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I, TJ, solemnly swear to you, State Your Name Here, that I will abstain from Devo references
for the duration of this review. Signed, the undersigned, TJ. Esquire. Offer void in Utah.
There, I think we should be safe now. Magical Whip has been on the DSi shop for some time
now, but recently caught my eye when Nintendo jammed it next to a bunch of other $1.99 downloadable
games and... well, it looked pretty good by comparison. So I picked it up and gave it
a try... and somehow, in the comfort of my own home, it was like I was back in Luigi’s
Pizza Parlor in my hometown, punching through some madcap platformy arcade game like Snow
Bros. or something. Only there wasn’t so much oregano in the air.
By the one or two text boxes worth of story you’re given, you’re some kind of magic-wielding
kid, trapped in a forest, beset by monsters, and left to defend yourself with your Magical
Whip. Magical Whip. Three magical whips. (I never said you were safe from Blues Brothers
references.) This magical whip allows you to snag nearby monsters, carry them around
as long as is tactical, and throw them into other monsters, which can then be snagged
out of mid-air and thus the cycle goes. But not all monsters are the same; while these
slimes are always easy pickins, these knights in shining armor are much beefier and take
four times the beating. That said, once you defeat it, a thrown enemy deals damage equal
to its own HP, so that knight is effectively a big, metal-plated wrecking ball. There’s
also a damage-boosting effect developed by chaining together caught monsters, tacking
more damage onto your shots. The game wholeheartedly encourages exploiting this mechanic, pointing
out that every boss in the game can be taken down in one shot, if you’ve done enough
technical chicanery around the edges first.
But the overall feeling of the game - which uses both screens for one lengthened playspace
- evokes those arcade classics of yore. Especially Bubble Bobble. Just as in Taito’s classic,
if you take too long on a particular stage, this... um, ghost-looking panda... spider...
thing... starts chasing you, using only vertical and horizontal movements. And if that doesn’t
feel familiar, you aren’t trying. What seemed to be missing, though, was the challenge of
those old quarter-slurpers... or so I said until I got to around the 20th of the 50 stages,
at which point I started to have to take it seriously. You’ve got a limited number of
continues, and your ultimate rank is determined by the number of dragons you were successful
in slaying on your way through the forest. Yep, you’re not only tasked with beating
the game, you’re tasked with beating it WELL. If you’re like me, and you remember
those oregano-tinged days of yore, you could do worse than picking up Magical Whip. Seriously,
it’s two bucks. That’s, what, a slice and a half at worst.