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Released In: 1989 The evil wizard Sabaron has taken over Arabia and only a descendant of the legendary magician Isfa can defeat him. You are that descendant, but there's one small problem: Sabaron has stripped you of magical powers, erased your memory, and thrown you into a different time period. Also, he captured your girlfriend, Princess Scheherazade. The Time Spirit Coronya finds you and brings you back to defeat Sabaron and his minions; she also joins you in battle. As you fight your way through the game, you will visit different time periods, relearn your forgotten spells and align yourself with an eclectic mix of fighters that includes a robot, a genie, a flying monkey, and a one-eyed monster. Featuring both real-time and turn-based combat, The Magic of Scheherazade is truly one of the most unique RPGs for the NES. Syd Lexia: From the moment I saw this game in Nintendo Power, I knew I had to play it. When I tracked it down at a local video store, I was not disappointed. The Magic of Scheherazade is a great RPG and you should give it a try. The time travel dynamic was pretty damn cool and way ahead of its time; Nintendo would use a similar concept in A Link To The Past with much success. One of the most interesting game mechanics was that in addition to the typical RPG allies who join your party as part of the storyline, you could also hire troopers to aid you in the turn-based battles. I really don't know why this game never caught on as much as some of the other NES RPGs, it's absolutely fantastic. Valdronius: This game is an early venture into the RPG genre, that came out around the same time as Final Fantasy. So why has this game faded into obscurity while Final Fantasy has produced well over a dozen titles? Well, to start, it has arguably the most unwieldy title of any NES game. Aside from that, it tries to use both real-time and turn-based fighting. The real-time fights are fast and straight forward, but if an enemy runs into you, he'll bounce back and run into you again, depleting more of your hit points. This may happen several times before you can reposition yourself and kill it. In the turn based fighting, you don't get to pick which enemy to attack, just which group of enemies. So while you don't end up attacking dead foes like you sometimes do in Final Fantasy, you can't fight strategically, eliminating enemies one by one. It was an interesting concept for a game, just poorly executed. Dr. Jeebus: I don't really remember this game at all, but Syd keeps insisting it was awesome. |
