Magical Drop III

In this game you grab falling blocks and throw them upwards. You can grab more than one, albeit of the same colour. Matching three same-coloured blocks in a column destroys them, alongside adjacent ones of the same colour.

Two design decisions contribute to the success of Data East's Magical Drop III:

- The quota of destroyed blocks that the player can fulfill to win the duel, which prevents stalling.
- Multiple groups of matching blocks affecting the speed of which the opponent's blocks start falling down.

These two factors encourage the player to concatenate matching blocks in as few actions as possible. The key word here: Efficiency.

However, blocks falling down threaten the player with a defeat, thus creating urgency to destroy blocks near the bottom. Urgency and efficiency clash with each other. It's a choice, except it's not just once, but multiple times per second, many steps ahead, while you desperately move your avatar to grab and throw blocks, and possibly mess up in the process. Then you blink once and your opponent is done with you. It's nerve-wracking but the result is frantic, fast-paced action that puts the mind of the player in full attention.

What pushes this game over its predecessors are the different attack patterns depending on the choice of character, which provide another layer of strategy. One of them pierces with multiple blocks at once on the center, while another one spreads them evenly to overwhelm the opponent, and so on. It's all up to playstyle.