Magic Sword

"Retro Review: An Adventure Worth Taking"

Retro Review: MAGIC SWORD

While the title maybe a little generic, Magic Sword delivered a solid adventure that kept kids with their safety-pinned capes and plastic swords entertained for hours. The game focuses on the story of a young hero (who just happens to own a magic sword) who must venture forth into the tower fortress of an evil lord to save his village and the world. The evil lord, Drokmar, has obtained an orb of immense power that is capable of ruling the world (somehow).

So, our blond-haired, Favio type hero decides to go put a stop to it. When the game begins, you, as the hero, travel across the land (about a football field's worth), all the while battling monsters and freeing allies. Once you do reach the tower, you must travel fifty stories up until you come to Drokmar's lair.

This game looks quite good. Capcom was well known for putting time into the graphics of their games, even as far back as the Super Nintendo. The colors are vivid and the animation is smooth (for SNES). Their are a surprising amount of enemy types, as well as ally types. Each of these has a significant amount of detail, which is always a good thing. The boss graphics are recycled a couple of times during the game (a trend common in the days of the SNES), but they are always re-colored for your viewing pleasure. Backgrounds are as detailed as stone walls get, but there are a few balcony stages thrown in to keep a little variety. The game can experience a little slow down if too many characters are on screen at one time, but this is uncommon.

While the sound is definitely not award winning, few soundtracks on the SNES were. You have basic booms and bangs that come from slicing through an enemy. The characters also make different sounds (your character has a considerable number of grunts he can make when he is hit or dies, and your allies come with a "Thank you" when they are set free).

The music is interesting in Magic Sword. Instead of taking the "scary dungeon" approach with a bunch of tracks of calm bass and a few screeching brass sounds, the music takes a strong guitar influenced route. This makes the game more exciting as it feels more like an action game than a cinematic experience (which would have hardly been achieved by dramatic music anyway).

This game is definitely fun. It has a few new ideas implemented as well (they were new back then at least). Not only do you take your own character with you, but you can free allies from jail cells arbitrarily placed throughout the tower. There are many different types of allies, which range from a female archer, a brute with an axe, a ninja, a sorcerer, and a lizard man. Each character has different abilities (which all come of to be attacks, but they have slightly different uses). The sorcerer, for example, charges four orbs of energy that he can launch in the direction you push the D-Pad. The archer fires cross bow bolts straight ahead, no matter which way you press the D-Pad. Some of the characters are more uncommon than the others. You can find almost all the characters with the same frequency except the Knight and the Lizard Man. There are only two or three of these characters in the game, and they have slightly better attacks than the other characters. You can only take one of these guys with you at a time, and you have to have the correct keys to open the jail cell doors to free them.

Another interesting feature was the hero's sword. Similar to The Legend of Zelda games, you could charge your sword to unleash a powerful attack (in this case, a magic fireball). Also, after each boss was defeated, the hero would receive a slightly more powerful sword. However, if you took damage in the game, you would drop your newest sword. You had to retrieve your sword as quickly as possible, because if you waited too long the sword would disappear. This became especially frustrating on the levels with floors of fire, where it was almost impossible to get to your sword without taking damage, which caused you to drop your sword again. You could only lose your newest sword however, so it wasn't that big of a deal if you happened to let one disappear, as you just resorted to the next level down sword.

The game is very difficult to complete, especially from the first floor. You simply are not given enough lives to complete the game in one sitting (unless you are extremely good at not getting hit, which becomes increasing harder on boss fights). Luckily, the game included a level skip screen, allowing you to start from the first floor to about half way up the tower.

Magic Sword is a solid 2-D adventure for the Super Nintendo. You can probably find it in a used game store for under five dollars. It's worth picking up if you still have a working SNES.

RETRO RATING: Seven out of Ten (7/10)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/05