MAGICAL DROP 3 SECRETS for NEO-GEO, VERSION v1.5 by Navaash Fenwylde (navaash@mail.wsu.edu) ------------------------------------------ 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 -----------------------------------------