Magic Lamp (封魔神燈) is an unlicensed action platforming game for the Game Boy Color developed and published by Gowin. The game was first released in Chinese for Chinese-speaking territories, notably in Taiwan, on July 2000, and would later receive an English release the following year in 2001.
Story[]
The story is centered around two boys, Sata and Tank, who are described as "fishermen in Arab" in the English version of the game. In the manual of the English release, it is stated that Sata is 15 years old and Tank is 16, and the story provided in the manual explains that they were childhood friends who grew up together as orphans and developed a deep bond for each other.
One day, while out fishing, the boys accidentally catch a large, strange fish, which then suddenly jumps into a whirlpool, dragging the boys and the ship they're on into it. When Sata wakes up after being dragged into the whirlpool, he finds that his friend Tank has disappeared. Sata eventually discovers an old sanctuary, which he decides to walk into. In the sanctuary, he finds a memorial temple, where he comes across a special glove with a shield inlaid with crystal. Curious, Sata picks it up and tries to wear it. Once he does, the shield on the glove starts to create sound and emit smog. Unbeknownst to Sata, he has unsealed a monster trapped in the shield, and the shield then opens its eyes and begins to speak to Sata. The monster in the shield tells him that he set it free and that he is its master from now on. It then tells Sata that he can leave the sanctuary on the condition that he lights the magic lamp and urges him to exit the sanctuary as soon as possible as the two seals (presumably on the shield) were undone at the same time, which caused the sanctuary to start collapsing. Sata then begins his journey through the sanctuary.
Gameplay[]
Gameplay.[1]
Magic Lamp is an action platforming game that plays similarly to the Mega Man/Rockman games. The player controls Sata through six stages that take place in parts of the sanctuary. Sata moves left and right with the D-pad and jumps with the A button. Sata can double jump by pressing A again while he is in mid-air after a jump, which can be used to get across large gaps or high platforms in stages. Pressing down on the D-pad and the A button together will cause Sata to slide, which is required to get through narrow passages. Pressing the B button allows the player to fire a projectile. Holding down the B button allows the player to charge a meter at the bottom of the screen. When the meter is between half and fully charged releasing the B button allows for a continuous short ranged attack. When the meter is fully charged releasing the B button results in a stronger projectile.
Credits[]
(From the English manual)
- Manufacturer: Gowin Technology Development Group
- Planning: Tsao-Lin Weng, Ding-How Wei
- Programming: Li-Chieh Chen
- Art designer: Ding-How Wei, Tai-Ichi Lin, Kai-Chung Wang
- Character deviser: Ding-How Wei
Trivia[]
- The ID assigned to this game by Gowin on their now-defunct website is GS11.[2]
- Both the English and Chinese versions of the game are dumped in MAME. However, they currently cannot be fully emulated in any emulator due to copy protection schemes used in both versions of the game, which only allow them to play the Gowin intro animation and their respective intro sequences before they crash and restart.
- The engine used in this game would also be used in another Game Boy Color game by Gowin, Final Robot G.D335. The game in question appears to control very similarly to Magic Lamp.
- At least some copies of Magic Lamp use a custom, odd-looking "Hotkid" boot logo when launched on a Game Boy Color. This is achieved by modifying the bottom half of the standard Nintendo boot logo while leaving the top half unaltered, allowing (most) Game Boy Color consoles and compatible machines to boot into the game. This boot logo technique would be used in other unlicensed Game Boy Color games by Gowin as well as unlicensed games from other companies, such as Sintax.
- The music that plays on the game over screen is a rendition of the death jingle from the unlicensed monochrome Game Boy game Story of Lasama, a game developed by people connected to Gamtec and Vast Fame. Gowin would publish the game in 1993 along with other games developed by people related to the two companies.
- On a related note, the music in the final stage (Stage 6) is from Rainbow Prince, another unlicensed Game Boy game developed by people connected to Gamtec/Vast Fame, where the song plays in the third level of that game. This game was originally published by an unknown publisher in the early 90s under the English name The Rainbow, and would later be picked up by Gowin and published as Prince Rainbow in 1993. Considering that Gowin was a company that typically did not engage in using unauthorized material (sound driver code aside) in their games and that they re-released their monochrome Game Boy games in the late 90s and 2000s, this suggests that they may have obtained the rights to the monochrome Game Boy games they published at some point, leading to them reusing material from those games in their newer games.
References[]
External links[]
- Intro and brief gameplay of the English version
- Complete playthrough of the Chinese version of the game
- Box and manual scans of the English release of Magic Lamp
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