Magician Lord

I was obsessed with this game in the arcade. I spent however much money it took and got to like level 6 where there's two moving platforms and like, flying eyeballs knocking me off again and again till I ran out of money. Then I came back and actually beat it.

This is amazing to me. More amazing than the fact that I beat Ghouls N Ghosts on Genesis.

it wasn't at the time, it was just something I had to do, but I got a hacked Xbox a few years ago, and even with savestates I gave up after 3 levels. I was saving after like EVERY enemy and had all the dipswitches on "easy as hell".

Then, for reasons that currently escape me, I bought it on the Virtual Console. I played it this morning and got to level 2, but goddamn if everything about this game isn't shitty. The dude controls horribly, you die in a fucking second and start way far back. It's been making me wish my hacked Xbox still worked, cos for whatever stupid reason, I want to see if I can beat this game again.

I seriously don't know how I beat it back then. It's completely beyond me. I must have been a video game god. Like those 5 year olds who completely own at Guitar Hero, only with shitty Neo Geo games. The only reason I got into it is because I thought the combination of the guys' witch hat and ninja mask was the coolest thing ever.

I wanna stick it with 1 star because it's so damn terrible and so damn difficult and if I had done anything else with what I'm sure now was $100 in quarters by the end, I'd be better for it. But the game and I have history. Like Emenim and Kim, there's always gonna be something there.

2 stars.