Magical Drop III

The Good
On such a small screen with 15-bit colors, the likeness of the arcade’s anime art and sprites are captured perfectly. The opening sequence looks very inviting. The layouts are also faithful to how the original game looked. With the difficulty levels to choose from, the gameplay is smooth and the controls are responsive, just right for the handheld. But when the getting seems good, pop goes the game.

The Bad
Of the sixteen characters that featured in the third game of the series, this port literally has only half of those characters being playable, no unlockable characters. There’s no discernible differences between those characters on the menu, no tarot number, and no ball pattern style, just the character name. And no matter how far you get into the game, you’ll never see the character’s ending. An utter letdown.

And while the gameplay is good, the variety is not. All you get is the endless mode and the two-player versus modes. There is just a boring black background in the game. That is pretty much all there is. Your only goal is to get a high score.so many features from the original have been stripped. It isn’t as if putting the full features of the arcade version into this port was impossible. With some lessons from Capcom’s Magical Tetris Challenge, they could have easily implemented the one-player versus CPU mode, plus the Magical Journey mode. All we got here is a super rushed port.

The Bottom Line
The portability of this game proved to be a liability. It offers far less than any of the other ports. While the Game Boy Color does have some limitations, this port dropped the magical ball. Maybe if this port was based off the first Magical Drop title, that would have been forgivable, but to base it off the third title bare-bone is disappointing. With the game retailing at an average of $20, it’s not worth the purchase. You’re better off spending that amount of money in quarters for the arcade version. Otherwise scrounge for some extra cash for one of the console ports. Not one of Data East’s best.