Magical Drop 2

"A puzzle game for people who like puzzle games."

Magical Drop is one of those games that has a pretty hardcore fan-base, and for good reason. The game is a satisfying brain teaser with a brilliant twist. Magical Drop 2, for it's part, keeps the rules intact and simply kicks the action up a notch. Years ago, I used to play this game with a friend of mine at a nearby bowling alley, and to this day, he refuses to acknowledge Tetris Attack as anything more than a MD ripoff. If that's not fandom, I don't know what is. Perhaps it's just nostalgia kicking in, but playing the SNES port nowadays, I can't help but feel disappointed. The port takes nothing away form the arcade version and still delivers all the same thrills, but somehow, I remember it being far more thrilling back then.

In this game, a series of coloured gems will drop from the top of the board. You play a small (usually female) character at the bottom who must grab certain gems and then toss them back up strategically. Line three same coloured gems in a row to clear them, along with any other same coloured gems they might be touching. There are also special gems that allow you to clear one entire colour off the board at once. You may pick up more than one gem at a time, but they must be the same colour. Power ups also need to be picked up separately from other gems.

There is a stage clear mode to this game, as well as an arcade-style continuous mode, but the real meat of this game (as with just about every other puzzle game from this time period) is the VS mode, which takes place either against a friend, or a series of AI opponents. All the same rules apply to VS mode, except that clearing gems is what determines the speed at which your opponent's gems will drop. Either outlast your opponent, or clear a set number of gems and you are declared the winner.

Personally, I'm not impressed with the ability to make your opponent's gems fall faster than normal. I do understand that you need to have some sort of incentive in order to keep people playing aggressively, but this becomes overkill fairly quickly. I also feel that it takes some of the strategy out of the game, as the ability to move fast universally trumps well planned moves, not to mention that if one player happens to get a power up, the match instantly becomes one-sided. Even if you were to take this feature out of the game, it's still a race to clear a set number of gems, and speed would still be one of the main factors in determining a winner.

Both stage clear and Continuous mode play in on a wider board, which is a dramatic departure from Magical Drop 1, and feature some fairly insane power ups. It's not uncommon for massive portions of the board to suddenly clear themselves off for seemingly no reason. While, continuous mode works just as the name would imply, stage clear gives you a very specific layout of gems that must be cleared within a certain amount of time, and with bonus points awarded for speed. These modes are fairly standard issue for a puzzle game, and while clearly not the focal point of the game, at least they don't suffer from the kind of neglect that other puzzle games show for their 1 player modes.

A number of other details were changed from MD1, most of which were improvements. There are more playable characters for one thing. Each character has his/her own stats, which would imply that there is a strategic reason for choosing one over the others, but it is not always apparent while playing. The power ups are also much easier to use. Instead of having to line up three or more power up gems, you only need to have one connecting with an existing cluster of gems as they are cleared. There are small doors on either side of the single player board, when you enter a door on one side, you pop out the door on the other side, greatly reducing the amount of frantic running back and forth that one would have to do. Also included, when playing VS mode against the computer, is a crude story mode in which you take on a series of increasingly skilled opponents. This does seem to clarify what's going on, but also hurts the pace of the game, and is, in and of itself, largely unnecessary.

There is some music to speak of on this game, but it's a background element at best, and the sound effects are barely adequate. Truth be told, however, I don't really get to enjoy the sound all that much. Each character has a series of quotes which they repeat habitually throughout the game. This might have given a little more personality to each character, but it also gets very annoying, and I often find myself playing with the volume turned down. On the whole, sound was unremarkable.

The graphics are also somewhat unremarkable on a technical level, but they do have a certain charm about them, and are a dramatic improvement over MD1. Each of the character sprites are drawn anime style, and as such, have exaggerated body language and facial expressions to give them a wide range of emotions and personalities. This might not be odd in other genres, but puzzle game characters tend to stand perfectly still and express themselves through text. The extra range of personality really pays off, these characters are as unique as the game itself, even by today's standards. As for the actual game, the colours are fairly crisp and the visuals work perfectly on a functional level.

That's what puzzle games ought to be about. Putting all the energy into a great concept and then having at least well enough presentation so that game entertains more than annoys. In some ways, it's unfair to judge puzzle game graphics the way you would other games. Unlike other games, puzzle game graphics can actually be too good, and distract from the game itself. Put in that perspective, the presentation of Magical Drop 2 succeeds, both above and beyond the standard, but without pushing too far.

There are a lot of reasons to check this game out, with my only real complaint being the fact that the gems you clear speeds up the drop on your opponent's game. it was very trendy in the mid 90s to include features like this on puzzle games, and more often than not, it gets on my nerves when they do. A lot of other people, however, prefer playing their puzzle games this way, so I'll stay neutral about that one. In the end, this is a game that will appeal almost exclusively to fans of puzzle games. If you fit that category, then I'm willing to bet you'll enjoy Magical Drop 2.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/17/07, Updated 03/10/08

Game Release: Magical Drop 2 (JP, 09/20/96)