PS3

Magician Lord

PlatformAdventureArcade

Space needed: About 56 MB

Overview

Magician Lord is a 1990 action video game developed by Alpha Denshi and released for arcades by SNK. It was one of the first four games for the Neo Geo Multi Video System (MVS) and a pack-in game for the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES). The plot follows Elta, a descendant of the "Magician Lord", on a journey across the land of Cadacis to find eight grimoires and seal the demon Gal Agiese before he can resurrect the god of destruction Az Atorse. The player controls Elta, who can transform into different beings by collecting elemental orbs.

Magician Lord was the first Neo Geo game produced by Akira Ushizawa, who had previously worked on Alpha Denshi titles such as Time Soldiers (1987), Sky Soldiers (1988), and Sky Adventure (1989). The team designed the game with the intention of releasing it on home consoles, but faced numerous challenges due to it being their first foray into Neo Geo development and the production environment at the time. Initially, the game was easier during location testing, but the team felt this would be boring and increased the difficulty for the final release. The soundtrack was scored Hideki Yamamoto, Hiroaki Shimizu, and Yuka Watanabe.

Magician Lord proved popular among North American arcade players and received generally favorable reviews. Critics praised the graphics, sound, and transformation mechanic. Many publications noted its difficulty, and some had mixed opinions on its gameplay, while criticism focused on the sprite animations. The game flopped in arcades but became the best-selling Neo Geo AES title at the time. Retrospective commentary in the years following its release have been mixed. A sequel for the Neo Geo Pocket was announced but never released.