Going after the red gems or the scarab can result in more haphazard jumping and ledge grabbing if the player is not especially careful. Floating past parts of a level with the sheet can result in being hit by an enemy over a bottomless pit, or missing a crucial swinging or leaping segment – to say nothing of what happens when Aladdin loses all his lives, restarts the level, and must find the sheet all over again. The way this juxtaposition works is that these things have a difficulty decreasing-reward and a difficulty-increasing risk. But red gems are more out of the way and collecting all 70 of them is part of a hidden challenge. Lastly there’s an assortment of green and red gems green gems are easy to collect, and gathering 100 of them gives the player an extra life. Depending on which section of the wheel the Genie points at, Aladdin gets either an extra life, an extra hit point or an extra continue. The player then spins a wheel around the Genie’s finger and stops it. There’s a treasure chest containing the golden scarab from the film catching it and completing the part of the level it was found in activates a bonus stage. There’s a sheet tucked away somewhere that allows Aladdin to slow his descent when falling. Aladdin doesn’t stomp on enemies and certain ground objects – he leaps off of them, with the same gymnastic grace applied to swinging from horizontal poles, stalactites, and ropes (To simplify the bopping, apples can be collected to lob at enemies, getting rid of smaller ones like bats in the Cave of Wonders and stunning larger ones like palace guards).Įach level has three additional mechanics, which create a surprising juxtaposition. Precise jumps aren’t needed to reach a higher or out of reach surface Aladdin can just grab the edge and hoist himself up. There’s a segment in the fourth level involving the Genie – he conjures up a series of clouds, playing cards and floating rings that act as tests of the player’s skill if the player has not yet mastered the Prince of Persia stuff, they have to do it now or else they just can’t advance. Fancy, yes, but the whole game relies on a mastery of their precision. The horizontal pole a few frames later is there to swing from, as a vertical pole later on is there to jump on and a ledge later on is there to hang from these three things dictate Aladdin’s Prince of Persia-style nuances, stylization designed to re-organize the flow of all the platforming. The barrel in front of Aladdin at the start is there for him to jump over, because this is a platformer. The game’s mechanics and rules, in pure Capcom style, are taught to the player in the first level, in the bright sandy streets of Agrabah. There’s no right or wrong answer as to which game is superior of course, but Aladdin Capcom stands out because of its own captivating aesthetics and the Herculean strength of its gameplay. Virgin Aladdin and Capcom Aladdin have been roundly debated, and support for the former owes to, among other things, an unprecedented collaboration between Virgin and real in-house Disney animators. The game has been in strong contention with Sega’s own video game adaptation, made in collaboration with Virgin Interactive and released around the same time. Capcom is why games like DuckTales and The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse are celebrated video game experiences, and that same line of reasoning applies here.Ĭapcom’s Disney deal expired with their adaptation of Walt Disney Pictures’ Aladdin, which was coincidentally released around the same time the film debuted on home video. From between 19, Disney properties were put in the hands of game development masters people who saw vast potential in the franchises given to them and continuously realized it. Early in Michael Eisner’s run at the Walt Disney Company, the rights to adapt Disney properties for Nintendo consoles was secured by Capcom. Outliers such as Demon’s Crest and Street Fighter II Turbo have their own place in the Super Nintendo canon, but the Trio is made of games that to me show the communal and unique way Capcom was an absolutely first-class game developer.Īladdin is the conclusion, and pretty much the culmination, of the first halcyon era of licensed Disney games. Squadron are part of a group of Super Nintendo titles I like to call “Capcom’s Undisputable Trio”. This game, along with Mega Man X and U.N.
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