Magic Sword (SNES) Review

As we all know, just because a game isn’t well known, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Many games are overlooked by ones released to greater fanfare.  Magic Sword:

Heroic Fantasy first appeared in Japanese arcades in the summer of 1990 by 

Capcom, two and a half years later it first found its way home on the SNES in the 

US.  

I never heard of this game before I started assembling a future A to Z video.  But

when I sat down to play it, I decided it deserved a little bit more than a 20 second

blurb wouldn’t be enough to do the game justice.

Magic Sword is a side scrolling action adventure platform game with some

elements often found in dungeon crawlers.  You control a loincloth-clad guy

named Alan, often simply referred to as “the Brave One” and you hack and

slash and cast spells, battling through monsters and villains as you ascend the

levels of this tower to get to the top and face off with the Evil Lord Drokmar.  

It’s a pretty generic story, but that’s what you got from arcade games back then.

Along the way, you find keys to open doors.  Behind these doors you may

find a number of potential allies along the way.  But be careful, as sometimes

these doors will have traps behind them.  

When you rescue a potential ally, they will follow you around and attack when

you do, jump when you do, basically shadowing your moves.  The allies can be

one of several different types:  A wizard, a priest, a knight, a thief, an archer,

a big man, a ninja and a lizard man.  All of which have projectile weapons, but 

the first two will not attack unless your magic meter is full.  While they’re both

very powerful, especially with the amount of damage the priest does to undead, 

you may find the others more useful.  All of which are quite effective, but have

their own shortcomings, for example the big man is very slow and the thief’s

bombs lack range.  The knight is considered the best in the game, but the lizard 

man is pretty cool, it’s nice to get one of these dragon monsters on your side for 

once.  As you fight and find items, you and the allies will level up, making your 

attacks more powerful.

Visually, the game isn’t much to write home about, it’s fairly typical of the era, 

but there are some good visual effects like the heat rising in the levels with all

the fire pits. However it is all very true to the arcade version.  There is a pretty 

big variety to the monsters you encounter.  These little red demons remind me 

of Firebrand from Ghouls and Ghosts.  The sound effects are fairly mediocre, 

but the game has excellent music, composed by Manami Matsumae, known for 

her work on the original Mega Man and a number of other classic games.

While I feel that the controls are decent, there were times with the platforming 

where I would think Iwas going to overshoot a platform, so I would tap back on 

the controller and completely fall short.  Thankfully spikes and fire pits don’t do 

that much damage.  Aside from that, you attack, you jump, and you have a screen 

nuke which kills or damages everything at the expense of some health.  

Enemy placement and respawning can be rather annoying, but I reckon this was 

a quarter muncher in the arcades, and things like that are to be expected from 

this kind of game.  You do get a few continues to help you ascend to the top, and 

you can choose to start as far up as the 33rd floor, leaving you with the final third

of the game to complete.

Another negative, regarding the Super Nintendo version is that the original arcade

game had a two player co-op mode.  Not unlike Final Fight, Capcom omitted this

gameplay feature for their Super Nintendo ports.

All in all, this game really surprised me.  I wasn’t expecting much at all, and when

I started playing it, I didn’t want to put it down until I finished it.  If you want to get

yourself this version, a loose cartridge will set you back around $20-$25 retail, 

but if you’re more interested in seeing what the arcade version has to offer, it

was ported to the original Xbox and PS2 on the Capcom Classics Collection Vol.

2, and it is also available on Xbox live arcade bundled with Final Fight under the 

name Final Fight Double Impact.  

In closing, I like this game.  It mixes a couple different genres and does a pretty

respectable job.  While I don’t think it’s a game everyone would rave about.  It

gets a thumbs up in my book.