You know, I’m getting a little burnt out from playing fighting games from SNK. Not to say that I’m not having a good time with them, but again, so many of them are incredibly similar to both each other and games from other developers, that it does feel like going through the same game over and over again at times. So, I figured for today, I would check out another SNK title that is outside of the fighting genre, and also one made by ADK once again, hopefully to possibly redeem themselves after the disappointment that was World Heroes. So after looking up other games that these companies had made, I stuck with the generically named Magician Lord, because I figured since it was an arcade action platformer, I would find something to like about it very quickly, since it is part of my favorite game genre. Unfortunately, however, what I got instead was yet another disappointment from ADK. I’m sorry guys, I can see promise in your titles, but y’all gotta try a little harder then this! And, you know, making a more well-designed game would also help out a lot here. There are several elements to like about the game, and if you were a fan of other similar titles from this era, you could like it, but there are plenty of things holding it back, some to be expected, and some not so much.

The story is about an ancient evil being resurrected to revive a demon lord to take over the world, with this evil being looking almost exactly like Xanatos from Gargoyles, which makes me wanna go watch that show rather than playing this, the graphics are, of course, very impressive for the time, having a lot more detail in the sprites and animations compared to many other games at the time, so it does look pretty nice, the music was good, even if not many of the tracks were all that memorable, but for the ones that I do remember, I do remember bobbing my head somewhat to them, the control is very basic, but I will give it credit for giving the player a lot more versatility then other games at the time, such as allowing for shooting upwards and diagonally depending on the power you have at the time, so that is pretty cool to see, and the gameplay is what you would expect from an arcade platformer for the most part, having some stuff that you wouldn’t expect from a game like this at the time… while also having plenty of other stuff you did expect.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of the Magician Lord himself, take on plenty of stages through plenty of fantastical and medieval settings, defeat plenty of enemies that vary in terms of size, power, and whatever weird creature they were, gather plenty of gold for points and magic orbs to increase your power level and change yourself into another form to give you an advantage over your foes, and take on plenty of large, grotesque bosses that will test your skills. It is what you would expect from an arcade platformer at the time, but given that this was a Neo Geo game, of course, it does have a higher level of quality compared to most other games at the time, making it look and sound pretty good. Not to mention, while having plenty generic elements, there are bits of the gameplay that is appealing for those familiar with this era of arcade games.

I’m not sure about all arcade platformers, but when it came to the ones that I have played, most of them don’t really take advantage of the platforming element of the genre. Sure, you still do move from left to right and jump around a lot of the time, but it was mainly about getting to the end to fight a boss most of the time with these games. Thankfully, Magician Lord manages to fix that somewhat, with there being plenty of levels where you will need to do some actual platforming to reach areas for extra goodies and to proceed forward in the game. It isn’t that in depth or anything, but compared to other titles, having some platforming rather then none at all is appreciated. Not to mention, when talking about the transformations, they are pretty cool and give you plenty of variety to choose from, such as a dragon warrior that breathes fire, a ninja that shoots fast projectiles, and even taking the form of Poseidon, where you throw down water bombs that send out waves to take out enemies. It may not be much, but it does make you feel pretty powerful whenever you take these forms.

Unfortunately, none of this is enough to save from what is a pretty generic and annoying game, where arcade syndrome plagues it at every turn. Of course, we can see the usual symptoms that typically comes with this disease, such as an overabundance of enemies that will quickly kill you if you aren’t ready, leaving little to no room to fight back, as well as taking away any powerups from you whenever you get hit, but it is made even worse due to the new platforming. There is one specific stage where it starts out with you jumping across very small moving platformers over a bottomless pit, while also being bombarded by these eyeball enemies, who you can barely avoid, and you have to take them down with extreme precision, which is a lot harder then it sounds. I definitely died at least 20 times here before making past this section, and that is merely just the worst part of this, with there being plenty other parts where this became a problem. Aside from that, a lot of the elements of the game you have probably seen plenty of different times before, especially from this era, and the lines of dialogue from the main villain are poorly translated, but not in a funny way like with Zero Wing. None of this was enough to make me consider it a really bad game, but definitely something I probably wouldn’t wanna come back to anytime in the future.

Overall, despite some cool transformations and actually having platforming in an arcade platformer, Magician Lord is a pretty bland and brutal game that doesn’t do enough to entice the player to continue playing, and with a sequel that was ultimately canceled, it is essentially just a one-off piece of ADK’s history that we can just forget about. I would recommend it for big fans of arcade platformers, or those who want to see what else this company has to offer, but for everyone else, there are plenty of better titles to choose from, and you will probably have a much better time with them. I mean, hell, you know what you could be doing rather than playing this? Watching Gargoyles instead. Seriously, if you haven’t watched that show yet, do yourself a favor and check it out, it is pretty good. Just keep your expectations low for the third season.

EDIT: I accidently predicted the live-action reboot, I am so sorry.

Game #362