Colonel Brown, a villainous 19th-century gentleman with a top hat and an eyeglass, is up to no good. Hiding behind a toy factory, he, with the help of a crazy professor, created a solution that turns any living creature into a terrible monster. After torturing all the available critters, Brown begins larger testing of the mutogenic fluid. First, he decides to take over the city of North Sterlington with the help of vile green mutants.
What a blessing that, quite by chance, the blond Marco, kicking the ball, was walking near the factory. He witnessed a terrible picture: Brown's assistant poured the solution into the city sewer. Marco's ball, getting into this mixture, became magical. And now, armed with a super ball, our hero is able to disrupt the colonel's vile plans.
Marko's Magic Football is a fun game without any challenge. We run, collect bonuses, fight off the ball from enemies. Good, unpretentious music and high-quality graphics will leave only a pleasant impression after the game. I especially want to note the pseudo-3D effects with layers and animation (at the level of Pinoccio and later platformers) - this is really cool. In total, the game has 13 large levels, the action will take place in the suburbs, the basement, the sewer, the forest, the circus, and finally, the toy factory. American releases for all consoles from Sega were called simply Marko.
The aunt with the camera is actually a save point, you can't kill her (and I tried). Unlike Soccer Kid, there is no need to paranoidly exhaust yourself by rolling the ball. It can always be "summoned" to the foot. On the net, I also found criticisms of non-standard management. European versions offer a choice of 4 languages. I will not say, but, depending on the passage of the game, you can observe more than one ending!
The 8-bit version is naturally worse, but in terms of graphics for its "weight category" it looks very decent. It has 8 levels, and some of them are very tedious, you will need a clever handling of the joystick. During the gameplay, the music does not play, red flags are save points, an order of magnitude less animation, Marco is very slow, and some monsters look different.
Mega Drive: excellent animation, up to flies over the garbage can, full-fledged large levels, Marco's lethargy was "cured" due to the run button. Some of the backgrounds are too pixelated - are they really taken from the 8-bit original and stretched???
Sega CD: Similar to MD. There is a short cartoon intro, CD quality music in the game.
SNES: In general, it's similar to MD. There are more animations in the screensavers, but in the game some little things are missing and the picture resolution is less. The music is head and shoulders above.