Magician Lord

Back in the 90s I never did give Magician Lord much of a chance, despite it being the first Neo-Geo game I ever saw. My ten-year-old mind was blown away when I saw it debut on an old kid-centric gameshow called Nick Arcade on Nickelodeon. Unfortunately, I did not get around to actually playing the game until I got my first AES in 1998. Over the eight years between its original release and when I got to play it, we were already past the mid-point of the 32-bit console generation. By that time, Magician Lord was already a bit dated, with many 16-bit games having greater depth, animation, and variety. While I played it a fair bit when I picked up my AES copy on the cheap in 1998, and then sporadically over the years, I didn't develop an affection for the title until much, much later...adult historical perspective and all. 

Magician Lord was developed by SNK's development partner Alpha Denshi, or ADK as they are more commonly known. Upon release, Magician Lord was well received by both critics and consumers - at least in the US. Curiously, Famitsu, a popular Japanese gaming publication, rated the game 18/40 while Western publications almost unanimously praised every aspect of the game with some going to far as to call it the best 2D platformer to release to that point. While I personally wouldn't go that far, Magician Lord was such a quantum leap forward in 2D graphics at the time that many of its most glaring flaws were overlooked by critics because of the spectacle on display. ADK would quickly go on to produce another Neo-Geo platformer, Blue's Journey, before switching gears and getting into the 90's fighting game craze. Sadly, Blue's Journey is half the game Magician Lord is in my opinion, but it has its mega fans. Let's see what makes Magician Lord so famous...or infamous?

The setup of Magician Lord is simple, but gives the player just enough depth to be interesting. In the fantasy world of Cadacis, the evil sorcerer Gal Agiz broke free from his eternal prison and stole the eight tomes of power, unleashing all sorts of monsters and demons in the world. You play as Elta, the last descendent of the prior Magician Lord who sealed away Gal Agiz in the past and must follow in his ancestor's footsteps to put a final stop to the tyrant. ADK went all in with the story and set up of Magican Lord over and above most other early Neo-Geo releases, with a full storyline overview in the manual and a unique intro sequence exclusive to the home version (more on that later). Throughout the game you run into Gal Agiz multiple times where he has a brief, fully voiced, exchange with Elta before sending him to meet some sort of crazy boss monstrosity. 

Elta is armed with a single magic projectile you can fire left, right, up, and also down while jumping. Controls are tight and responsive, with slightly floaty jumps at the apex of the animation sequence. While floaty jumps usually cause problems in platformers, Elta's jump has a decent amount of control, letting the player throttle the downward trajectory of the fall. Like most platformers with a shooting mechanic, Elta can only have two projectiles on the screen at any given time which adds to the difficulty, but game seems to be balanced around this choice.

Throughout your adventure you can collect item orbs that will increase your weapon power up to three levels, and you can also find orbs that allow you to change into various other forms including a dragon ninja, samurai, denjin, water creature, and more. Each alternate form has their own unique attack and there are certian levels where the platforming challenges and/or enemy placement caters to one form over the other. Rather than each alternate form having a unique orb to collect, you must gather orb combinations in order to unlock some alts. Upon transforming, you gain access to three additional pink health bars aside from your default three. If you lose all of your additional pink health you will transform back into your base magician form. The game is balanced just enough that Elta's default magician form can get you through most areas just fine, especially if you can get your power level to 2 or 3. This is my preferred way to play the game. 

While they don't seem so at first, all of the individual levels are actually quite small. Beginning with stage 2 there are multiple doors you can go into in each level to find treasure and challenges, and your goal awaits behind one of these doors. The catch is that unless you follow a FAQ or a map online, there is no indication which is the optimal path until you've found it yourself. The levels are static, though, so once you know where to go after one play through, you'll have the general lay of the land. That said, the level design tends to meander here and there, and you often double back on parts you've already cleared without understanding how you got back there. The designs aren't bad, just confusing and it's easy to get a little lost in stages 4 and 5. 

Overall, the game's difficulty is tough, but not insurmountable. The constant respawn of enemies and small bullets with huge hit boxes often crowding your arial space can get frustrating early on, but after some practice getting around the obstacles does become easier. Even though there is no countdown timer, when you've spent too much time in a level, a huge - very scary - monster hunts you down that cannot be destroyed. There are one credit runs of the game you can watch on YouTube, so it can be done. But getting through some spots later in the game will take quite a bit of patience to get through and can quickly become a lesson in tedium rather than an engaging challenge if you're not one for games with high difficulty. Just be thankful that in our modern era you do not have to pay per credit. 

Magician Lord is not the longest game at around 20-30-minutes to complete if you know where you're going, and up to an hour if you meander a bit. If you have access to the Unibios on your MVS or AES you can turn on a variety of cheats to help make the game a bit more palatable in the modern age. One cheat I often use when I play is Max Power. The ability to have your fire power at max throughout the adventure makes the game much more approachable for new players and is an excellent way to learn the levels and enemy placement for harder runs later on. Since there is no difficulty setting, you can think of these cheats as a customizable easy mode.

Unlike the vast majority of Neo-Geo games, Magician Lord is one release that actually has some differences between the arcade MVS and home AES versions. And these changes go far beyond just putting the MVS game in AES mode if you have a Unibios installed. The AES version, which had some additional work done after the 1990 arcade release, has a full introduction sequence, extra hit points, and a variety of level and balance changes. There are a few different revisions out there as well with a hand full of other tweaks. Basically, if you want the full Magician Lord experience, the AES and Neo CD versions are the way to go with this one.

If you're a sucker for pixel art, the graphics and sprite work are absolutely beautiful. Magician Lord really shows off the processing chops of the Neo-Geo hardware in its early days with its large and detailed sprites, expert use of color, and smooth scrolling with little slowdown no matter how many sprites are on screen. While the game is beautiful throughout with some truly grotesque enemy and boss designs, the levels themselves are a bit of a mixed bag with some of the earlier stages being the standouts in visual design with the later levels being less than inspired. Still, the visual design will remind most players of Konami's Castlevania series and it is most often compared to that when discussing the game in historical context.

ADK was known for their excellent audio work, and Magician Lord does not disappoint. While not as good as ADK's later work in my opinion, the soundtrack is overall pretty memorable and even got a modern LP record release in 2020! The voice overs are hysterical in English, with excellent quotes from Gal Agiz like, "I'm destined just to die." What does that even mean!? If you play on a Japanese bios, ADK included a full Japanese language track. While the actual acting is much better, the horrible English translation is preferred as there is that "so bad it's good" charm that is lost on the Japanese original. That said, the game is not nearly as chatty as early Neo games by SNK proper. 

Magician Lord is a fantastic throwback and a solid action/platformer. Like all early Neo-Geo games, it is just a bit too hard for its own good for the home market, but it is as tough as you'd expect for an arcade game. The changes ADK made to the AES release code are welcome and is one of the very few games tweaked to cater specifically to the home market. While it doesn't have the finesse of home-console action platformers, Magician Lord stands well along with other difficult arcade platformers coming from Konami and Capcom at the time like Contra and Magic Sword. It was an excellent launch title for the Neo-Geo, and it's a shame that the planned sequel on the Neo and the Neo Pocket years later never materialized. I would have loved to see a more refined world for Elta to inhabit.

As one of the earlier home releases on the Neo-Geo in Japan, Magician Lord initially came in a cardboard box rather than a vinyl case in that territory. This variant of the game costs roughly $200-$250 complete. Japan got a second print with the more sturdy vinyl case and is around $100 more in the 2023 retro game market. Surprisingly, this is one of the few instances where you can often find a complete US version cheaper than the Japanese counterpart - but usually only by $50 or so. Magician Lord is more affordable on both the MVS and Neo CD, but the Neo CD version is the second most expensive way to play given its short production run. You can think of the AES release as the "complete" version of the game, along with the Neo CD version. Basically, the MVS original is fine and all, but my recommendation would be to get one of the home versions for the full experience.

In our modern age, you can easily pick up Magician Lord on just about any console or PC platform as part of the Arcade Archives release from Hamster, as well as on the various SNK mini-consoles on the market or emulation/FPGA solution. Aside from more modern emulation based releases, there were no ports of Magician Lord to legacy 16-bit consoles or PCs back in the day. 

If you're just beginning your AES collection, it's hard to recommend Magician Lord given the price in the current market. If it were $70 or $80 bucks like it was not even a decade ago (at the time of this writing) I'd say it should be a day one purchase. With prices as they are, though, my recommendation would be to get the games you already know you want first and go after Magician Lord later as its price has more or less stagnated around the $300-$500 mark. Still, Magician Lord is considered an "essential" Neo-Geo game for most folks in the hobby, so there's some value having the experience of playing and owing one of the standout titles of the very early days of the hardware.