Magician Lord on Neo Geo AES: the Game That Launched the Neo Geo, and the Sequel That Died with Its Developer

Magician Lord is a side-scrolling action game Alpha Denshi built for SNK, and it was there at the very start: one of the first four games on the Neo Geo MVS arcade board, out in Japan in April 1990. The home version followed on 1 July 1991 — a Neo Geo AES cartridge, product code NGH-005, 46 megabits, the Japanese title spelled マジシャンロード on the spine.

This is the fifth entry in a series about games that were good enough to earn a second part and never got one. Magician Lord is the plainest case the series has had. The sequel was not passed over for lack of interest: it was announced in 2000, for the Neo Geo Pocket, under the same name, for Japan and North America. The English Wikipedia files it under “Unreleased follow-up” and says the game “never materialized due to ADK’s bankruptcy”. The developer went under in 2003 and took the sequel with it. This guide covers what the game does, why the home cartridge is not quite the arcade game, what the code on the label means, what a cartridge costs now, and how to search for one when almost none are on sale.

• Japanese title: マジシャンロード, developed by Alpha Denshi (later ADK), published by SNK (株式会社エス・エヌ・ケイ)
• Neo Geo AES (home cartridge): 1 July 1991 · product code NGH-005 · 46 megabits · ネオジオ専用ロムカセット · copyright line ©SNK/ADK 1990
• Arcade (Neo Geo MVS): April 1990 · board number NGM-005 · one of the first four games on the MVS
• Elta and six forms: collect two orbs and the wizard becomes a dragon warrior, a waterman, a poseidon, a shinobi, a samurai or a raijin — eight stages, a servant of Gal at the end of each
• The home version is gentler: Elta starts with three hit points instead of two, and six instead of four while transformed
• Neo Geo CD: 31 October 1994 · product code ADCD-100 · 4,800円 before tax — the same game on a disc
• No second part: a Neo Geo Pocket sequel announced in 2000 never appeared; ADK declared bankruptcy in 2003 and SNK Playmore bought the properties
• No list price for the cartridge here: the two sources this site cross-checks disagree on what it cost in 1991, and the gap is not the tax rate, so no figure is quoted
• Hard to buy: on 20 September 2026 Suruga-ya’s own stock of both box variants was 品切れ, with marketplace copies from ￥139,101; Buyee had no cartridge at all — only discs

What is Magician Lord, and what do the six transformations do?

You are Elta, a descendant of the original Magician Lord. Wikipedia sets the quest out plainly: he travels through Cadacis to “find eight grimoires and seal the demon Gal Agiese before he can resurrect the god of destruction Az Atorse”. Eight grimoires, eight stages, one of Gal’s servants waiting in each.

The system the game is remembered for is the orbs. “By collecting two of them, and depending on the combination, Elta can transform into one of six different beings, including a dragon warrior, a waterman, a poseidon, a shinobi, a samurai, and a raijin.” Each form fights differently — fire breath, water projectiles, frozen bursts, spiralling bursts, wave projectiles, thunder barrages — and each moves differently: the first three are slow, while the shinobi, the samurai and the raijin jump high. A run of the game is therefore not one character with one move set; it is a set of six, and which of them you are holding when you reach a boss is part of the fight.

It was taken seriously at the time. GameFan regarded it “to be one of the best action-platform games ever made, if not the best”, praising cutting-edge graphics, exceptional music and challenging gameplay. Joystick liked the soundscapes and the transformations and disliked the lack of fluidity in the character animation; AllGame’s Kyle Knight thought the transformation mechanic interesting but “could have been great if implemented properly”, and called the choppy sprite animations the main flaw. The commercial picture is stranger: Play Meter ranked it forty-first in a September 1990 arcade equipment survey, RePlay listed it in November 1990 as the tenth most popular arcade game of the previous month — and, according to Chad Okada, a former SNK staffer quoted in Wikipedia’s reception section, the game “was a flop in arcades, but became the best-selling Neo Geo AES title at the time”. The cartridge outsold the coin-op’s reputation.

Why does the home cartridge play differently from the arcade board?

Because it gives you more life. This is the sentence to know before you choose a version: “Elta’s health bar starts with two hit points (three in the home version) and increases to four (six in the home version) upon transformation. Elta will revert to his normal form if his health bar returns to its initial hit points.”

That is a fifty per cent increase in how much you can absorb, in a game critics of the day kept calling punishing. The arcade board was built to end your game; the cartridge was built for a living room where nobody is feeding it coins. So the NGH-005 cartridge is not simply a home copy of the MVS board — it is the easier cut of the game, and the one most people who remember Magician Lord fondly actually played.

Which release is the Japanese cartridge, and what is its code?

Neo Geo games carry two numbers with the same digits: NGM- for the MVS arcade board, NGH- for the AES home cartridge. This game has both on record. MAME’s parent set maglord is titled “Magician Lord (NGM-005)” and its clone set maglordh is titled “Magician Lord (NGH-005)” — the home side named outright, which is not true of every Neo Geo game. The Neo Geo Master List’s row gives 005, ADK as developer, 46 megs, an AES release, Japanese and English AES both on 7.1.91, and the Neo Geo CD on 10.31.94.

Kataban’s catalog tracks the Japanese releases through the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Database: row M756810 for the cartridge, M756811 for the disc, M730799 for the arcade original. None of those rows carries a schema:productID or a schema:gtin — the database simply has no product code for this game. The code in this guide comes from three independent sources that agree: MAME’s maglordh title, the Master List’s 005 row, and Suruga-ya’s own 型番 field, which reads NGH-005 on both of the shop’s product pages for the cartridge. The disc is a different number entirely: MAME’s Neo Geo CD software list and Suruga-ya both give ADCD-100, an ADK house number rather than an SNK one.

One date is worth reading carefully. 1 July 1991 is not a street date for this game alone. The Master List gives the same day for the Japanese cartridge and the English one, and Suruga-ya shows the same 発売日 on other early AES titles — ザ・スーパースパイ and ゴーストパイロット both carry 1991/07/01. It reads as the day the AES home line went on retail sale rather than as this title’s own release day. Wikipedia’s account of the hardware fits: the AES was at first rented to hotels, bars and restaurants, and SNK only “expanded sales and marketing into the home console market in 1991”.

There are also two boxes. Suruga-ya files a plain マジシャンロード(ROMカセット) and a マジシャンロード(ROMカセット)[紙パッケージ版] — a paper-package edition — as separate products with the same code, the same date and very different prices. If you are buying, that distinction is the one that moves the number most.

What does it cost now, and why is there no list price here?

Start with what this guide will not tell you. The two sources we normally cross-check for a Japanese list price disagree here, and the gap is not explained by tax: the Media Arts Database and Suruga-ya’s 定価 field give figures that cannot be reconciled at the 3% rate of 1991 or the 10% rate of today. When they line up — as they did for Top Hunter, where the database figure times 1.1 came out to the shop’s number exactly — we print it. Here they do not, so we print nothing. A number you cannot stand behind is worse than a blank.

What it costs now is measurable, and it is a lot. On 20 September 2026, Suruga-ya’s own stock of both box variants was 品切れ — sold out. Everything on offer came from other sellers through the site: the plain cartridge from ￥139,101 across two copies, and the paper-package version at ￥197,570 across two copies, with one of the shop’s own branch listings at ￥156,170. The trade-in prices tell you what the shop itself thinks: ￥132,000 for the plain cartridge, ￥90,000 for the paper-package one.

The disc is a different world. On the same day, Suruga-ya’s own Neo Geo CD copy was ￥18,600 and there were a dozen more through the marketplace from ￥16,800 — roughly a tenth of the cartridge, for the same game.

Why was there never a sequel?

For once there is a specific answer rather than a silence. The English Wikipedia has a section called “Unreleased follow-up”: “In 2000, the sequel was announced for the Neo Geo Pocket under the title Magician Lord, with a planned release in Japan and North America. However, the game never materialized due to ADK’s bankruptcy.”

The company behind it had been with the Neo Geo from before the beginning. Alpha Denshi was founded in July 1980 in Ageo, Saitama, moved from audio and telecoms equipment into arcade games, and by 1987 was developing almost exclusively for SNK hardware; it contributed much of the hardware design of the Neo Geo itself. It shortened its name to ADK in 1993 and agreed to become an exclusive SNK developer. After SNK’s own bankruptcy in 2001 it turned to i-mode mobile content, and, as Wikipedia puts it, “ADK could not reverse their fortunes and ultimately declared bankruptcy in 2003”. SNK Playmore bought the intellectual property, trademark included.

So the sequel did not fail to appear because nobody wanted it. It was announced, and then there was no company left to finish it. What arrived instead were re-releases, and there have been many: the Wii Virtual Console in September 2007 at 900Wiiポイント, published by D4 Enterprise; NEOGEO Station on PlayStation 3 and PSP on 22 December 2010 at 900円 and 700円 including tax from SNK Playmore; Hamster’s ACA NEOGEO edition on 17 August 2017 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at 823円 including tax (842円 on Xbox One); and mobile versions after that. Thirty-five years of selling the same eight stages, and never a ninth.

Can you actually buy the AES cartridge today?

On the day we looked, not from the shop itself.

Suruga-ya, 20 September 2026: both products were 品切れ. What the site offered were four marketplace copies in total, at the prices above. Ask the shop to show sold-out items as well and the code search returns nine listings, every one of them this cartridge — plain, paper-package, 説明書状態難, パッケージ状態難, 箱(内箱含む)・説明書状態難, 説明書欠品. That is a complete condition ladder for a game you cannot buy: the record of copies that have passed through, not stock.

Buyee, the same day: not one cartridge. The best search returned eighteen listings and six of them were this game — all six Neo Geo CD. The rest were other Neo Geo titles sealed, a Neo Geo Mini, an Evercade collection and the 2017 download edition. There was also a sealed Magician Lord soundtrack, which is a lovely thing and is not a game.

So what can you actually get? The Neo Geo CD version, which is the same eight stages at a tenth of the price and is the only format of Magician Lord with real supply. If you specifically want the 1991 cartridge, the honest advice is to watch rather than buy: four copies split across two box variants is not a market, it is four asking prices, and the difference between ￥139,101 and ￥197,570 is a cardboard sleeve.

How do you search each shop for it?

Suruga-ya: use the code without the hyphen. NGH005 gives results: 2, all of them this cartridge; ask for sold-out items too and it gives 9, all of them this cartridge. NGH-005 with the hyphen gives results: 12 (this game: 2) — the rest are 餓狼伝説スペシャル, 龍虎の拳2, サムライスピリッツ, ザ・スーパースパイ and other Neo Geo carts. Suruga-ya splits the code at the hyphen and matches the pieces, so the hyphenless form is the precise one, and on this game the difference is every listing (2 of 2) against 2 of 12. The disc behaves the same way: ADCD100 returns only this game, ADCD-100 returns 13 listings, mostly other ADK discs.

Buyee: use the title, not the code. The code is useless here. NGH-005 returns nothing at all, and NGH005 returns exactly one listing: a Pokémon card numbered 005/069. The Japanese title with the platform, マジシャンロード ネオジオ, is the best search available — results: 18 (this game: 6). The bare title マジシャンロード is worse: results: 23, the same 6 games, plus a 1988 manga of the same name by 島田ひろかず and a vinyl record.

Read the titles, not the counts. ROMカセット is the AES cartridge. CD-ROM or NCD is the 1994 disc. 紙パッケージ版 is the paper-box cartridge variant. OST or サントラ is the soundtrack album. アケアカ is the 2017 download. And note that the credit moves between formats: Suruga-ya files the cartridge under SNK and the Neo Geo CD under エーディーケー, the developer — the same game, attributed to different companies depending on which shelf it is on.

Why search Kataban for this one?

Because unlike the last entry in this series, the English title works. Checked in a desktop browser on 20 September 2026, Magician Lord returns five results and マジシャンロード returns six. The six are the 1991 cartridge, the 1994 Neo Geo CD disc, the 2007 Wii Virtual Console release, the two 2010 NEOGEO Station downloads for PlayStation 3 and PSP, and the 2017 ACA NEOGEO edition; the English search returns five of those because the ACA NEOGEO row carries no English title. Either way you can tell the six apart before you read a single shop listing, which is the whole point when a title has been sold this many times.

The product code is a way in as of today. The database rows carry no code of their own, so the field was filled in here from the three sources named above — and because the catalog strips punctuation before it matches, NGH-005 and NGH005 both land on the cartridge, and ADCD-100 and ADCD100 both land on the disc. On a Japanese shop shelf, the kana to look under is マ.

Magician Lord · マジシャンロード · Neo Geo AES, 1 July 1991 (NGH-005) · Alpha Denshi / SNK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code without the hyphen (NGH005) · Buyee — title and platform (マジシャンロード ネオジオ)
See the six releases on Kataban →

A developer that helped design the hardware, a game that sold the console, a sequel announced and then quietly erased by a bankruptcy — and, thirty-five years on, four cartridges for sale in the whole country and a soundtrack. If you want the object, it is the cartridge with NGH-005 on the label, and you will be waiting. If you want the game, the disc from 1994 is sitting right there at a tenth of the price.