Magic Sword: Heroic Fantasy ARCADE

Magic Sword: Heroic Fantasy is Capcom’s 1990 arcade game, casting one or two players as sword-wielding heroes climbing fifty floors of the Dragon Tower to confront the dark lord Drokmar and destroy a world-conquering magic orb.

Along the way, players can free one of eight captive allies — including an Amazon, Wizard, Thief, and Lizard Man — held behind locked doors throughout each floor, temporarily swapping to their unique weapons and abilities. Its two-player cooperative climb was the game’s biggest draw, a feature the 1992 SNES port notably dropped, leaving the arcade original the definitive way to experience it.