Magic Girl (小魔女, literally Little Witch) is a unlicensed shooting game made by Gamtec for the Sega Mega Drive in 1993.
Overview[]
The story tells of a witch named Ling Ling whose planet was attacked by monsters from a black hole, seeking revenge for her destroyed hometown. The game plays like a fairly standard vertical shooter, although it features elements not common in such games such as a health meter and two types of shields that can be used simultaneously. The game's five stages long with a boss at the end of each stage.
Ports and re-releases[]
Along with several unlicensed/repro releases done after the game's initial release, Magic Girl has also received two officially licensed re-releases. A Genesis cartridge version was released by Super Fighter Team in 2015 that translated the game into English. Aside from this the game also advertises Legend of Wukong, another Gamtec game the publisher translated and released, after the credits. A port for the Evercade handheld system is included on the Piko Interactive Collection 1 cartridge, which was released in 2020.
Trivia[]
- Some graphics from this game (namely Stage 4's background) were also in another Gamtec game, Thunderbolt II (though the Famicom version.)
- One of the bosses in Super Bubble Bobble MD bears a strong resemblance to Ling Ling.
- While not explicitly a bootleg, there's a possibility that this was made to cash in on the Akazukin ChaCha manga, presumably about half a year before the anime came out. One indicator in particular is the striking semblance of both main characters ChaCha, & Ling Ling, especially since their names have the pattern of having a simple structure of letters repeated twice. However, the purple suit sort of contradicts this possibility at first glance. However though, one other indicator is of the Anachronism Stew trope as the invaders in the show are futuristic in design whereas most of the village is similar to feudal Japan, & like Akazukin ChaCha, some futuristic elements are used with some of the villains(e.g. ChaCha's Magical Princess form has 3 weapons which look futuristic in comparison to other weapons used by the main characters, the Mikenekos have futuristic gadgets to thwart ChaCha, & in episode 54, a robotic warriors comes in to hypnotize some of ChaCha's friends, turning them into enemies). However though, the futuristic elements are only used for the invaders in this game. One other indicator for this is that the art style looks somewhat similar to an anime at the time, which can especially be seen in both the intro, the stage clear screen, the game over screen, & the ending screen. However though, most of Gamtec's games go for an animesque artstyle anyway, such as Bomboy, Adventurous Boy, & Chaoji Dafuweng.
Gallery[]
