MAGICIAN LORD - AGAIN CHANGES FROM HELL ROMHACK

Magician Lord is a fantastic game, featuring outstanding graphics and music for its time. Unfortunately, it suffers from an extremely high difficulty level, the result of last-minute changes made to increase profitability for arcade operators.

The goal of this patch is to rebalance the difficulty to bring it closer to the average difficulty of 16-bit era games, so that everyone can enjoy this excellent title without having to spend dozens of hours on it — time being the most precious resource for retro gamers. It’s also a good warm-up for those who wish to later take on the brutality of the original :)

The patch applies to the ROM from set 2 (the version released on Neo-Geo AES), as it offers a more console-like experience: there’s an introduction to the story, and each death sends you back to the last checkpoint.

List of Changes

Gameplay

• 8 HP max (6 in the original version)
• 5 lives per credit (2 in the original version)
• Invincibility time doubled after being hit
• Global level timer removed (normally hidden), which used to spawn an invincible monster after a few minutes
• Disabled automatic monster spawns when staying in the same area for several seconds
• You now need to get hit twice to lose one power level. This is visually represented by the power cell cracking after the first hit before disappearing
• You can drop off ladders by pressing the jump button
• When transformed, pressing C allows you to return to Elta’s base form while keeping the extra HP
• In his base form, Elta can now fire 4 magic missiles simultaneously on screen (2 in the original)
• Reduced HP for certain enemies that required too many hits to defeat
• Removed the time limit for Gal Agiese’s dialogue before each boss, allowing you to enjoy the full music. Press any button to skip directly to the boss

Visuals

• The power gauge design has been completely redone to match the HP bar’s style
• Realignment of the orbs at the top of the screen
• Improved character shadows for better contrast and consistency
• Removed the score and hi-score display. Let’s be honest: NO ONE plays Magician Lord for the score — especially not a modded version! The remaining lives counter has been moved to the top-left corner to maximize space for those gorgeous graphics

Translation

• Complete French translation of the game based on the Japanese script
• Complete retranslation of the English version, known for its infamous lines (“Again changes to hell”), to better match the Japanese script
• Fear not, fans of the Engrish original translation: at the title screen, you can switch between the two translations by pressing D

Cheats

• For those playing without a memory card who wish to resume from the last reached level, you can press UP+C+D at any time to automatically skip to the next stage

Instructions

Note: I won’t go into details on how to use an IPS patch, gzip a file, or anything technical — Google and AI are your friends ;)

Requirements

Make sure you have the ROMs maglord.zip and maglordh.zip, then extract the files maglord_p1.ips and maglord_s1.ips from the patch archive (choose the folder according to the desired languages).

1. Create a folder named maglord_acfh
2. Unzip maglord.zip, patch 005-s1.s1 with maglord_s1.ips, and place the resulting file in maglord_acfh
3. Unzip maglordh.zip, patch 005-p1.p1 with maglord_p1_fr.ips, then copy the resulting file into maglord_acfh

Your maglord_acfh folder should contain:

• 005-s1.s1
• 005-p1.p1

Note: If you want to verify that everything is correct, here are the SHA-256 checksums for each file:
005-s1.s1 original: a7124fdb61bc9603884507cc1e92cf58de35f67c7226ff46125f511ab3393f5f
005-p1.p1 original: a315c99a9bca39fd0b37e2313717013697d2534b6f7f524cf398cc27e4278915
005-s1.s1 patched: a1b94cdf1eda89f294666a2dcd3547314eb856b6e91a6db6fb29a9b97acd0ff1
005-p1.p1 patched French/English: a376a41f7e415a05edee410629ce738310e955f243a4524f92221f3fa020abf1
005-p1.p1 patched English/Engrish: 2158117de70847a70eed789ce5289c623a60abe78feab3f0c06b5466646aafd8

Playing on MAME / Final Burn

1. In the maglord_acfh folder, create a zip archive containing 005-s1.s1 and 005-p1.p1 and name it maglordh.zip
2. Place it in MAME’s roms folder alongside the original maglord.zip (no need to modify the latter)
3. Launch the game via command line: mame maglordh. The graphical UI cannot be used because it blocks modified ROMs from launching.

Playing on Modded Switch (LayeredFS)

1. Requirement: you must have the ACA version of Magician Lord installed
2. In the maglord_acfh folder, gzip the files 005-s1.s1 and 005-p1.p1 and rename them to p1.bin.gz and s1.bin.gz respectively
3. On your Switch SD card, create the folder /atmosphere/contents/01007920038F6000/romfs
4. Copy both p1.bin.gz and s1.bin.gz there
5. Launch the game (ignore the startup error message)

Playing on Darksoft

1. In the maglord_acfh folder, rename 005-s1.s1 to srom and 005-p1.p1 to prom
2. Retrieve the Darksoft ROM, which is a folder named maglordh containing: crom0, fpga, m1rom, prom, srom, and vroma0. Replace prom and srom with the files from step 1.
3. Copy this folder to your Darksoft SD card

Playing on Analogue Pocket

1. Requirement: you must have the Neo-Geo core installed on openFPGA
2. Follow the "Playing on Darksoft" instructions above to create the ROM (a folder named maglordh)
3. Rename the folder maglordh to maglord_acfh
4. On your Analogue Pocket SD card, copy this folder to /Assets/ng/common/
5. Then go to your chosen core (e.g. /Assets/ng/Mazamars312.NeoGeo), where you’ll find many JSON files (one per game)
6. Duplicate Magician Lord (AES).json and rename it to Magician Lord (Again changes from Hell).json
7. Edit the file Magician Lord (Again changes from Hell).json and replace "data_path": "maglordh" with "data_path": "maglord_acfh"
8. In the game list, launch Magician Lord (Again changes from Hell)

Generating a .neo file to play on MisterFPGA, NeoSD, or the Geolith emulator

1. Requirement: have the tool neosdconv installed
2. Retrieve the MAME ROM maglord.zip and extract it. Get the files 005-c1.c1, 005-c2.c2, 005-c3.c3, 005-c4.c4, 005-c5.c5, 005-c6.c6, 005-m1.m1, 005-v11.v11, 005-v21.v21, and 005-v22.v22, and copy them into the maglord_acfh folder (be careful not to overwrite the two existing files)
3. From the parent directory of maglord_acfh, run the following command: