When the Neo Geo launched in 1990, one of its stand-out releases was ADK’s 2D platformer Magician Lord, which saw the protagonist transforming into different characters as they fought through a Ghouls ‘n Ghosts-style fantasy world.
Unlike other Neo Geo games, such as Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown and Metal Slug, Magician Lord was never officially ported to any other console and remains a system exclusive.
That might change in the near future, as homebrew coder @Ryusennin (aka Kaminarinom) has produced a tech demo showing the game running on NEC’s ill-fated SuperGrafx console, a souped-up PC Engine / TG-16 that launched in 1989 and was a commercial bomb.
While the demo lacks sound and only shows the main character, it’s astonishing how close it is to the Neo Geo version – which, lest we forget, was running on more powerful and expensive hardware.
What’s even more impressive is that this demo has multiple layers of parallax scrolling, whereas the original game only had two layers.
You can see the original game in motion below:
This isn’t the first time the game has been ported to another system by fans – the SNES got its own taste of Magician Lord a short time ago.
Go on.... treat yourself to a new game.
