Well it’s no Aladdin…
My last post was on Arabian Fight which Sega created to go head to head with Arabian Magic which was developed by Taito. Not sure why Sega thought they needed to go up against this boring ass game but they did. To top it off they actually didn’t do anything to make it any better than the competition. If you thought Arabian Fight was boring well, you know nothing Jon Snow!
You can choose one of the four heroes and I picked Lisa the female character because that’s just what I do. Lisa has great magic and is fast but takes a lot of damage, Rassid is the most well balanced, Sinbad is the slowest but can really knock enemies out and Afshaal is the tank of the group. The move set isn’t as limited compared to “Arabian Fight” and you can even block which is nice. The magic comes from power ups which are inside treasure chests which are very visible in the levels. The cool part is getting the magic lamp which unleashes a genie with a very strong attack, as you progress through the game the magic lamp contains the defeated bosses which you defeated. The only issue with magic lamp is this very strange sound that the genie makes, it sounds like he’s trippin’ off Hagagit.
The games levels are beautifully done and very unique, they range from Arabian markets, magic carpet rides and inside vases. The enemies range from regular soldiers, wizards, dancing ladies and musclebound men who are the mini-bosses in the game. The music is not good at all and the sound effects are even worse. I pretty much only played this game with Lisa and beat with her but I did try out the other three heroes. I only used the specials during the boss fights. I found the game to be a bit on the easy side especially with two players, compared to other games in this genre. I also had to put my headphones on and blast my own music because after a while it became annoying. The game play is poor, the controls are clunky and the hit detection was wacky.
Overall I didn’t really care for this game and it’s a shame because there was potential but it was executed poorly. Sega’s “Arabian Fight” also holds the same fate and that’s even more surprising considering their track record and creating their own Arabian themed game a year later. Unfortunately Taito dropped the ball here but they did very well with “Growl”, “Dungeon Magic” and my personal favorite “Ninja Warriors”. I would play those again, this one, no thank you.
Developed by Taito
Published by Taito
Released in 1992
Rating – 3 out of 10
The Chronicles of a Gamer 