Magical Pop'n

released on Mar 10, 1995

The game is a side-scroller which is divided into six stages. The player starts with a three-heart life gauge and one spell attack. The player can increase Princess's lives by collecting golden tokens (which look like the Princess's face), gaining one life for every three coins collected. The player can also increase health by finding heart containers in treasure chests. Spells can be obtained throughout the game and are important for advancing further.


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An adorable mini-Metroidvania starring some kind of wizard/witch girl as she goes through six fairly large stages. The character is a blast to control for the most part (the grappling hook felt really finnicky at times) and even if the levels are large and open-ended, I never really got lost or annoyed in the same way I have in other backtracking-heavy platformers. As with most games of this type, combat is very simple and while the bosses may be larger than life...they don't put up much of a fight.

I do think the level design drops off a bit in the last stage especially, hence why I didn't give this four or more stars. It relies just a bit too much on the whole "press this switch and rush back to the other end of the room before the door shuts" gimmick for my taste. I also found one point where I intentionally had to die because I did not have enough magic stars (the game's equivalent of magic points that allow you to use the abilities you find scattered throughout the stages) to get up to a ledge.

Still, if you can forgive that (and a few annoying sound effects), you're in for a good time that feels surprisingly modern.

Magical Pop'n has one of the most fun, well animated characters to control on the SNES and it really feels like the developers focused most of the development on making the character an absolute joy to control.

Sadly, it feels less focus was put into the actual level design so Magical Pop'n is a game that feels very lopsided. I could see myself coming back to this game in a couple of years just because of how fun the character was to control only to immediately drop the game at the halfway point because the levels become an absolute slog to get through.

bastante bueno el diseño del ultimo nivel ngl

Cherchant un petit jeu à compléter pour finir l'année, je suis tombé sur ce titre en fouillant une liste au hasard. Une esthétique adorable pour un petit plateformer décrit comme "mignon et sans prise tête" fut au final mon expérience vidéoludique la plus frustrante de cette année.

Magical Pop est effectivement un jeu très mignon comme le souligne sa jaquette au style magical girl enfantin. On y contrôle une petite princesse dans un univers assez léger, notre héroïne est très expressive, il y a de belles animations, c'est coloré, la musique est sympathique, et tout ce qu'on pourrait reprocher sur la réalisation serait quelques lenteurs dans certains passages surchargés.

Cependant, j'ai trouvé à coté l'expérience de jeu plutôt frustrante. Ce n'est pas un mauvais jeu, ni même un challenge vu que le jeu est généreux en item de soin, le système de magie est intéressant et le jeu se permet un petit coté exploration bienvenu.
Mais, dans la grande tradition des jeux de plateforme design dessin animé de la Snes, le jeu regorge de petit truc agaçant. Que ça soit certaines collisions, les paternes de certains ennemis, l’écran qui cache par moments certains détails, ou le placement de certains pièges... Le point qui a cependant le plus usé de ma patience fut la gestion du grappin, qui est l'une des pires que j'ai pu voir dans un jeu du genre. Le niveau de glace et son passage sous timer avant le boss resteront dans mes mémoires, mais pas pour les bonnes raisons...

En bref, un jeu à l'esthétique très mignonne mais dont l'accumulation de petite frustration et de son grappin me laisseront une expérience un peu mitigé.

Game Review - originally written by ???

I think this game takes away Umihara Kawase’s title as Cutest Game Ever. Although Rhapsody also comes close. Even after watching the opening story, the plot isn’t really clear as to why this adorable little princess has to go and take down all these demons or what have you. But, you don’t play these kind of games for their story.

You’re a princess. Who looks a lot like Little Red Riding Hood except you’re, uh, Blue. And you’re adorable. Anyways, your goal is to jump around and swing your sword at enemies, until there’s no more enemies to swing your sword at. Basically. You also get powerups, that you can use with the A button, and you have your super badass attack, that you use with Select. But basically it’s just your usual charming platformer that’s really fun to play. Tada!