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Disney's Aladdin
  GBAPlatformerUC  
  opened by paleface at 04:01:33 11/20/04  
  last modified by paleface at 12:27:18 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=GBA; cat=Platformer; reg=NA]
           
I have got to stop buying games based purely on nostalgia, particularly when that nostalgia is just plain wrong. I don't think I ever played this game before.
 
I might have played the Genesis one or something. This GBA version is a port of the SNES Aladdin, or so I'm told. All I know is, the first thing I wondered after starting the game was "where's my sword?" 'Cause you don't get a sword here: you get apples. Deadly apples? No. Tasty apples. At best they stun someone. Your trained monkey eats them for snacks.
 
So without a sword, what do you do with all the big baddies coming after your harem-pants-clad butt? Sic your monkey on them? Unfortunately no, he's useless. You dodge them, that's what. And in between dodging, you jump and flip off a lot of platforms. Yahoo!
 
The game is trying to be a slightly sprier version of Prince of Persia in the platforming sense, and I'm talking here about the old 2D PoP with the nice animation. You can see it when Aladdin steps forward of pulls himself up a ledge. Problem is, that kind of carefully choreographed animation lends itself, at least here, to any slight turn forcing Aladdin to take a full step in that direction, or in him taking a long ass time to pull himself up a ledge--time during which enemy arrows or scorpions (the wall-climbing kind) get perilously close to our apple-hurling hero.
 
There are a lot of death pits in the game. A ridiculous amount, really. I'm all for a few here and there to keep you on your toes, but not to far from the start the levels here devolve into (quite literally) doing handstand backflips off little points of rock sticking up between bottomless pits. This isn't that fun, especially when if you don't remember from the last time you died, you charge ahead and flip right into a bat or something who comes on from offscreen, causing you to plummet to your doom. Again. Due to the involved yet rather stodgey animation, timing of button-presses between hand-plants can be dicey, and there's every chance that you'll push the button at just the wrong split-second, causing you to plummet to your doom. Again.
 
Oh and there's a "Sprint" button. This sounds good until you realize that it means that if you want to be moving at any decent kind of speed, you have to be holding a button down. So you basically hold Sprint down the entire game, and your finger gets sore. This is silly.
 
So jumping puzzles galore, no sword, not-so-great animation and control, music that sounds like a bad carnival--this isn't working out too well. If I were smarter I would not have bought this game. Now it's going to sit in some dark recess of my shelf, and maybe once I a while I'll scowl at it.
 
  paleface 04:07:14 11/20/04
           
Download added: sucker.jpg (12073 bytes)
  "That is what you call "sucker bait.""
 
The game is mad about having you collect gems. They're scattered all over the levels, usually someplace where you have to go out of your way to jump and get them. What are they for? Actually, I don't know. I suppose you probably get an extra life if you get a hundred of them, or something. But I stopped caring, 'specially when I realized that they like to put them in places leading to you either taking a hit or even dying.
    
downloads:
· boss.jpg
· bow.jpg
· sucker.jpg

 
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