Tales of the Arabian Nights looks interesting! The Arab theme is different. I imagine turbans and scimitars and fireballs and flying leaps!
We need to talk about the cover:
I will get to be on a flying carpet? And the game has ULTRA LOAD and SPEECH?! Awesome! That being said, why does my dude look so damn evil? His face is giving me full-on witch realness. The pointy blue hat is not helping matters. Neither are his hands and arms, reaching up towards the sky in paroxysms of wicked joy. I can't imagine that the princess would feel very comforted if this one showed up in her chamber.
Status: Played it
Thoughts: The digitized speech is awesome! It was a pleasant surprise. It shows what the C64 can do when its power is harnessed properly. And I like the music as well.
But once again, the controls are "stiff as a board"! If only this game remembered the "light as a feather" portion as well! My character was a squat, heavy and square blob. He moved like one, too. The dude was very angular.
Movement onscreen has a case of pixel-hunt-ladder syndrome, where unless you are standing on the EXACT pixel for a ladder or rope, you won't move up or down at all. The seconds that are required for me to take tiny steps left or right to reposition myself will often prove to be fatal. Whenever a game has a loop of flying enemies that dive towards you and they endlessly respawn, timing is key.
The horizontal jump distance was surprisingly far. Unfortunately, the immediate death from a tiny fall is quite reminiscent of Spelunker. Tiny fall distances discourage exploration and using a character freely. I loved the mechanic of having to grab the gold jars in a specific order so that I could spell out "ARABIAN". It adds a nice layer of strategy. But my character sprite was way too big and would often completely obscure whatever surface or object I was interacting with. It also made the screen feel weirdly crowded. The cannon, multiple bird types, squids, and mostly unsafe jumps worked together to create a minimum of movement for my character. I was pinned down so often that it felt like I was playing chess!
This is another game that absolutely should be revisited and remade. I love single-screen platformers. Just give me a character that is fun to control!
Rating: 2.0 out of 4 Flying Carpets
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