Disney’s Aladdin (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Aladdin might just be one of Disney’s best animated films. With top notch animation, every song being memorable, and some amazing comedy that mixes dialogue and slapstick thanks to the talents of Robin Williams as the Genie and Gilbert Gottfried as Iago the parrot, there’s a lot to love in it, with everything held together by a story that keeps things moving along. A video game adaptation has a lot to work with, and while the quality of a film has never been a guarantee that the game based on it will be good, Disney’s Aladdin on Sega Genesis might also be one of the best game adaptations of a Disney animated feature.

Disney’s Aladdin follows the story of the 1992 film pretty closely, interspersing small moments of text between its ten levels of play. The romance with Princess Jasmine is deemphasized, the game instead focusing more on Aladdin’s personal journey from a street rat just scraping by to finding the Genie’s lamp and trying to take down the sultan of Agrabah’s traitorous vizier Jafar. The small amount of levels does mean that this journey keeps its settings diverse to make up for it. You do spend a bit more time in areas like the streets of Agrabah and the sultan’s palace, but your adventure will have you escaping the sultan’s dungeon, exploring the mystical Cave of Wonders, escaping from the lava-filled caverns after, and even entering the Genie’s lamp to see a world filled with kooky constructs built by his magic. While these ensure the gameplay keeps having new concepts thrown at it, the music and graphics deserve their own mention here as well. The wonderful music from the film is transferred to the Sega Genesis’s sound font very well, but even when it isn’t using recognizable tunes as background music, Disney’s Aladdin has some surprisingly catchy new compositions such as the desert stage’s Camel Jazz. Perhaps more impressive though is the dedication to expressive animation. Attacking royal guards will have them react in exaggerated manners, and even when they’re alone they’ll move in interesting ways like the buff guard taunting you or the fat guard pigging out on food and even shrieking in surprise if you nail him right with an apple and cause his pants to drop. There are a lot of fluid animations for even the smallest enemies, but even the backgrounds are given some extra love despite being mostly static. Plenty of Disney Easter eggs are scattered around like Mickey Mouse ears hanging near an oasis and the dungeon containing a surprise cameo of Sebastian the crab from Little Mermaid in chains. Even when it’s not telling jokes, details are definitely emphasized, even when it might mean a stage hazard like retractable wall spikes or a small enemy like a bat might be a bit hard to spot because of it.

As platforming stages, the levels are definitely packed tightly with interesting obstacles. While you are often trying to get from the left side of the stage to the right, the path there is rarely straightforward, many levels requiring the player to overcome one vertical section to get to the next part or having it take place across a series of horizontal rows. Sometimes the screen real estate is just barely able to show you where to jump next, but for the most part there aren’t many dangerous blind jumps, the few cases where you might make one involving Aladdin being under some other external pressure like outrunning a boulder or trying to leave a sinking platform that means you don’t have the time to scout perfectly. For the most part your paths are clear but not at all simple. Some levels will involve you needing to find certain items to open the way to the end, and nearly every stage has some new way of getting around or major hazard to worry about. The dungeon involves plenty of chain climbing and hopping from platforms that pop in and out of the wall, the Cave of Wonders requires you to climb across ceilings, and the lava cavern has the player trying to avoid being crushed by rolling rocks. The carpet rides that appear in a few levels aren’t too engaging since you just stay in place and swing your sword if trouble gets close, but most of the levels mix their stage-specific ideas with plenty of tricky jumps and deviously placed enemies. There is one big change to the formula though with a stage where you fly the magic carpet through a lava tunnel, the player guiding it up and down to avoid crashing, this being more of a reflex challenge as you must respond to the up and down cues to survive.

Aladdin packs two ways to deal with any opposition he meets. The sword swing is the simplest despite Aladdin needing to be up close to use it, many enemies designed to be dangerous if you space yourself poorly when you approach. Bats move in odd patterns, weapon wielding guards can clink blades with you, but even more troublesome are foes who hurl things at you, knife jugglers and gem throwing statues able to pester you from afar. However, your sword is also handy at deflecting such attacks, the player even able to send them back at the enemy if they’re positioned right. A more reliable means of taking down far away enemies though is throwing apples, the fruit scattered around the levels to serve as your ammunition. A little weaker than your sword, they can still get the job done with most enemies, and the bosses actually heavily rely on apple-throwing to take them down. Bosses essentially come in two designs, those being mobile foes who stop in place to get slashed with your sword and stationary ones who harass you from afar that you’re meant to pester with apples. Finding the right spots or having plenty of apples can make these battles fairly easy, but if you can’t get the pattern down or are low on apples they can be a touch more challenging. No matter how many apples you have though, enemies are still deviously placed so that you’ll often have to find a safe way to approach before you can deal with them, the challenging platforms made all the more interesting by the constant consideration of how you’ll hit enemies waiting to take advantage of sloppy movement.

Hearts and checkpoints are distributed pretty well to allow the player to take a few licks on their journey, but there are instant death hazards like falling into water or failing the magic carpet escape. However, besides apples, there are less common collectibles that can be used to increase your lives count and earn extra continues. Gems can be used at peddler’s stands hidden around stages to buy them, and Genie faces are used for extra spins on an after-level roulette where you can get different prizes. There are also bonus games where you can play as Aladdin’s monkey friend Abu and try to survive, but these seem almost more built around getting points for a high score than the goodies that appear during them. The opportunities to build up your apple reserve and earn extra lives do keep the main game manageable and add an extra consideration to your navigation, especially since many little secrets are hidden in the levels where looking in a suspicious place might reward you with something useful.

THE VERDICT: Aladdin’s adventure on the Sega Genesis is nearly as good as his stint on the silver screen, the care for music and animation translating into a game that doesn’t compromise its look in designing interesting platforming levels. Disney’s Aladdin has a few small stumbles like its simplistic boss fights, but even with just ten levels to experience, it packs them tight with a range of platform concepts and enemies who emphasize a need for smart level navigation. Progress is definitely earned even with the health and life pickups keeping it from being too difficult, but the game mostly finds its appeal through how much thought goes into many of its small details. Your sword and apples have a different set of strengths and weaknesses that keep getting tested while the area designs keep finding new contexts for your simple movement controls. It looks good and it feels good, so it’s not surprising this game came out great.

An so, I give Disney’s Aladdin for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…

A GREAT rating. Sometimes touted as one of the best licensed games ever made, Disney’s Aladdin for Sega Genesis definitely has plenty of traits that make it not too wild of a claim, but the lovingly crafted animations and catchy music can sometimes make it easy to miss certain traits. The straightforward boss fights aren’t bad per se, but the game does have a few moments that feel a touch too simple such as the magic carpet escape. In a ten level game some moments of acceptable quality will keep it from being an overall amazing experience, but there is definitely a lot to love outside of just the stylish execution of the title. Stages brimming with small challenges to overcome that ask you to both move right and attack intelligently mean that you’re always being engaged with except when you decide to just stop to rest before the next challenge or go back to look around for some goodies. A few suspect jumps can’t weigh down a game that otherwise has tight jumping and plenty of different ways of getting around a level, with each stage having a different feel to them even if you viewed them solely for their role in gameplay. It gets the most from its small handful of levels and then packs in the extra game space with lively animations to make things both interesting to play and interesting to see in motion.

Disney’s Aladdin has plenty of fun little touches designed to please a Disney fan, but fans of platformers will find just as much to like about the way its levels are laid out. It’s a game that does a lot with a little but never feels like its straining itself to make use of them, the emphasis on extra touches even making things like camels that can kill enemies with their spit when you jump on them nice touches rather than the mostly useless features they technically are. It can be easy to wish for a few minor improvements to it, but Disney’s Aladdin is definitely worthy of the praise it gets for being an enjoyable game that represents its licensed property well.