Trivia / Magical Drop

• Ascended Fanfic: Before the discovery of the official SNES port of Magical Drop II, Retro-bit obtained a license to Aeon Genesis's then-unreleased fan translation to pair with their Data East license, making this translation semi-official.
• Ascended Fanon: Some of the "real" names for the characters, which appear to have been completely made up by the Magical Drop Central Database Wiki, appeared in Magical Drop V. Said names are notably absent from the Japanese version.
• Bad Export for You:
  • The first three Magical Drop games, while averting the usual fate of puzzle games of the era, saw plenty of..."modifications" when they hit western shores. All three games lose the original Japanese voice acting, being replaced by either a single voice actor (US versions) or a small handful of voice actors that each speak a different language (Euro versions). Magical Drop II loses Flash Mode and character-specific endings. But Magical Drop III is the biggest offender: in addition to the voice changes and loss of character-specific endings, it loses a harder difficulty mode, the "fortune-telling" at the end of playthroughs, and the rival characters in Adventure mode, AND character interactions are reduced to generic phrases.
  • The PAL PlayStation version of III is a grammatically awful, but as least more faithful translation of the Japanese version. Too bad the game runs much slower than the Japanese game, which already ran slower than the original arcade game. It also drops "Arcade" mode which, despite not being arcade-perfect, at least tries to approximate the pacing of the Neo Geo game.
  • Both Magical Drop V and Magical Drop VI have issues rendering Japanese text.
• Dueling Dubs: After decades of not being released internationally, there are two international versions of the Super Famicom port of Magical Drop II. The version used in Retro-Bit products utilizes a fan-turned-official translation by Aeon Genesis, while the Nintendo Switch's SNES Online uses a different version featuring the infamous international voice acting that is rumored to have been a cancelled PAL release.
• Dueling Works:
  • Magical Drop F and Puyo Puyo~n. Both are the fourth (main) entries in their respective series, released exclusively for consoles in 1999, featured an Art Shift, and experimented with character powers. Magical Drop F technically "lost" this duel, as this was the last game released by Data East for consoles and put the series on a hiatus for more than a decade, but the lukewarm critical and commercial response to Puyo Puyo~n didn't exactly help Compile get out of their rut either.
  • Money Puzzle Exchanger, which released around the same time as Magical Drop III, was similar enough to Magical Drop for Data East to file a lawsuit against its developer.
• Franchise Killer: Magical Drop V effectively did this; with an 11 years gap between it and Magical Drop VI, and only seldom re-releases to keep Magical Drop around after V got de-listed from sales altogether. In addition, it also served as a Creator Killer for Golgoth Studio, despite their efforts to deflect the blame onto publisher Ignition.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Don't count on a re-release of the PAL version of Magical Drop III, as the publisher has gone under. Luckily, it is fairly cheap on auction sites, unlike Magical Drop Pocket which goes for roughly twice as much as an actual Neo Geo Pocket Color.
  • Magical Drop F was on PlayStation 3's North American PlayStation Network for a short while, but a rights issue (which also happened on the Japanese side and may or may not have been related to Magical Drop V) caused the game to be pulled permanently. At least it and the other games returned to the Japanese store.
  • Magical Drop V was removed from Steam (the only place it could be purchased) in 2020, years after both its developer and publisher had gone dormant. This, along with its poor reception, makes it unlikely to return to sale in the future.
• Late Export for You: The Super Famicom version of Magical Drop II released in Japan in 1996, but did not see an international release until the Data East Classics Collection in 2018.
• Port Overdosed: Magical Drop II and Magical Drop III have seen a variety of ports. III in particular reached the trope page's 12-platform requirement upon its Windows 10 release, and that's before considering whether Magical Drop Pocket and the Game Boy Color Magical Drop count as ports of III.
• Promoted Fanboy: The Magical Drop II Fan Translation that was being produced by Aeon Genesis was officially licensed by Retro-Bit (who themselves obtained a license for the original game from G-Mode) for their Data East Classics Collection cartridge. This English version would later be included in the Super Retrocade and Evercade systems. An alternate unreleased English localization was later found by a game preservation enthusiast; this unreleased localization would be released as part of the Nintendo Switch Online SNES collection (for better or for worse).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Playstation port of Magical Drop Plus 1 contains interesting info about the first Magical Drop, including an alternate title of "Taroppu" (a presumed portmanteau of "Tarot" and "Drop"), unnamed girl and angel characters, and a potential design for a character based on Hanged Man.
  • The gallery of the Playstation port of Magical Drop 3 contains several potential designs, including another potential Hanged Man design, an even more boyish Judgement who was implied to be too similar to Devil, a more simplistic Tower alongside what could pass as a fusion of Tower and Hermit, and Temperance with a bob cut and larger wings.
  • It is heavily implied that Burnz was going to be part of the base roster of Magical Drop VI instead of a character that will be added via updates, as most of his data is in the game and an early trailer had one more character slot than the final game.

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