Preview shotsUnfortunately when I take screenshots of this game, the colors come out all messed up. If anyone knows how to get a proper screenshot, please explain it to BludClot at super-fami dot com. Until then, you'll just have to use your imagination.
Review
This is my third review and so, naturally, this is my third time writing something to the extent of "[Gamename] is a japanese shmup in which you control a young girl riding a flying broomstick." What the hell is going on in Japan? In this one you fight a confusing array of enemies too bizzare for me to even make fun of. You will find yourself up against everything from giant feet monsters, to giant Playstaion 2's, to a giant Pikachu in a thin disguise, presumably to avoid copious cartoon copywright conflicts concerning corporate control. It seems that every weird creature in the entire universe wants a piece of this girl and her gravity-defiant broomstick of death.This game has music, but you probably won't notice it unless you make a conscious effort to pay attention to it. It's cheesy and fine and sits there in the background where it can't hurt you, not that it would want to anyway. Even if the music did wish you bodily harm, I doubt it could do much damage if it tried. There's a little bit of voice in the game. At the menu screen you will hear things like "Configure!" and "Bai bai!" depending on what you choose. Also you hear tiny grunts when you get hit and what sounds like "Pikaaaa!" when you use your smart bomb. These little bits of polish are quite nice and go a long way for me. The graphics aren't technical breakthroughs by any means, but they're still pretty decent. All of the graphics are simplistic, but well-done in their simplicity and follow a consistant theme of insanity. There are magical wands that power-up your weapons and fruit pieces that award you points and life, it's all very cutesy. Midway through the first level, you'll undoubtably be thinking to yourself "Hey, I've got an 8-year-old niece who would love this game! I've got to go show it to her!", but why not finish reading the review first. After you finish a level you're treated to a little story. Of course, it's in japanese so you won't understand the dialouge or even to whom you're speaking with, but following the theme and feel of the game you can only assume that the two girls are planning to have an avant-garde tea party somewhere in the thickest forest of non-linear thought, and then..... WHAM! Hentai! Unless you were previously briefed concerning this game, you probably weren't expecting that. Unlike the in-game graphics, in these dialouge and CG scenes the girls look to be of age, so it's either "not that bad" or "not that good" depending on your particular disposition. The gameplay is good. The controls are obvious and responsive. You only have your gun and smart-bombs, but it really doesn't need to get any more complex than that to satisfy me. As for your gun, different powerups change it to one of three different weapons (not counting the default weapon which you will only have for the first few seconds of the game anyway) each with three different levels of power. There are also three different kinds of missiles you can get as well, which all put together gives you a decent variety of ways to maim a big foot or giant head. You get three lives and there are no 1-up's, but you have quite a bit of health for each life which is recoverable through certain items. The difficulty is pretty easy [oxymoron], read the high score section to read how I did after a few tries. Okay, so you know that little "I am currently playing a computer game that takes up the whole screen." away message that you put in your AIM client when you play a game since AIM's too much of a piece of shit to not give focus to your new IM windows and totally fuck you over? Right, so I put that up and I'm going along merrily playing this game. This is my best run ever. I get to the last boss with all three lives, my favorite weapons fully powered up, full health minus one shot I think, and four out of five bombs. More importantly, I'm doing my best this time, I'm not taking as many hits and then recovering my life, I'm really in the zone, I'm dodging everything. The second-to-last boss goes down, and the last boss appears, with me at my aforementioned status. We start our little tango de gunfire and *click* Magic Polalamin loses focus and I'm staring at the ramblings of an idiot. It's not like he even IMed me and then saw my away message, he IMed me ABOUT my away message! While I see nothing but a white box filled with black text suggesting an alternate wording to the default "playing game" message, I can hear my poor little girl getting torn to shreds. I immediately alt-tab back to my little fantasy world of magic and mildly disturbing nudity, but to no avail. The screen is all black from that point on and no matter how I try changing the focus back to my game, it is all for nought. Sadly, I listen as my little girl is completely decimated and then I blindly navigate the main menu, hit Z, and hear "Bai bai!". I scold the IMing harbinger of death, but it does little to relieve my angst. For a moment I contemplate that maybe this was God's way of telling me that I should not squander my youth playing questionable hentai games, but then I come to the conclusion that my friends are just dicks. The point is, although AIM is truly at fault, followed then by my inconsiderate friend, it would be nice if Magic Polalamin were able to better recover from losing focus. Also, there's no way to stop playing midgame, you have to make yourself die. That's kind of annoying also. Magic Polalamin is a fun little vertical shmup. It's fairly easy, but you should enjoy playing it at least a few times. It would be a perfect shmup for children if only it didn't insulate the levels with uncharacteristic scenes of hentai, partially censored in the usual japanese way. You probably wouldn't want to play this one while anyone's around since it changes from embarrasingly childish to embarrasingly adult quite rapidly, but if you're a consenting adult over the age of 18 or just a kid who has a computer and a modem, you might want to check this one out. Just make sure that your friends would be able to outsmart a stick of celery if ever they were put into such a situation in which they were forced to do so.
TipsLock the door and play with the sound low. Just in case you do get caught disgracing yourself, have an alibi ready. It should be something simple like blaming society or the media or some other large, unspecific group who couldn't possibly respond to such allegations.
Highest ScoreI didn't catch it, but I did eventually get to play it uninterrupted and one-lifed it.
ReplaysThis game does not produce replays.Final Score: 7 out of 10
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