Magician Lord

About Magician Lord

Magician Lord (1990) is Alpha Denshi's side-scrolling action game, one of the first four Neo Geo arcade releases and an AES pack-in, in which the wizard Elta transforms into six elemental beings to recover eight grimoires.

Magician Lord in Depth

Centuries ago, a young man sealed the demon Gal Agiese and Az Atorse, the god of destruction, inside eight grimoires and was hailed as the "Magician Lord". When Gal Agiese breaks free and the grimoires vanish, his descendant Elta sets out across the land of Cadacis to recover them before Az Atorse is resurrected. Over eight stages, Elta jumps, climbs ladders, crouches and fires magic shots in four directions. Each stage has a main area with doors leading to trap-filled dungeons, and the goal is to find the door to the miniboss, whose defeat leads to the stage boss and a grimoire. Treasure chests hold extra lives, valuables, power orbs that raise his attack through three levels, and elemental orbs.

Collecting two fire, water or wind orbs transforms Elta, depending on the combination, into a dragon warrior that breathes fire, a waterman that throws bursting water balls, a poseidon that sends waves across the ground, a shinobi with spiralling magic, a samurai whose sword throws waves or a raijin that unleashes thunder. The first three move slowly, the last three jump high. Elta has two hit points in the arcade, three at home, rising to four or six when transformed, and reverts to normal when he drops back. Two players can take alternate turns, and progress can be saved to a Neo Geo memory card.

Making Magician Lord

Alpha Denshi, which had worked with SNK on the hardware that became the Neo Geo, made Magician Lord as its first game for the system. Ushizawa, head of its second planning division and maker of Time Soldiers and Sky Soldiers, produced it and drew character sprites with Shinji Moriyama, while Hideki Yamamoto, Hiroaki Shimizu and Yuka Watanabe scored it. It was designed with home consoles in mind but was challenging as the team's first Neo Geo project. Shown at the 1990 AOU Show, it was released in arcades in April 1990 and on the AES in July 1991, followed by a Neo Geo CD version in 1994.

Former SNK staffer Chad Okada said it flopped in arcades but became the best-selling AES title of its time. Critics generally praised its graphics, sound and transformations, GameFan ranking it among the best action-platformers ever made, though many noted its difficulty and jerky animation; retrospectives have been mixed, Retro Gamer calling it a "dinosaur". Alpha Denshi later became ADK, the Neo Geo's most active third-party developer.