Posted in: Games, Retro Games, Video Games | Tagged: Kaiga, Magic Castle, Net Yaroze

A Forgotten PS1 Game Called Magic Castle Has Been Released

Published Sat, 02 Jan 2021 23:59:54 -0600

Last updated Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:01:31 -0600

A long-forgotten title for the original PlayStation has a new life as Magic Castle has been released 20 years later. A little bit of history behind this one as it is a rogue-lite title created on the Net Yaroze platform clear back in the late '90s. The game started production in 1997 but was eventually canceled in 1998 with very few people knowing of its existence. Video proof exists of the game being teased as you can check it out here on YouTube, as it appears they had plans to get it out sometime in 1999. Looking at that video it seems like the kind of game we would dive into head-first back in the day. But there doesn't seem to be any formal explanation as to why the company decided to shelve the project beyond the idea that they took interest in a different project and moved the team toward working on whatever that ended up being.

A Forgotten PS1 Game Called Magic Castle Has Been Released — Credit: Kaiga

Well, now you can play the game for yourself as the prototype for Magic Castle has been completed. The work was done by K. Matsunami, a SEGA designer who goes by the moniker PIROWO. He tweeted out that the game had been completed as best it could so players could give it a spin. It is not the complete game by any stretch of the imagination, you're basically getting what would have probably been a demo that players could have tried out at a gaming convention or as an exclusive in the mail. You can see the full game in action in the video below, or you can head to this website to download the ROM yourself and play the game right now. It's kind of cool to see it come back to life after being discarded, but if this had come out back in the late '90s, it would probably be sitting in our collections to this day.