MAGICAL DROP 3 SECRETS for NEO-GEO, VERSION v1.5
by Navaash Fenwylde (
[email protected])
------------------------------------------
This document is a rough translation of the Magical Drop 3 secrets from
this web page:
http://www2a.biglobe.ne.jp/~tutokku/urawaza/magical3.html
I take no credit for discovering the information originally, only for
providing the proper translation for these secrets.
UPDATE 2/27: Evidently the author reworked his page, and this
information is no longer available. However I am nonetheless indebited
to him that he put this information up, including the information in
the newly-added Section IV.
Since I did not author these secrets myself, you are free to distribute
this document anywhere you want to, so long as this disclaimer is
attached and unaltered. However, this Secrets FAQ is NOT to be
distributed for profit of any kind, or as a gift/bonus/etc. as a
supplement for a game purchase. Also, due to the issue of FAQ plagarism,
this FAQ may not be disseminated or printed in any way by any
publication, printed or online, without the express written consent of
me, Navaash Fenwylde. Permission is automatically denied to the
following companes: Ziff-Davis Video Game Group, IDG Media, or Future
Publishing, Ltd. or any of their subsidiaries. (After all, Kao Megura
is THE MAN, and he doesn't deserve to have his stuff ripped like that.)
The latest version of this FAQ can always be found on GameFAQs
(
http://www.gamefaqs.com).
This document will look terrible if not viewed in a monospace font due
to the use of ASCII representations of graphical diagrams. Use the
following line to determine if the font is loned up correctly (and if
not, use a font like Courier):
1234567890
**********
All of the following notes apply to Story Mode (Vs CPU) only, not Puzzle
Mode or Adventure Mode, unless otherwise noted. These secrets apply only
to the MVS and Neo-Geo versions of Magical Drop 3, NOT the Playstation
or Saturn versions (save for IV).
Oh, and (editorial ON) for the love of God, if you ever come across this
game on an MVS set to English-language mode, beg the arcade operator to
somehow change the language to Japanese. The English-language version
has the plot cut out, a whole difficulty setting cut out (on the Vs. CPU
mode), inane dialogue ("I'll never be beaten by the likes of you!" --
said by EVERY character), and really, really horrendous dubbing. (The
same cropping happened also on the English version of Magical Drop 2 -
plus that a WHOLE GAME MODE was cut out (Hirameki), and the voices
were not dubbed over but replaced by a single generic sound set. Anime
hackjob dubs have NOTHING on this. (editorial OFF)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
I. Stage Routes
II. Use Father Strength
III. Unlock Hidden/Secret/Boss Characters
IV. Clear the Board *NEW*
V. History and Credits
I. Stage Routes
---------------
There are two different stage paths in Magical Drop 3: for Easy (kantan,
meaning "simple") Mode, and for Normal (futsuu, meaning normal) and Hard
(zenkokutaikai, meaning oddly enough "national athletic meet") Modes.
Hard Mode does not exist in the US version of Magical Drop 3 (see near-
ranting above).
Easy Mode is meant for first-time players. It takes you through a
six-stage route; between each stage, the game dispenses tips on how to
play effectively. You only fight characters who are selectable right off
the bat. Additionally, the computer does not play viciously. Below is
the character you battle in each stage, and the routes possible:
Stage 1 | -----Fool-----
| |
Stage 2 | ---Magician--- High Priestess
| | | |
Stage 3 | ---Chariot---- Young Strength ---Justice----
| | | | | |
| ----Death----- | | -----Star----- |
Stage 4 | | | | | |
| | ----Devil----- | -----Sun------
| | | | | |
| ---Judgment--- | ---Emperor---- |
Stage 5 | | | | |
| | --Hierophant-- | ----Lovers----
| | | |
Stage 6 | ----World----- ---Empress----
In every situation in which there are two different routes possible, the
route you take is determined by the amount of time you used to clear the
stage. If you finish the stage in 40 seconds or less, you take the path
to the left; if you take more than 40 seconds, you take the path to the
right.
Example: You are on stage 3, facing the Chariot. Your clear time is 42
seconds. Your next battle will be against Devil. If you had cleared the
stage 2 seconds before or more, you would be fighting Death instead in
the next stage.
Normal and Hard Modes are a 12 (or more, depending on your performance)
stage journey through the loosely based land of the Tarot. In addition
to the 16 selectable characters, there are 7 more characters you
encounter at various points (Father Strength is mostly reserved for
Adventure Mode). On Normal, the game operates on a sliding difficulty
scale:
- The game starts on the lowest level of difficulty.
- Every time you win, the game's difficulty goes up (the computer gets
generally more advantageous drop patterns, and its clown movement
speed goes up). This makes it quite difficult to finish the game on
a single credit.
- Every time you lose (and continue), the game's difficulty goes down
(the reverse of what happens above). Sometimes a person will need to
continue two or three times on the same stage to see a noticeable
difficulty drop!
Hard Mode is simple; the game starts with a higher base drop pattern
advantage and cursor speed. It can go up and down as described above,
but can never go below the base.
Below is the progression chart for these difficulty modes:
Stage 1 | ----Devil-----
| |
Stage 2 | ----Lovers---- ---Justice----
| |
Stage 3 | ---Justice---- ---Emperor----
| | | |
Stage 4 | -----Star----- ---Chariot---- -----Fool-----
| | | |
Stage 5 | -----Fool----- ----Death-----
| |
Stage 6 | ----Hermit---- ----Hermit----
| | | |
Secret 1 | -----Moon----- | | --Hanged Man--
| | | |
Stage 7 | ---Judgment--- ---Magician---
| | | |
Stage 8 | --Temperance-- --Hierophant-- -----Sun------
| | | |
Stage 9 | High Priestess --Temperance--
| | | |
Stage 10 | ---Empress---- ----World----- Young Strength
| | | |
Secret 2 | ---------Black Pierrot----------
|
Stage 11 | ----Tower-----
|
Stage 12 | ---Fortune----
(Final)
As noted before, when there is a split in the bath you take either the
left or right path when your stage clear time is under/at or over 40
seconds, respectively.
There are two exceptions. Both are after the Hermit's stage has been
cleared. First is Moon; to reach her, you must finish the first six
stages in 90 seconds or less. That's right, 90. (Picking a character
with a strong attack pattern, such as Young Strength, really helps.)
Also, you must be on the left stage path (so if your stage 5 battle is
Death, it is impossible to reach Moon.) Due to the stringent time
requirement, consider yourself a really good player if you reach her.
The second is the Hanged Man. Battling him is more of a penalty than
anything else (since it prolongs your play time); you must be on the
right stage path and have spent over 300 seconds in playtime after
clearing the Hermit. (If you fight Fool in Stage 5, you are spared from
having to fight him.) You will probably see him more often than not in
Hard Mode since those fights tend to take longer and end more often than
not by reaching the quota.
The third and final hidden character (and also the most difficult) is
the Black Pierrot and his three backup singers (who interfere with his
attack animation, unlike in Magical Drop 2). The requirements are very
stringent; not only must you win at least 3 matches in a row (so if you
have to continue on Stage 9, you will not encouter him at all), but your
score must be 150000 (!) points or higher. If you're really gunning for
him, this makes it important to get the time bonuses (clearing a stage
in 30 seconds or less; the less time used, the higher the bonus - they
can go as high as 75000 points!). When you get to him, the Pierrot is
extremely vicious - his cursor speed is basically "teleport", which is
brutal. Expect to continue 2 or 3 times to get the difficulty down to
doable unless you are just as much of a nutjob as the CPU. (And if you
DO beat the Pierrot, the difficulty will be jacked up so high that...
obviously the game designers wanted a hardcore challenge to be able to
finish the game without continuing, which I don't doubt some people
have.)
II. Use Father Strength
-----------------------
The method for selecting Father Strength (the big and muscular one) is
exceedingly simple. On the character select screen, move to Strength,
hold the C button, and press A or B (depending on the color scheme you
prefer).
III. Unlock Hidden/Secret/Boss Characters
-----------------------------------------
Kudos to Data East for this inventive trick; in the same line of
thinking as the hidden character trick in Magical Drop 2, the basis of
unlocking the "unusable" characters here is based on the Tarot.
In the Tarot, there is a number assigned to each card. The breakdown of
the numbers for the 16 initial characters is as follows:
0 Fool
1 Magician
2 High Priestess
3 Empress
4 Emperor
5 Hierophant
6 Lovers
7 Chariot
8 Strength (NOT Father Strength!)
11 Justice
13 Death
15 Devil
17 Star
19 Sun
20 Judgment
21 World [This is only included for posterity, since World cannot be
used to perform this trick, as you will see below]
When the character select screen pops up, there is a countdown timer,
starting at 20. If you let this run down to one second beyond zero, your
character chosen will be whatever your cursor is sitting on (obviously
you do not want this).
The trick is as follows: Move your cursor to any character for which
you know the Tarot number. (Star is a good choice, since you don't have
to wait for the countdown timer to go so far. Sun is doable but you
have to be quick, and Judgment is barely possible but doable.) When the
countdown timer reaches the Tarot number of the character who you have
highlighted, *press the C button 3 times - no more, no less*. If you
miss, you can try again with a different character when the countdown
timer reaches that point, so have a couple of backup numbers memorized
just in case.
You will know if you did the trick correctly when you hear a sound; this
is the same sound you hear when you reach the end square on the game
board successfully in Adventure Mode. Six new character select boxes
will appear on the screen: Moon to the left, Hanged Man to the right,
and above will be Hermit, Temperance, Tower, and Fortune. (The Black
Pierrot is not selectable for two very good reasons: One, he is not an
actual Tarot card. Two, his attack drop pattern is so strong that it
even beats Fortune's for sheer evil.) Additionally, 10 seconds will be
added to the character select timer (to a maximum of 20), so you have
time to select a character especially if your time was low when you did
the trick.
Notice that if you are on the Player 1 side, the character colors if you
press the A button will actually be their alternate colors. To select
their default colors, you must press B.
Just for the record, I think Moon is kawaii kirei sugoi. ^_^
IV. Clear the Board
-------------------
This trick is possible in any mode, and will without fail set off a
chain reaction that gets rid of ALL of the drops on the board, even
clear and timer-countdown bubbles. However, it requires a fair bit of
setup. The following is the easiest way to do the trick; it is
possible to perform the trick in differing conditions, but require
far more controller dexterity and button-bushing speed than this
method.
What you need are six colored drops (at least three of each) and a
single ice drop. Arrange the drops (without setting anything off;
be especially careful as you will lose your ice drop(s) if anything
reacts next to it) in this fashion as shown by the diagram below:
1 = drop type #1 2 = drop type #2 X = irrelevant drop
! = ice drop C = clown position
XX11!XX
12
22
^
|
|
|
__C____
To perform the trick, pull down the left drop #2, move over to the
right, and push the #2 on to the other #2's, creating a reaction.
(The ice drop will be at a diagonal and will not react.) While the
#2's are clearing off the board, you will be able to put objects
on them without them falling up into place. Move back to the left,
grab the two #1 drops, then drop them onto the drops clearing out.
Now you have the following:
XX 1!XX
%
%
1
1
^
|
___C___
This is the first of two tricky parts. *Before the reacting drops
completely disappear, move to the right quickly and grab the ice
drop. Move back to the left, and before the two ends of the #1
drop chain connect, throw the ice drop up onto the forming stack.
A reaction will occur, and the ice drop will turn into the drop
#1, like this:
XX 1 XX
1
1
1
^
|
|
___C___
Now comes the other hard part. *Before the #1 drops react, pull
the entire stack of #1 drops back to the clown.* You must do this
AFTER the ice has turned into the #1 drop color, but BEFORE the
drops clear off the screen. If you did this right, you will
notice the following:
XX XX
%
___C___
(holding #1 x4)
A drop seems to have cleared itself out in the middle of nowhere.
You can let go of the #1 drops now. In a systematic chain
reaction, ALL of the drops on your board will disappear as if
their respective wild-card drops had been cleared. Also, if there
are any drops left that cannot be cleared through wild cards,
they will be cleared out in their own special reaction.
In Puzzle Mode, this will always result in a "Perfect" bonus of
10,000 points. In Vs. CPU mode, this will always result in an
eight-line reaction being dumped on the opponent (though this
tends to be less effective against better AIs since they can
move faster to compensate). And in Adventure Mode, this will
always cause the next stack to fall down to include a row of Fire
Drops along the top.
V. History and Credits
----------------------
Version history:
v1.5 (2/27/2000) Looked at the Tsutokku page only to find that all
of the relevant secrets documents had been wiped
out. Nonetheless, I continue to credit him; also,
added in Section IV, which was also on those same
pages that were wiped out.
This FAQ will probably not see another update
unless I come across any other major secrets.
v1.0 (11/20/1999) Wrote up the FAQ. May add the Sega Saturn version
secrets translation later, but I shouldn't have to
since anders0n's FAQ on GameFAQs (old as it is)
covers some of the same ground (sort of).
Much thanks to:
- Data East
http://www.dataeast-corp.co.jp/
For creating a great puzzle game with personality.
- Tsutokku + Silver
(
http://www2a.biglobe.ne.jp/~tutokku/urawaza/magical3.html)
For hosting the page on which I found this valuable information.
(At this time, only
http://www2a.biglobe.ne.jp/~tutokku/ works.)
- Tetsuya Osugi (E-mail withheld on request)
For helping along with much of the translation work.
Once again, I take no credit for the original information. I simply take
credit for the translation. (c) 1999, 2000 Navaash Fenwylde
Unpublished work (c) 1999-2000 Navaash Fenwylde
End of MAGICAL DROP 3 SECRETS for NEO-GEO
-----------------------------------------
