 Ssssssss… S-drunk! Two of my picks for the very best arcade games of the 90s are the Dungeons & Dragons games, Shadow over Mistara, and Tower of Doom, and they are extremely well-made games with a surprising amount of depth, and if you dig those two games like I do, then you'll really like Dungeon Magic, made by Taito in 1994. This game was known as Light claims in Japan, and some parts of Europe, and I should mention quickly that no, this game does not have anything to do with the NES game, Dungeon Magic, of the elements, they're totally unrelated. But man, Dungeon Magic the Arcade game is a great time. It's like Landstalker for Sega Genesis combined with games like Knights of the Round, the Dark Seal games, and the aforementioned Dungeons and Dragons titles. One token gives you a health meter and two lives to get through four long dungeons, and there's four playable characters to choose from. Ash the Knight, Gren the Fighter, Vold the Wizard, and Sissy the Archer, and they each play differently as you might expect, although the basic tenets of beat-em-up gameplay are all still here in spades. There's your regular attack, a clear screen magic attack, and you can also jump, defend, dash, and grab enemies, but most importantly, each of the four characters has their own distinct playstyle, similar to a game like King of Dragons. For example, Ash is the strongest melee fighter, but his range and his defense aren't so great, since his slow sword attack often opens him up to blindside damage. Gren is in a similar boat, but he plays more like a traditional beat-em-up character, so he's a bit quicker, although not as strong as Ash. Sissy is a ranged fighter with powerful magic, but a really weak melee attack, so she plays totally differently than those who guys, making you keep your distance while shooting across the screen. Vold, on the other hand, starts out weak in pretty much every category. You have to be careful with him at first, but once you level him up, and yes, you can level up characters in this game, then he becomes the most powerful of the four characters, laying down all sorts of carnage. Now let's get into what makes this game really stand out. For starters, one of my favorite things about Dungeon Magic is that you can use lots of different stuff as weapons. Watch this werewolf dude wear a mace as a mask. Then you pick up a candelabra to fend off enemies. What am I, Liberace? You can also pick up all sorts of different shields to defend yourself temporarily. There's single use items like axes and spears. There's barrels sitting around to toss it bad guys. I mean, not that you'll need that much help, since you can just as easily spike a monster's head into the ground with a hurricanrana. As you can see from the footage, this is one of those games where you can smash just about anything and everything to find more points, more weapons, more power-ups, more health, and in some cases, more areas to explore. And you're gonna need to explore in this one, because Dungeon Magic is a beat-em-up that has a leveling system with experience points. That's right, this is a beat-em-up RPG, and in the truest sense too. And by that I mean, the game doesn't require you to clear every room to proceed. If you really want to, you can skip past enemies, you can ignore entire rooms altogether, you can go straight to the exit and try your luck at getting through the game under-leveled. But ultimately, it's fun to just enter a room and trash it like Metallica trashed a dressing room back in 1983. Really though, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't take your time to explore through every nook and cranny in this game. There is a time limit, so you do need to be careful, but still, there's secrets here and there that help you out. Like if you kick this candle in the wall here, that releases, uh, this guy, who looks just like this one dude from the AV club in my high school days. He enthusiastically follows you around and drops extra gold to help you level up faster, and when his health finally runs out, he kinda just fades into nothing and explodes. Hey, thanks dude. My favorite part of this game is how gigantic it is for an arcade title. Each dungeon only has one exit, but there's lots of different ways you can get there. Even better is that you can pick up something like a barrel and stack it somewhere, climb up, and find even more treasure. If you manage to find a golden treasure chest, you'll gain a powerful new weapon replete with elemental magic, like ice, fire, or lightning. If you play as Vold the Wizard, there's a rare drop you can stumble upon called the Holy Staff, and it's laughably overpowered. Seriously, Vold sucks to play as at first, but if you're able to find the Holy Staff, it's worth it. So yeah, Dungeon Magic is awesome. It's the rare arcade game that offers a lot of depth and replay value thanks to the huge dungeons you can explore, plus all the different weapons and characters you can play as. The isometric view might throw some people off, but rest is sure, this one plays and feels like a traditional beat-em-up, since your characters are always facing either to the left or to the right. I will say there is a bit of platforming here, and the diagonal angle can make that a bit problematic, but it's not too bad. Dungeon Magic was ported to the Title Legends 2 collection for PS2 and Xbox, but seriously, this game rocks, and you need to play it any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.