Snoopy's Magic Show (Game Boy) review "Balls to the Wall"

Woodstock and its kind have been kidnapped by Snoopy's brother, Spike! Maybe. Confusingly, it's taking place during a magic show, so it all just might be an act. Perhaps? More specifically, the objective of Snoopy's Magic Show is to guide the titular beagle through several square arenas in a top-down viewpoint and nab all Woodstocks present. Opposing your goal are some of the most threatening beings in existence: balls. These round objects, often working in a pair, will continually move throughout each stage, bouncing off of anything they come into contact with. As is the case with many an oldschool video game, if they collide with Snoopy, you immediately lose a life and restart the stage.

As silly as this premise seems at first, it's actually very easy to get hit by a ball when you bring into account how many things are taking up space within these 8 x 9 grid arenas. In earlier stages, half of the arena is already filled with solid blocks that you need to walk around, not to mention the tighter spacing lends to more erratic movement by the balls hitting stuff much quicker. Often maze-like in structure, these can lead to some goofy "deaths" if you're not perceptive. For instance, you could run into one ball heading towards you in a condensed corridor, and when you try to retreat, you'll unfortunately meet the other ball entering through the opposite side.

Even then, the early stages are pretty easy to get through, like within a minute or more each with a few lives lost; at this current pace, getting through all 60 stages sounds attainable in 70-some minutes. But the challenge escalates, thankfully, with the introduction of new obstacles and how they're implemented. Quickly, you are presented with speed tiles, which propels the white-furred, black-spotted dog forward in the specified direction. Another one is a block that appears and disappears at intervals, and then there are teleport tiles, which are pretty self-explanatory. Of the three, the vanishing block sounds the most menacing, with the other two coming off like benefits.

However, you'll realize all of them are equally devious in execution.

The dread of the speed tiles become apparent when they start filling arenas connected to one another en masse, with the catch being that once you step on one, you can't escape until you reach the final connected tile. In some stages, simply stepping on a speed strip by accident will fling you to the opposite side of an arena, and you have to carefully make your way back while dodging those deadly balls. As for teleport tiles, yes they bring you to a different location, but... they can also teleport the balls. So if you time it poorly, you can teleport into a place with a linear corridor, and then be chased by a ball into a dead end mere seconds later.

Sometimes you'll deal with one of these tiles or blocks individually and sometimes the devs like messing with you by doing all three. What's interesting is that sometimes you're presented with a literal maze to navigate, while other times everything is laid out like a puzzle needing to be solved. For instance, in a specific stage every Woodstock is stuck inside a speed tile "wall," where simply stepping on those tiles will push you back out. The solution? Turns out some solid blocks can be pushed once over. However, simply discovering a moveable block won't solve the puzzle, as there are varying factors. Which direction should you push it? Will pushing it in the wrong direction cause a soft lock? Is it a red herring?

The most diabolical thing, though, is that you're still expected to stay composed and solve a puzzle while these sentient round objects are constantly seconds away from rolling into your pup. And you gotta do it within a very brief time limit. The hilarious part? The ball movements aren't 100% random. It's something you don't notice early on, but becomes obvious when you're trying to perform "pixel perfect" avoidance in cramped spaces. When you think the ball is going to make a big bounce in the opposite direction, it will conveniently turn towards your "general direction" with a subtle curved motion. There's even moments where it just decides to bounce off thin air, but that typically happens in the late stages.

A lot of the things described so far probably sound more overwhelming than they should be. You're correct... to an extent. You will lose lots and lots and lots of lives the closer you get to the 60th stage, and depending on how much skill and luck is on your side, finishing everything can take anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes or more. So what's preventing this from being a torturous experience? Snoopy's Magic Show is very generous with its life and continue systems. Unless you're really bad at the game, you're typically given an extra life per stage and when you lose everything, the game allows for unlimited continues from where you left off. On top of that, there's even a password system!

Some of the latter stages are so comically tough that the entire challenge revolves around completing them through piecemeal. But that's also part of its allure. Is it perfect in execution? No: some stages are so questionably-designed, that you wonder if they could be completed without luck. But that's why the punishment system being so gracious works in the game's favor. When you die, you're immediately back in the action, and it doesn't hurt that the stages are short in terms of design. It's fully suited for a pick-up-and-play handheld experience. Imagine if there was a more asinine system, like being forced to continue at the beginning of a batch of stages or, worse, you're sent to the very beginning after using up limited continues; the game would have been miserable.

It does make you wonder if the devs realized that the stages themselves were challenging enough and knew they had to go easy with the continue system... or did they do this to make it as user-friendly as possible due to the Snoopy license? Either way, the two work well together to create an entertaining, time-wasting product for Nintendo's portable, doing enough to keep you going without it truly being frustrating nor amazing. Now if 60 stages doesn't feel like enough then don't worry, because in order to fully beat the game, you need to complete a second loop while dealing with something even more nefarious: Spike. If you thought two semi-seeking balls was a lot, try dealing with one bouncy ball and a dog that's actually trying to track Snoopy!

Community review by dementedhut (August 31, 2025) Hocus pocus.