Data East Arcade Classics - Magical Drop III

On 03/27/2014 at 04:28 PM by KnightDriver

Magical Drop III has the look and feel of Super Puzzle Fighter with colorful graphics, joyful music, and wacky characters to choose from (I chose Rini who rides the pig Giuseppe in the Adventure mode).

rini

This isn’t a tetris style action puzzler but a match-three one. An array of colored bubbles descend from the top and you can grab and release from the nearest bubble to match colors which eliminates them from the screen with your "clown" at the bottom. If the bubbles get to the bottom before the timer ends, you lose. There are several modes you can play but I played the Adventure mode. I didn’t get to the end, but I went quite a ways. Afterwards I looked up all the other Magical Drop games to put in my wishlist at backloggery. The lastest one is Magical Drop V which is on XBLA and PSN.

This is exactly what I played.

Cary Woodham

03/27/2014 at 07:09 PM

When Magical Drop was fairly new, I had a group of friends who were OBSESSED with this game. They would even import the home versions on the consoles of the time, like the PSOne and Dreamcast. It was a fun game, but I was more into Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Puzzle Bobble. Those and just plain ol' Tetris are my top three favorite puzzle games.

For some reason, I was recently thinking about a puzzle game that's on Taito Legends 2 called Cleopatra Fortune. I got the main theme stuck in my head. If i wasn't lazy, I'd post a link here so it could get stuck in your head, too.

KnightDriver

03/28/2014 at 02:52 PM

Super Puzzle Fighter is my favorite too.

I have Taito Legends 2 and will get to that and try out Cleopatra Fortune. Here's that catchy music.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

03/27/2014 at 07:13 PM

I wish whimsical games like this were still made by the big boys instead of just gray sci fi shooters. Now only indie developers do stuff like this. IT's sad.

03/28/2014 at 02:56 PM

Well, there's Puzzle Quest. They've kinda dropped the ball on that series though. PQ2 wasn't great. I don't know about Marvel PQ. That looks cool and I've heard good things. I just wish it would come to consoles so I can play it.

Whimsy though... PopCap did some really cool titles like Plants Vs. Zombies. Wonder why PvZ 2: It's About Time hasn't come to consoles yet. I want to play that not that 3D shooter they have now in Garden Warefare. I have no interest in that.

03/28/2014 at 03:14 PM

me neither.

Super Step Contributing Writer

03/28/2014 at 09:33 AM

Seems like a fun game. I should play more match-three instead of always http://freetetris.org

03/28/2014 at 03:32 PM

I loved the match-three puzzle as it was used in Puzzle Quest. I wish there were more just like the first one.

03/28/2014 at 03:42 PM

I have to add this. Thinking about Rini riding a pig reminds me of the Marylin Manson video for Sweet Dreams. I'm not much of MM fan but this video's asthetics are interesting to me. MM is painted black and riding a pig about half way through.

C.S.3590SquadLeader

03/29/2014 at 03:21 PM

That looks like fun.

03/30/2014 at 02:55 AM

It's cool. I'm going to play more of it and then pick up some of the other games in the series and try them out too.

goaztecs

03/31/2014 at 01:20 PM

Ooh this reminds me of the PSP Mini Dyno Gems. That game was a lot of fun, and this. I went to check out how much it is on PSN and wouldn't you know it, the online portion of the store is down. I'll try again later

03/31/2014 at 07:22 PM

There's an iOS/Android game too. Magical Drop Touch. TouchArcade did a review of it.

NSonic79

05/14/2014 at 01:55 PM

Puzzle bobble! Puzzle bobble puzzle bobble! Puzzle Bobble! Puzzabobblebustamove!

Thoguht about buying these games seeing they are selling on VC but I didn't get into bustamove so meh.

05/14/2014 at 04:00 PM

I'm going to have to try Puzzle Bobble sometime.

PixlBit