Magical Drop III is a fast-paced puzzle game that will hurt your wrists unless you're using European-style joysticks with a nice short throw. That reminds me – perhaps I should do a MAME controller roundup sometime soon. Anyway, on to the review.

Using the first button you pick up a ball, or a column of like-coloured balls, from the array at the top of the screen. At any given time, you can carry as many like-coloured balls as you need to. Pressing the second button shoots the balls back up to join the rest of your stack, and any that are arranged in a column of three or more are eliminated, along with any adjacent like-coloured balls. Pressing the third button adds more balls to the top of your stack, which is useful when you're gearing up for a big chain reaction.

To clarify – lining up three balls in a row doesn't work. They have to be stacked in a column – but, if a column has other like-coloured balls touching it, they will also be eliminated with the column.

Because there's no set time limit (or minimum time required) for any move, the gameplay of Magical Drop III runs as fast as you want it to. In a two-player match, this means “Very fast indeed.” The game capitalises on its speed by introducing a time-based chain reaction system – if an elimination takes place within about half a second of the last one, it will count as a chain reaction whether or not the following eliminations were caused by your current action, or your previous one.

For example, eliminating a group of yellow balls with green ones above and below will trigger a chain reaction as the green balls then eliminate themselves. However, you can also trigger a chain reaction by manually picking up and moving balls within about half a second of the first elimination. If you were to do the above action, and then pick up and release a set of, say, red balls so that they eliminate while the green balls are being removed (or very shortly afterwards), then you'll have a three-level chain reaction.

This manual chain system serves to make the game even more fast-paced, to the point where the throw distance on your joysticks becomes more than a trivial issue. It's certainly a departure from other puzzle games, and you'll find your thinking time dramatically reduced by necessity. Magical Drop III is a game you play with your instincts, not necessarily your mind.

Presentation is very good, with catchy music, excellent characters, and bold, vibrant visuals. The actual gameplay is not what you'd expect from a puzzle game, but is interesting and addictive nonetheless.

All in all, a pleasant surprise from Data East.