ACA NEOGEO Magician Lord

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Alternating (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Magician Lord is an Action-Platformer released in 1990 in Japanese arcades as a launch title for the NEOGEO MVS arcade platform, and on the NEOGEO home console in 1991, also as a launch title (it is one of only four games to launch with both the MVS and AES), with a port to NEOGEO CD in 1996. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Magician Lord has been compared to the Ghosts ‘N Goblins series for both its style of play, its medieval fantasy theme, and its extreme difficulty, however I would argue that this game takes “difficulty” too far – some enemies and bosses I simply cannot see a way anyone could defeat them without using numerous continues, and while the ACA NEOGEO series allows players to continue as often as they want, it’s still absurd that this should be necessary – clearly someone was trying to sap quarters away from gamers and didn’t care how sleazy they had to be to do it.

It’s a shame too, because the concept of a magician who can transform into various other forms via power-ups is inherently pretty cool, and if the controls weren’t so stiff and sluggish this would actually be fun. But no, dying a lot to what appears to be unavoidable situations is not my idea of “fun”.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

In the end… look, I know there are NEOGEO fans out there who have a fondness for this game given its major role in the console’s history. But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell SEGA’s fans about Altered Beast – this game has aged poorly, if it was ever good in the first place. Yes, the concept is cool, the visuals are cool, but the game itself? No, I would not recommend anyone play this.

tl;dr – Magician Lord is an Action-Platformer and one of the games most directly tied to the launch of the NEOGEO. It has a cool concept of a transforming wizard and decent graphics, and it is also an absolute nightmare to play, with no-win situations seemingly designed to punish players and force them to spend more quarters. I suggest you don’t even spend a single quarter on this game.

Grade: D+

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