Basic Strategy
Popping Balloons
At the most basic level, Magical Drop III is a game about popping balloons.
While the game draws inspiration from more recognizable titles like Puzzle Bobble or Puyo Puyo, there is an immediate apparent difference; the balloons at the top of your screen aren’t stuck to one another and can be freely rearranged.
To accomplish this, Magical Drop gives you control of a small clown at the bottom of your screen who can be moved horizontally by using your joystick. The two buttons on the arcade cabinet allow you to pick up and toss back the colored balloons on your side of the screen. Your clown is able to hold as many of one color balloon at a time as you can manage, but must toss them back before picking up a different color.
By creating a vertical line of three or more like-colored balloons you’ll pop them, removing those balloons from your board along with all adjacent balloons of the same color. Additionally, in the head-to-head game mode, a portion of the balloons you pop will be added to the top of your opponent’s board.
Winning The Game
The most common means of victory in Magical Drop is causing your opponents board to overflow. Each player’s board is made up of 7 columns and 12 rows, and should either player have one of their balloons exceed that space they’ll lose the round. This can be accomplished by quickly popping your balloons before your opponent has the means to retaliate, or sometimes by mistakenly placing held balloons into the wrong row.
To help avoid stalemates, there is a secondary win condition for Magical Drop known as “quota”. Quota represents a race to pop balloons quicker than your opponent. Each balloon you pop is deducted from your quota until a player is declared the winner by reaching 0.
While the fast paced push-and-pull of Magical Drop III is already enough to entice your average arcade goer to part ways with a few of their tokens, it’s what goes on while the balloons are popping that unlocks a deeper strategy.
Chain Reactions
As your balloons pop there is a slight delay, about 2/3rds of a second, before they disappear. In this time, you still have control of your clown to continue to match other balloons. Doing so before the first match disappears will result in a “chain reaction” which will not only increase the amount of balloons you send at your opponent, but delay the balloons your opponent sends back from appearing on your side until the chain is complete.
Experience will help you notice simple patterns which can lead to additional opportunities to create chains. Learning to create these chains consistently will become an integral part of your Magical Drop strategy as you improve.
The first type of chain, which we’ll refer to as a “sandwich”, will likely look familiar to those who have played puzzles games like Puyo Puyo.
A basic “sandwich” chain.
Popping the lone yellow balloon caused the blue balloons to connect and create a chain. Sandwich chains often occur naturally in the balloons sent by your opponent, but can also be created by rearranging your existing balloons. Since setting up a sandwich guarantees you a chain, this strategy will consistently buy extra time to continue matching other balloons.
The other type of chain, which we’ll refer to as a “freestyle” chain, does not offer the same guarantee but does provide more flexibility. To create these chains you’ll need to rely on your reflexes to quickly rearrange balloons during the pause of previously created matches.
A 5 part “freestyle” chain.
While this may seem daunting for new players who have not yet developed muscle memory for Magical Drop, freestyle chains will become a regular part of your repertoire as you improve. The situational awareness and fast hands required to optimally create these chains is one of the main differentiating factors between players at higher levels.
By practicing identifying patterns from which you can reliably make chains and correctly applying these two techniques you’ll find your offensive and defensive capabilities in Magical Drop improve significantly.
Get Popping
That should do it for the basics of Magical Drop III, so it’s time to apply what you’ve learned. Grab a friend and start popping those balloons in VS mode. Even if you don’t have anyone close by the VS CPU mode will provide you with plenty of challenges.
Once you’re feeling ready, continue reading for more advanced strategies and tactics, starting with a breakdown of all the special balloons that might drop into your next match.