All Our Hidden Gems: A Review of Magical Drop III (PSX)

 🟢 Introduction 🟢

I’ve never been someone who’s been very interested in puzzler games; I’ll play a few rounds of Tetris or Puyo Puyo with friends in a casual setting, but aside from that, I’ve never cared much for the genre. That actually changed a few months ago when I was with a friend at an arcade. I was walking around looking for games to play and there was one small cabinet in the corner of the arcade which looked to be one of those SNK Arcade Candy Cab Machines. I don’t know the exact model, but this machine had three different games to choose from. I don’t remember the other two games, but the third one—Magical Drop III—drew me in because the art style was really cute. 

I played a few games against CPU players and found the game to be quite addicting. My friend was waiting on me though, so I only played for a bit but I remembered what the game was called. So, when I got home, I did some research on the game and downloaded a ROM for the PlayStation version. I was hooked. I was so hooked that I devolved into researching the history and lore of the series, checking out the competitive scene, looking up supplemental media, and drawing fan art. And because of that, you’re going to be subjected to another one of my schizophrenic rants— I mean reviews. So I hope you enjoy listening to me talk about my current favorite puzzler game, Data East’s Magical Drop III.

Slipping Away from the Pages of History: Taking a look at Celio, Wyler, and Sabre

 Introduction

The Archanean Fire Emblem games have a lot of characters; I’d even go as far as to say they have a ton of characters. FE1 in particular was notable for having nearly 50 playable characters. For an RPG game that came out in the early 90s on the Famicom, that's a big deal, and if you count boss characters, you have even more. But would you believe that there were going to be even more characters? Well, you probably did, but you’ve probably never heard anyone talk about them much in detail.

Today, I want to talk about three particular cut characters who I find particularly interesting: Celio, Wyler, and Sabre. Characters who were planned to show up in FE1, but were all cut for one reason or another. So, without further ado, let’s dive in and take a look at Celio, Wyler, and Sabre.  

Fan interpretations of Wyler, Sabre, and Celio drawn and/or edited by yours truly

The Gentle Sound of the Quiet Bow: An Analysis of Tomas: The Archanean Archer

 Introduction

Unlike my previous character analysis of Matthis, Tomas isn’t really a character that I feel is overhated or undeserving of the ridicule he gets, nor do I feel like I have to really play defense or anything like that. He’s still an unpopular character, don’t get me wrong, but that’s mostly due to the fact that people simply forget about his existence. And anyone who does remember him just sees him as a weak Archer who joins in the midgame, which…he is. 

When it comes to Archanea characters, some people may give them a lot of flak or write them off because they lack a lot of dialogue or any character, and Tomas is kind of one of the main poster boys of that notion. The guy straight-up doesn’t have lines of dialogue outside of death quotes in most of his appearances, so you’d expect this type of analysis to be devoid of substance. However, from the little we do get from this guy, I feel there is just enough for me to justify writing about him, talking about his character, and why I like him. So, let’s begin talking about Tomas, the Quiet Bow.