Magic Darts ・ マジックダーツ
Developed by: SETA
Published by: SETA (JP), Romstar (NA)
Released in: April 26, 1991 (JP) | September 1991 (NA)
The typically ho-hum game of darts hits your Nintendo Entertainment System with a big twist…
PRESTIDIGITATION!
Choose from playable characters like Harry Houdini, David Copperfield, and Merlin as they square up in the classic bar game. Each magician makes use of the abilities they’re famous for to keep things strange and unpredictable. Take Houdini; he starts every game in a full-body restraint. Chains, straitjacket, the whole nine. If you can actually bust Harry out of the prison of his own creation in time for his turn (done by mashing buttons relentlessly, punctuated by his sprite flailing around wildly in the corner of the screen), he will automatically score a bullseye. Fail, and he has to aim while hanging upside down, using nothing but the muscles in his neck and mouth. Needless to say, this makes things drastically difficult. Wait ’til you hear about the unlockable Morgan le Fay route, and the secret Penn & Teller superboss!
So obviously none of that is true. Magic Darts on the NES is a basic dart game with basic game modes and basic gameplay. The titular magic comes not from the worlds most famous magicians one-upping each other at bar games, but instead from the fact that you can play as a monkey, an alien, a ninja, or a robot alongside normal human characters. If you enter your player name as “SEX,” you can be a weird robot/alien/Leonard Nimoy hybrid, if you feel so inclined. Each of these funky characters has a trick shot that triggers once in awhile. A round typically isn’t longer than five minutes. There are other game modes, but they’re all about as short and droll as each other. Shock and awe, there’s no story mode or anything resembling progression. For a game that released in the same month as the Super Nintendo launched in North America, the lack of content is pretty inexcusable.
Of course, playing real darts with your friends/family/drunken strangers at the pub is still the best way to experience the game. But for when that isn’t an option, where do we turn? In the space age of the 2020s, we have flashy apps riddled with sketchy ads to satisfy any sudden parlor game related urges one might feel in the dead of night. The discerning modern gamer can find it as a common mini-game in huge sandbox games, like Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza. But in the olden days of the 8-bit Nintendo, a lot of naff got greenlit because an interactive simulation of some boring thing appealed to a certain subset of player. This is just a theory, but I think that subset had to have been dads of the 1980’s. Old dudes tinkering with trajectories and the effects of power on shots when the kids are asleep just makes sense. SOMEONE had to be playing all of those golf games on the NES, right?!
There’s not much else to say on the subject of Magic Darts. For something with such a majestic title, it’s deeply uninteresting. If you’re genuinely hankering for an 8-bit simulation of darts, this one controls fine and has decent enough graphics. But unless you’re a crazy hardcore darts enthusiast or if you were someone’s dad in the 1980’s, there’s nothing here for you. Or anyone. IT’S DARTS GODAMMIT.
Final score:
NESJunk 