I’ve started The Magic of Scheherazade for NES, one of my bucket-list games that I always wanted back in the day but never got, first, because it was an uncommon game before Amazon and, second, because I had no clue how to pronounce its name to ask for it, certainly an oversight by the developers in an industry aimed at kids. I’ve gotten far enough into it (about an hour and a half) to give some thoughts.

In a related pronunciation fail, I had the flu in second grade and asked my mom to rent me a game whose name had “castle” and “quest” in it. I meant of course Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, but I was unable to pronounce both “Castlevania” and “Simon”, and the workaround netted me… CastleQuest, a puzzle-adventure game where you collect different colored keys to open doors. Sort of an early Apogee game in key resource-management, only Legend of Zelda. Or something, it’s been 30 years. I hated it at the time as it was the biggest disappointment of my gaming career, but I’ve always wanted to return to it on its own terms.

The Magic of Scheherazade marries Legend of Zelda or really Startropics (as you have a jump and different spells and weapons) and Dragon Warrior gameplay in a blended RPG with common experience/levels and “rupees”. In the Dragon Warrior fights, you have a stable of djinni companions you recruit by beating bosses that you can have fight along with you in a user-chosen party. Right now I only have the initial companion with the weakest attack, making DW fights unnecessarily long and tedious. This afternoon I’m forging ahead to get the second companion, who should pack more of a punch.

One thing I was really enamored with as a kid was the Arabian Nights setting in retrospect in the time of the movie Aladdin and the PC game Prince of Persia 2. I grew up romanticizing the Orient and they grew up to have my sympathies irl. All these woke ninnies complaining about cultural and historical inaccuracies in Arabian Nights settings can pound sand, no pun intended. Quest for Glory 2 for PC and both eras of Prince of Persia and the relevant Assassin’s Creed games have explored the setting in the history of games. I understand it was politically radioactive for a while but jeez.