puzzle and adventure modes of previous entries, leaving only a very dull story mode that is basically pointless dialog exchanges that leads to a forgettable character specific ending. The rest of Magical Drop V is far less ambitious. It’s also not explained at all, so I imagine some new players will be confused when they play as Bruce for the first time. It’d be easy to ignore if this were some kind of bonus, but it’s part of the main game. It just feels odd to have him in there at all. Admittedly, I’m not very good at Ghostlop, but I can’t see many people winning matches as Bruce. While it’s cool that Golgoth added Bruce to the roster, it would have been a lot cooler if they included Ghostlop’s Story Mode. It’s a completely different game, but you can play Ghostlop anywhere in Magical Drop V. Instead of sucking and throwing balls, Bruce throws a baseball that he can change from red-to-blue, correlating with the round ghost balls above. Magical Drop V includes a 12-stage Story mode, three online/offline multiplayer modes, and a new character that literally changes how the game is played.īruce comes from Ghostlop, an unreleased-yet-finished Data East game that shares a similar mechanic of clearing out balls. This belated, fan-made sequel does little to change the format. Some may play more strategically than others, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a win. Once you have the basics down, Magical Drop becomes an intense game of pattern recognition and speed. In competitive play, making combos - clearing one area immediately after another - forces a new line of balls to appear in the enemy’s window. New lines of balls continue to scroll downward, so there is always pressure to clear up space. The player controls a jester that sucks up colored balls and throws them back, lining up and clearing balls of the same color. Unlike so many other puzzle games, the rules and controls of Magical Drop are so simple that any novice can easily learn and play. It feels like a crusty, dry turd.Īlong with Money Idol Exchanger, Magical Drop was the peak of Neo Geo’s puzzle game output in the ‘90s. It all comes down to how the game feels: The swift character movement, the sounds of clearing a row of icons, and the sight of crushing an enemy with a combo.
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Like Bust-a-Move, Magical Drop is a timeless puzzle series that perfectly displays that throwing balls at other colored balls is all it takes to make a good game, sometimes. Whether I was practicing at home or showing off at my local arcade, Magical Drop became my obsession.
There are thousands, if not millions, of games out there, begging to be played but last summer there was only one that mattered to me: Magical Drop 3.
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