Magical Quest 3 starring Mickey and Donald (SNES, GBA) – The final dress up!

 Magical Quest 3 Toot 

So, we’re back, one last time in the realms of the Magical Quest. This time we have a couple of major shake-ups, no longer is this a perilous quest for Mickey and Minnie. Donald has decided to muck in. Donald’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie are the ones in danger this time as they find an enchanted book and get transported to Storybook land, which has been conquered by the evil King Pete. Now, my understanding of titles for rulers is a bit hazy at best. But I think Pete had it best in the first game where he was Emperor. Either way, it is up to Mickey and Donald to not only save Storybook land but also their world by stopping King Pete.

Something that I really appreciate about the Magical Quest games is that there is some kind of progression in their delivery. From the first and the second game they added co-op and now between the second and third game they have made the two playable characters unique. Whilst they both get the same outfits; the outfits have their own style and quirks. The outfits we have this time are the Armour, Climber and Magician outfits. The armour outfit is probably the one you will use the most, as this is your primary attack and defence outfit. For Mickey gets a suit of knight’s armour, a shield and a lance, giving him a decently ranged melee attack. However, as this is a full suit of armour, if he falls into water he was immediately sink. Donald on the other hand, it looks like he gets the short end of the stick. His armour is a wooden barrel and pot helmet, attacking with a short-range squishy hammer. He can hide in the barrel as his defensive action which makes certain bosses and mini-bosses incredibly easy. Also, because he is in a hollow barrel, Donald will float in the water. The Armour outfit’s attack passively charges up, once the bar reaches the top it does the most damage and can also stun nearby enemies. The climber outfit is probably the one that isn’t that different between the two characters, much like previous outfits of a similar nature, it is more for utility and traversal. It does have an attack, Mickey’s having more reach than Donald’s, the attack can be used to grab and immediately throw enemies. The new climbing mechanic for this outfit does take getting used to, you can jump onto certain trees or other appropriately round columns and shimmy up them. You are not defensively as you climb, as you can swap sides of the pole like object you are climbing and as you swing around to the other side, you are in an attacking state. It took me a while before I understood I could do that and is incredibly useful to know. The Magician outfit is the most interesting, in that the projectiles it fires has different effects on different things. Mickey shoots out two doves that travel is an low arc, if the projectiles hit enemies, projectiles or certain platforms they will transform slightly. For example, using it on a scorpion enemy will remove the stinger from the tail, allowing you to jump on them. Some bosses have strategies that involve using the magic attack on their projectiles to damage them. Donald’s magic outfit has him holding a lamp, that he needs to charge to unleash a ball of magic energy. I will be honest, outside of the mandatory moments that require the Magician and Climber outfits, I stuck mostly to the armour outfit, as it is the most effective one for fighting most of the bosses.

Much like Great Circus Mystery, dying in a stage will allow you to respawn and continue immediately where you died. This game however, instead of just appearing on the edge of a platform or where you died, you appear in a balloon and have a few seconds to move yourself to a location on the screen before the pops and you rejoin the action. This game has probably some of the trickiest platforming in the series, so this method of respawning is probably there to aid in the instance of failed jumps or putting yourself in the safest location you can see. Regarding extra lives, this game loves to throw them at you, within the first world it is quite easy to max out your lives, and that is before we even talk about the bonus rooms.

Each world has a bonus room, that functions as a mini game where you pick one of four cards, depending on what card you draw, you will get prizes, ranging from points, to coins, lives or heart potions. If you get four heart potions that gives you an extra heart for your life bar. The mini game continues until you pick a Pete card, and you are sent back to the stage. However, it should be noted that once you leave a bonus you can go back to it and try again. This allows you to grind coins, lives and potentially hearts. Though the heart potions seemed to be the rarest items in my experience. The ease of being able to grind coins makes getting all the upgrades significantly easier in this game, but like Great Circus Mystery getting a game over means you lose all your coins.

Something I had failed to mention. Magical Quest 3 on the SNES was never released outside of Japan. This is a bit of a shame, as with Great Circus Mystery, this would have been a fine game to play with friends and family. Graciously, you don’t really need to understand any Japanese to play the game, and honestly, you’re not missing that much. As with all versions of this game, I can’t really recommend the GBA version, just because of that annoying screen crunch and because if you want to do the co-op mode, you’ll need a link cable. Though, if you do play co-op, I highly encourage you to try and pick Donald as your playable character, in my opinion he is significantly better than Mickey, as he can make some parts trivial.

I probably beat this game about five times in total. Across both platforms, which I feel would bring my total amount of completions of the Magical Quest games close to fifteen times in total, no wonder I am experiencing burn out on these games. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t play them again in a couple of years’ time, all three of them can be a great time offering gameplay that isn’t too taxing, but still quite enjoyable. The games at the time of release were criticised for their length, but in the modern day, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Shorter gaming experiences have value. I have a great fondness for this series and would encourage people to play them, they can feel a little bit samey if you play them back-to-back, so it might be worth you space them out a little bit.

The Great Circus Mystery/Magical Quest 2 (SNES, Genesis, GBA) – Dressing up with friends!

 

Great Circus Mystery Toot 

 So, I wouldn’t have realised that this game was a sequel to Magical Quest if I didn’t see the GBA listing on RetroAchievements. I say sequel, it is a sequel in the sense that it uses a similar gameplay style to the first game, jumping, grabbing blocks, changing clothes, etc. The plot this time, Mickey and Minnie are on their way to a circus on the edge of town, but when they get there Goofy tells them that everyone has disappeared, including Pluto and Donald! So, Mickey and Minnie go to investigate. It turns out that the circus was attacked by Baron Pete! That’s a big step down from being an Emperor, isn’t it? Anyway, it is done to the duo to defeat Pete, again and save the circus.

So, let’s touch on one of the biggest new elements for this game, that I haven’t been able to experience. This game has two player co-op, where one player plays as Mickey and the other plays as Minnie. For this purpose, there are some additional changes to how the game plays. When you lose a life in this game, you respawn and carry on from where you died. Falling into a pit will have you spawn in a safe location. This was probably done with the co-op mode in mind, it keeps the action going for both players however it does make the game significantly easier to brute force. In a similar vein to the original one, getting a game over doesn’t set you back, usually just to the start of the last area you entered. The game is enjoyable as a single player experience, but I can imagine it could be elevated by the co-op. Much like the GBA version of Magical Quest, both Mickey and Minnie play the exact same, they are merely an aesthetic change, so there is no reason to get yourself into too many arguments over who you play.

Right, but what about the outfits in this game? They’re… Okay at best, I won’t lie. I mean, like the original game there is one outfit you will probably use most of the time, which is the cowboy one. The cowboy outfit is the replacement Magician outfit, in that you use a cork gun to fire a projectile which would be perfectly fine if it wasn’t for the hobby horse that comes with the outfit. The cowboy outfit changes your movement slightly as you don’t walk but bounce along. You can only jump when you are on the floor, and not mid-move bounce. This is a minor thing, but it can be annoying until you get used to it. As an outfit, it is the most functionally useful one. Second, we have the cleaner outfit, which gives you a vacuum cleaner which can be used to pull blocks towards you or suck up enemies, turning them into coins. It’s not a particularly useful outfit; I used it to farm coins at certain points in the game and defeat a specific boss. Unlike the original, getting a game over means you also lose all your coins, making getting all the upgrades, potentially, frustrating. It is much easier to die in this game than in the original and extra lives aren’t all too common in this game. Lastly, we have the explorer outfit, used to climb walls, slide down vines and swing from certain blocks. Unlike the first game, it doesn’t come with an attack of enemy kind. You only “need” it for the world you get the outfit on, and there might be a couple of fringe cases where this one is useful.

Compared to the original, this game also came out on the Genesis as well as the SNES. These two versions have a couple of minor differences in graphics with a unique area in each game, the Genesis version has an area where you are in a collapsing room and need to carefully platform and make use of the charge ability of the cowboy outfit to dash between platforms above an instant death pit. It’s an awful time and I still struggle with the positioning you need to not overshoot the platforms. The SNES version has a rotating room where you hang on platforms in the explorer outfit. Come to think of it, it reminds me of a certain part of Super Castlevania. Capcom seem to be recycling their ideas. Other than that, the only major difference is the controls. In the SNES version you can use the L and R buttons to cycle outfits and another button to switch. The Genesis version is a little more clunky in terms of costume switching. The GBA version is the same as the SNES, but with the same screen crunch issues as the first GBA game. Honestly, I would still play this game on the SNES, just for the ease of controls and because you wouldn’t be missing anything by not playing the Genesis version.

Much like the first game, playing this for RetroAchievements meant that I had to do about 6 or 7 full clears of the game, with a mixture of unique challenges per version. The SNES version has a set of challenges where you just use the default Mickey/Minnie outfit against bosses and mini-bosses, whilst the Genesis version had a speed run challenge. The stage-based speed runs were ridiculously tight in places, but the full game in 35 minutes wasn’t unmanageable. It did provide me an additional three Masteries for my “Master of the Mouse” Challenge, but I will admit that fatigue for the series was starting to kick in, and there is still a third one on the horizon.

If you enjoyed the original Magical Quest, then you are in for more of the same, and that is not necessarily a bad thing as the games are competently made and offer a fun challenge. The fact that this game added co-op is a great new feature and I am surprised this game has never been on my radar until I started my RetroAchievements journey. If I had this game as a kid, I probably would have loved it and hated it in equal measure, sometimes playing games cooperatively with a younger sibling can be an annoying experience, but it would have been one heck of an experience!