Wahey! Here's something original from the Land of the Rising Sun. A puzzle game, with cute little rendered characters and some balls that have to be matched together in lines of three. A game with all the innovation of John Major's wardrobe. Magical Drop (or Chain Reaction as it's confusingly called on the side of the box) is slightly different in terms of how you match up these balls.

The object of this is to prevent balls from reaching the bottom of the screen, instead of putting them there. The only thing you have to aid you in this quest, is a small grappling hook. By shooting this up towards the balls, it will hook onto whichever colour it touches first, and pull it back down to where you are standing. Once this is done, you have one of two options. You can either send it back up to the balls already in the game area, or you can hook down any more spheres of the same colour. The object after all this is to link up as many of the same colour balls as possible, causing them to disappear. Right, all that sorted? Good.

It's from Japan, if that helps. And, erm, it's a puzzle game with, er, balls. Ahem.

The aim is to prevent the balls reaching the bottom of the screen, otherwise it's game over.

One of the variants of the game styles is the challenge mode. Each of the characters is given a difficulty level from one to four and then you are given a set of twenty pre-saved layouts of balls, and a limited amount of moves to make all the balls disappear. This may not sound difficult, but trust us when we say that Steve had a full head of hair before playing it, and now his bonce is smoother than a baby's bottom. If you work through the twenty in the order they are numbered, then the difficulty will increase accordingly.

Surprisingly, in a game like this, each of the wide-eyed and big-mouthed Japanese characters do actually have an affect on the game. On the player select screen, a stat screen will appear when each person is highlighted. If a little icon appears at the top of the screen, that is their special ball. Match three of these up and, depending on the icon colour, all of the coloured blocks matching that colour will disappear. Most of the characters have one icon to help them, and the wizard has two, but these don't necessarily aid all of the time. In desperate times, trying to get the final icon to match up the set is tricky, and can leave lots of balls piled up together, so be selective in using them.

The ranking mode is yet another variant on the basic idea. You start as you would for a normal game but, at timed intervals, another set of balls will fall down under the ones you are already playing with. It is then down to you to clear them as quickly as possible.

The longer you last and the more balls you manage to get rid of, the higher your rank. This also gives you something to aim for when you play again.

This instantly brought back memories of Baku Baku, a cutesy puzzle game I was widely accused of underrating in its recent review.

Magical Drop is a similarly addictive twist on a nearly identical theme, but improves on Baku Baku in my opinion because it presents a wider variety of game options and largely strips out the most pukesome elements of its predecessor's sugary presentation.

As a result, this is less likely to appeal to very young players (it will be too hard for many of them anyway) but earns my vote as being the better of the two games. The best bet for the Saturn's top puzzler.

Having seen various screenshots of this in the Japanese press, I have to say that I thought it looked like pants. And although it has dispelled most of my previous doubts, I still have a nagging doubt that is preventing me from giving it a big score. The best thing about it is that it is so addictive.

The number of variables on the original game idea is enough to warrant hours of play, but, conversely, this is also the main fault. Sometimes the game can become impossibly hard, especially in the pre-saved challenge option where frustration set in and my concentration wavered. But, on two player mode, it is a top blast and is matched only by Baku Baku in terms of playability.

If you know someone who can get their hands on it, and you have the patience for some rock hard puzzles, then this is recommended.

Graphics 82%
Simplistic but effective, and the characters all look pretty smart.

Animation 80%
There isn't really much scope for animation in a game like this.

Music 76%
Cheesy tunes are fine for the first two minutes, but after that it all gets a bit annoying.

Effects 81%
Lots of speech, but we can't understand any of it. The hook noise is good, though.

Playability 85%
It is extremely playable, and worthy of a lot of time in multi-player mode.

Lastability 84%
P. Variants on the game styles are good in one player mode...
N. But only for a short while, as it becomes very frustrating.

Overall 84%
A fine game that is worth looking into if you are a fan of puzzlers. But those with no patience may shelve it after a couple of goes.