It seems you can't bat an eye at the import market these
days without being knocked upside the head by one of seemingly hundreds of
"Column"-type puzzle games, ninety-nine-and-nine-tenths percent of which involve
the matching of colored shapes with ones of like color. You've got the classic "Puyo
Puyo" series (seen Stateside previously as "Kirby's Avalanche" and
"Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine"), the Tokimeki Columns titles in all of their
lurid Lolita-esque glory, the Sakura Taisen Columns title, and ten-zillion more
generic versions. Perhaps the best-known title here in the States is Capcom's "Super
Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo," an excellent albeit flawed Columns-y game with solid
competitive play. >{? And you know what? I love 'em all. I'm sick that way. The play
mechanics rarely deviate between titles in any significant fashion, yet the simplicity of
the play and the splashy antics of the anime characters, for some oddball reason, still
manages to capture my attention. They're a great way to waste ten to thirty minutes of a
day in a mindless,
good-natured trance, staring google-eyed into your TV screen while you attempt to match
like-colored objects at a frenetic pace.
However, despite the existence of the aforementioned variations on the original Columns,
my favorite is still the Magical Drop series, developed by Data East. From the first
moment I played Magical Drop 2 in an Olympia arcade, I knew I was hooked. Featuring
cute-mogrified renditions of the Tarot card characters, and sporting intense, almost
reactionary competitive play, the Magic Drop series has a distinct look and play style all
its own. Forget Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, kids; this series makes it look like Final
Fantasy Tactics as far as speed of play is concerned. The third installation refines the
play machanics seen in MD2, and adds a bumflush of new characters to the returning cast.
On top of that, the home version has additional play modes besides the standard
"Story," "Puzzle," and "Versus" modes, offering up quite a
bit of varied play.
There isn't much of a premise to Magical Drop 3, as far as story goes - it *is* a puzzle
title, after all. It seems the cast of Tarot-based characters are out to prove their
supreme Magical Drop skills to one another, and eventually overcome those of the final
boss, the sorcerous Fortune. Although the game only starts out with 16 characters, you can
earn an additional eight by beating the Story mode in a variety of ways. Each character
has their own specific "push-down" pattern of drop gems, forcing the player to
change their strategies for each matchup. Certain characters have simple, easy to
negotiate push-down patterns, such as the Fool and the Justice, both of whom drop easily
matchable patterns in uniform fashion, allowing for easy matches. On the other end of the
spectrum are characters such as the Moon, who pushes down
non-uniform "spikes" of crystal gems (more on this later) at a fast rate. Once
you figure out each character's particular push-down patterns and styles, play becomes
more balanced. Still, if you play competitively, you are probably better off choosing an
upper-tier character like the Hierophant, the Moon, or the Star (or, if you're truly
cheap, the Fortune).
Play itself is very basic, requiring two buttons and the D-Pad. The D-Pad moves your
"pierrot," (a cute little jester-puppet sprite) back and forth as gems are
"pushed down" from the top. You, as the player, have to move your pierrot to
grab gems of like color with one button, and, after having collected an arbitrary amount,
launch them back up at the descending tide with the other. Certain characters push down
gem types other than the standard four colors, including crystals which require a gem
break to occur adjacent to them before disappearing (or changing into normal gem, in
certain cases), bombs which require a number of breaks before combusting, and
"magic" gems which, when matched against, destroy all gems of the same color
onscreen. The faster you match and break gems, the more chance you have of scoring a
combo, which happens when you complete a gem match while a break animation is occurring.
Combos can also happen if the previous gem break results in a vertical match of three
other gems as they slide up to fill the space
voided by the break. Taking advantage of these chain reaction to score even more breaks is
a key to long combination sequences. The bigger your combo, the more gems you'll push down
on your opponent. This game, unlike Super Puzzle Fighter 2, is very speed and skill
dependent - luck rarely enters into the picture.
Besides the standard arcade Story and Versus modes, there's also a Puzzle Mode, which
allows you to "practice" on a fullscreen field of gems. The longer you survive
in this mode, the more gem variety comes out, and the more tricky and clever the
combinations required to advance the level. At the end, you'll be ranked according to your
time and performance, allowing the player to gauge his/her skill progression. On top of
that, this mode is great time-waster, perfect for a little post-work or -school stress
relief.
The last mode is an Adventure Mode, where your character of choice is pitted against a
rival in a board game. Here, each "square" contains one of a potpourri of
variants on the standard Magical Drop engine. I didn't find this mode quite as amusing as
the other modes, perhaps because I didn't fully understand the criteria necessary to win.
You, as the player, roll a dice in turn with your CPU or 2P rival, and advance
accordingly. If the two players meet on a square, a standard Magical Drop faceoff results.
Other squares can range from collecting a certain number of gold coins to matching with
rapidly falling gems. If you don't know Japanese, this mode will seem rather surreal and a
bit cryptic.
With a likeable cast of playable characters and one of the most skill-oriented play
engines I've seen in a puzzler, Magical Drop 3 is a sterling title all around. As a puzzle
fan, I highly recommend it.
