Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

It’s Magic has the kind of opening that makes its priorities clear fast. You control Tommy, a tomcat stranded away from the Dream Islands, through side-view stages where you need every diamond and a magic potion before you can move on. It is not a platformer built around merely surviving the route from left to right; it asks you to sweep the level properly, and that gives even early stages a more deliberate feel.

The potion requirement is where the game becomes more demanding. A potion appears only after you kill a particular monster, while Tommy fights by shooting magic. Since the relevant enemy is not a mystery that changes with a new game, careful play and memory matter. You are encouraged to learn a stage’s layout, work out what must die, and make sure you have not left diamonds behind before considering the job done.

Freely scrolling stages give you room to explore in both directions, but the enemy behavior can make backtracking prickly. Monsters that have not been killed return in their established spots, so leaving threats alive can turn a retreat into repeated trouble. That is a fair fit for the game’s old-school arcade bent, though it can become frustrating when you are retracing ground for one missed collectible. Boss fights before leaving each world provide a useful punctuation mark after all that cleanup.

The strongest reason to play is that clear, compact loop of exploring, collecting, fighting, and checking your work. If you enjoy 2D platform games that expect patience and a little route learning, Tommy’s quest has a satisfying sense of completion. If you mainly want fast, forgiving forward momentum, the insistence on total collection may feel more like homework than adventure.

Graphics

The game uses a 2D side-view format, with stages scrolling freely in both directions as Tommy searches for diamonds, potions, and monsters. The fantasy setup gives the action a suitably magical frame: a cat protagonist firing magic at enemies while moving through separate worlds toward the Dream Islands.

Story

The story is light, but it gives the collecting a better excuse than a generic treasure hunt. Tommy wanted to become the first to leave the Dream Islands, took work with a wizard to make that happen, and then used the wizard’s spell book and crystal ball while the wizard was away.

His escape goes wrong immediately when the crystal ball breaks in the outside world. Recovering its pieces and gathering magic potions becomes the route home, which neatly ties the game’s goals to Tommy’s mistake rather than dropping him into a quest without a reason.

There is a mildly mischievous charm to a hero whose predicament comes from taking an ill-advised magical shortcut. Don’t come in expecting a story-heavy fantasy tale; this is a straightforward setup designed to push you through worlds and stages. Still, Tommy’s desire to return home gives the final objective more warmth than the usual abstract platform-game finish line.

Overall Experience

It’s Magic is a compact, traditional platform game with an unusually strict definition of finishing a level. The requirement to gather all diamonds and trigger each potion turns every stage into a small search problem, not just a sequence of jumps and enemies. That extra structure is the game’s biggest strength when you are in the mood to be thorough.

Its rougher edge is the same design choice viewed from the other side. Missing a diamond or leaving the needed monster behind means more searching, and reappearing enemies can make that search less pleasant. The game asks you to slow down, remember where you have been, and accept that progress may sometimes come from method rather than reflex.

For Commodore 64 fans with affection for side-scrolling fantasy platformers, it is worth a look for its focused objectives and world-by-world boss progression. Give it a chance if you like clearing a map completely before moving on. Skip it if collectible cleanup and hostile backtracking drain the fun from a platformer; It’s Magic rarely hides what it wants from you, but it definitely expects you to follow through.

Retro Replay Score

6.5/10