Computer Gamer


Tales Of The Arabian Nights

Publisher: Interceptor Micros
Machine: Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Computer Gamer #4

Tales Of The Arabian Nights

This started off quite well, but soon became a bit boring because it's one of those games where all the screens follow each other in a fixed sequence, so that in order to master each new screen, you have to go through all the earlier screens time and time again. And, though I enjoyed playing the first few screens, I just got so fed up with constantly having to go through them just to try and see the next screen that it soon stopped being fun.

In some of the screens you have to collect letters in the correct order to spell the word 'Arabian', whilst on others it's just a matter of surviving as you row a boat, or fly on a magic carpet and try to avoid the nasties chucked at you.

Some of the things that you have to avoid, such as an eagle or some spirits, have fixed patterns of movement, so that avoiding them simply becomes a matter of committing those patterns to memory, which makes some of the screens (such as the very first Sinbad's Ship) a bit dull and repetitive once you've mastered them.

The graphics actually look a bit dated and some of the screens remind me of the old Imagine game, Alchemist, though the sprites in Tales Of The Arabian Nights look a bit smaller than those in that game. I also think that the collision detection was a bit suspect on occasions, though mainly on the first screen, where I got killed a number of times by an eagle that looked like it was still a few pixels away.

Given an infinite lives POKE, so that you wouldn't keep having to go back to the beginning and retrace your steps, this would probably be quite an enjoyable game, but as it is, that constant trek through the early screens was too repetitive for me.