Over a Thousand Nights... every day! Let's Play... The Magic of Scheherazade!

My, but it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I decided to mark my glorious return to the hallowed and ancient and sacred art of playing NES games, supplying screen shots of them, and then writing captions relevant to those pictures by playing one of those games that everyone seems to love and acknowledge the greatness of, even if they’ve never played it. It is also the game with the hardest to spell title I think I’ve ever seen. I speak, of course, of The Magic of Scheherazade. A title which, I’m surprised to note, is fully understood by the spellchecker of Microsoft Word: 2003.

For those of you not “In the Know”, The Magic of Scheherazade is one of those games that came out in the tail-end of the 80’s, when the NES seemed to be simply lousy with awesome games. I learned of it the same way I learned of most of the games I’ve LPed, by reading The Game Players Encyclopedia of Nintendo Games. In those 4 pages dedicated to MoS, I saw sprawling vistas, massive bosses, and a combination of real-time and turn-based combat.

That last bit being the salient point.

So I rented it, and got as far as the second world before having to return it to the gas station, from whence it came.

But now, in this new perilous Computer Age, I shall return of the lands loosely (incredibly loosely) based on The Arabian Nights. And you’re going to join me. Since that’s what you clicked on the thread for, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Let’s Go Magic us some Scheherazade’s, Y’all!



Okay, firstly, we have to chose the text speed. You’re reading this screen shot form, so whatever I choose has no bearing on you. I’m impatient, however, and will be selecting “fast”.



And now we get to name our be-turbaned hero. According to nebulously defined sources, the guys name is Isfa, but I’ve never been one for playing by established continuity, so I’ll name him something better. Let’s see, the game is loosely based on The Arabian Nights, and one of the stories in that (as I recall) involved Sinbad (the sailor, not the comedian). Sinbad had a bunch of movies in the 60’s and 70’s, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. And my favorite Ray Harryhausen movie is Jason and the Argonauts, starring Todd Armstrong. We only have the four letters to work with, so we’ll whittle that down and name our hero… AMST!

…Todd might have made more sense, but I named my bed, so now I’m going to have to kill bees in it.

All illustrations are provided by Talking Times own Mr. Loki, incidentally.



The Evil Magician, Sabaron summoned them from the dark world for his evil desire. One brave magician attempted to fight him, but he failed, his sweetheart was taken and all his memories erased. He was even thrown into a different time period. Do you remember this? The Young Magician is YOU!



How could I remember this when you just said that the wizards memories were erased. Anyway, the TL/DR version is that the games plot is pretty nearly identical to Samurai Jacks.



After the brief opening narration, Armstrong is accosted by this little Temporal Cat thing. It asks me to help fight Sabaron. But no, Armstrong was enjoying his leisurely time spent in-between centuries, and would rather not risk life and limb trying to defeat an evil wizard. Thanks anyway, but you’re on your own Coronya.

Naturally, this is one of those “But Thou Must” situations, so we have no choice but to go with Schr�dinger here. Maaaaaaaaan.

If nothing else, Sabaron already nearly killed Todd Armstrong, erased his mind, kidnapped his sweetheart and tossed him outside of time. Kind of hard for his to do anything worse.



Okay, one more bit before we can actually get to the game part. The Arabian Class is kind of like the games job system. Or perhaps difficulty level, depending on which section you’re currently playing. You can change your class whenever you want during the game, so choosing poorly here won’t screw you.

Fighters get massive physical strength, but don’t get a projectile weapon until later in the game. They’re useful for dealing with regular enemies.
Magicians get all kinds of long range and magical attacks, but are pretty lousy with swords. They’re handy for taking on bosses who usually remain out of reach of your sword.
Saints have wimpy swords and limited access to magic. They suck.

Since it’s going to be a while before our first boss, Armstrong opts to be a fighter. Besides, you don’t get a name like Armstrong if you’re not going to be going around, showing how strong your arms are.



Now that Coronya knows my name, and preference to Sword-ing things over magic-ing them (or staring at them fretfully until they feel awkward and leave), She sends me willy-nilly into a window sitting the middle of the void of space.





Landing in the middle of Mooroon, Armstrong shucks of my input and heads into the big impressive, semi-chromatic palace directly in front of him.




Yeah, we’ve already had this whole song and dance with the Time/Space cat, thanks.



Yes, your sweetheart Princess Scheherazade, too. TODD ARMSTRONG, Find Sabaron and defeat him. You’re the only hope for Arabia. You can do it! First talk to the townspeople

So I guess the titular Princess wasn’t the only one kidnapped by Sabaron. Well, if the first Princess doesn’t want to marry you, you might as well kidnap another one. You have to admire the guys tenacity, if nothing else.

Anyhow, that’s all that the jabbering there is for an intro, so we head out and start adventuring in earnest!

Most of the villagers don’t have anything important to say, and even then it tends to get repeated, so instead I present a montage of anything remotely important:




I’m assuming that a ‘Mashroob’ is supposed to be a Mushroom, but I’m not willing to stake any money on that.



Okay, enough chit-chat, let’s stalk the lands and kill the crap out of low-level enemies!



Not too long after heading out, Todd Armstrong comes across a bunch of poorly concealed highwaymen! They wander around in seemingly random patterns and are easily killed with a single sword strike. One had the clever idea of dodging Todd Armstrongs furious sword strikes by plowing into him and took off a good chunk of his HP before dying.



After wandering around for way, WAY too long, we come across out next monsters: Large, green flies. They float lazily around the screen in a slow, yet erratic, pattern and die quickly and without fuss.

It’s kind of hard not to like the “schwing” and crumbly noises you get for attack and killing monsters. Not as great as the Sword Lasers from The Legend of Zelda, but still quite appealing.



Almost immediately afterward, both groups of enemies attack at one. One of the Bandits drops a coin though, helping to pay for the inevitable Bread to restore Todd Armstrongs depleted life.



After murdering a few dozen bandits, Todd Armstrong receives his first level-up. Besides the usual HP and MP boosts, he also memorized Pampoo, which continues the games fine tradition of giving everything the worst name ever. Pampoo is a healing spell, by the way. In case you couldn’t tell from the name.



Sadly, one of the stupid-fast bandits collision damaged Todd Armstrong to death, costing him a precious 1-up! Yeah, the game has a finite amount of lives. Bit of a knock against it, that.



Todd Armstrong also finds some leaping, projectile-launching fishmen. He can’t reach them with his teeny-tiny sword so he runs.



In between taking severe bee-hits and stabbing the hell out of everything within arms reach, Todd Armstrong reaches this lakeside, which prompts Coronya to speak for the first time since sending him to Mooroon.



Oprin causes a staircase to appear. In the middle of a field. It can only be invoked when Coronya mentions casting it, which is helpful. And beneath those stairs?



A cryptic hint from a woman who lives in the dirt. Handy.



And right next to that is the next town. Which is as good a place as any to end the first update, I think.

I have this game somewhere, but never got far in it. Looking forward to following along.

I've never heard of this game but it looks quite interesting!

This subforum is but a shadow of its normal self when OctoPrime is not doing an LP. His NES adventures breathe life into the rest of our humdrum activities.

Huhh, I always thought this was like Solstice and Equinox for some reason.

A Magic of Scheherazade LP? Alright! When you switch to the Saint at a particular point, you gotta try doing some of the things that the wimpy plot-advancing class can't do.

I am excited. How excited? So excited.

This game has the most schizophrenic design I've ever encountered in any game, ever.

This LP has helped me learn something new! Looking at the screenshots, I was a little confused by how green everything was. But as it turns out, Iran is much more verdant than I thought! Learning is fun!

I've tried more than once to like this game, but never succeeded. Few things sound more up my alley than an Arabian Nights-style imitation of Zelda 1, but Scheherezade doesn't come close to that standard.

Ps. I've always thought Scheherezade is a lovely name, though the alternate translation "Shahrazad" is a lot easier to spell.

I was disappointed to learn the game wasn't about a cold-war era nuclear-equipped walking battle tank.

Welp, that does it. Sabaron will forever be voiced in my head by the late, great Mako now.

I'm looking forward to this LP. I have vague memories of renting this as a kid and not getting as far into the game as Senior Cephelopod has in the first update.

Yeah, most portrayals of the Middle East are in the desert-y regions of Iraq, Saudi Arabia. Most of the rest of it that isn't desert is actually pretty green.

people forget that the middle east was known as the 'fertile crecent' for a billion years.

Man, I'm looking forward to reading this Let's Play, even though I can't even begin to pronounce Scheherazade. Spelling it's tricky enough.

Try "She Hear A Zod" for starters. Then say it with an exotic accent, like you're whispering a magic spell.

I would never have guessed that.

So far the best thing about this game is that title screen! Man that is fancy... Let's look at it again:


Yup that's pretty impressive

To recap for those of you who were too busy to bother remembering what has already transpired in this Lets Play; An evil wizard named Sabaron beat up former movie star and accomplished magician, Todd Armstrong, and tossed him into another century. There, Todd Armstrong met a little cat spirit thing and set out to stop Sabaron, and save his wife/girlfriend/girl he liked and several other princesses who Sabaron also kidnapped.

We join Todd Armstrong, as he and Coronya as they enter the second town!



Rudoria, I guess. Most of the people in Rudoria mention that a guy named Jad is talking all weird like, and, coincidentally, his house is on the next screen.



To the east on a pier was a door which came free. And behold! Fifty Years into the past, did I see! It may sound like a dream, but I saw it, trust me!

A door that leads to the past? That sounds handy, considering how Todd Armstrong is lost in time. Admittedly, he might not necessarily be 50 years in the future from where he wants to be, but still, a time door.

A brief stop at the hotel to restore lost HP and MP, and Todd Armstrong is BACK ON THE CASE!



This bridge wasn’t there last time I was by, incidentally. Either the existence of a time door is distorting reality and causing bridges to spontaneously appear, or talking to Jad was an event trigger that caused the bridge to appear.

Either way.

And here’s that Pier that Jad was rhyming about, one cast of OPRIN later…




Let’s go back 50 years to find Faruk in Mooroon through this door! Yes/No?

Surprisingly, this isn’t a ”But Thou Must!” situation, you can totally say no. Saying no just knocks you back to the sucky old present, however, so there isn’t much use of it. So let’s head forth… to the past!

Also, I have no idea who Faruk is...*




[MUSIC]*Doctor Who Theme[/MUSIC]





Mooroon, 50 Years Ago looks similar to Mooroon, 50 Years Later Then This Is. Except everything is more blue.



Even the local wildlife has unchanged! The landscape has changed by a preposterous amount in the past few decades, however. Even the towns are in different places*. Best get to a wandering!



On the way, TODD ARMSTRONG hits level 3, strengthening his sword and learning another spell! It’s possibly safe to assume that BOLTTOR1 is a lightning-attack spell, but given how this game handles names, I’m not totally committed to that.



While wandering around, TODD ARMSTRONG finally runs across one of the RPG-ier random battles! Finally!



The RPG battles work exactly like you think they would, you choose an option form a menu, and then proceed to exchange blows with the monsters until one or the other of you die.

Things get more extravagant as you get more party members, as you and the enemies set up formations accessing new abilities, or canceling out the advantages of others. More on that as it becomes relevant, this here is one of the “Hope you don’t die before the pink lizards do” kind of strategies.

So TODD ARMSTRONG and Coronya join the battle to the death against the small, cute, baby lizards.

Coronya proves her (?) worth by being able to turn the lizards into Eskimo Pies(?). Rendering the harmless critters even more harmless then before.



EXCITING MAGIC ATTACK!



You know, it would have been a LOT faster and easier to just hunt down and slaughter 3 Bandits. Would have gotten just as much EXP. Oh well.



The ground also has another staircase in it for some reason. Hooray for exploration!



Ahh! Dinosaurs!

The Dinosaurs are exactly as durable as the mosquitoes outside, but they deal stupid-high collision damage. Eeek! TODD ARMSTRONG must flee from his saurian aggressors!



And the escape was blocked by Blimros! Who are, luckily, exactly as wimpy as the baby lizards. And, even more luckily, spent all their time targeting Coronya, instead of TODD ARMSTRONG, and even more luckily still, no monsters spawned as TODD ARMSTRONG ran, after beating up those Blimos.

It would seem that I didn’t get a picture of it, but one of the mosquitos outside dropped an MP restoring potion, giving me enough MP to cast Pampoo repeatedly! TODD ARMSTRONG IS BACK ON TOP BABY! Just the way he always has been!



Also, a Solar Eclipse started. Which is totally irrelevant to me now. But, in the near future, will be inexpressably useful.


*I sequence broke, by accident
**No, it didn’t. I just got lost.

Coronya has turned the enemies into Mega Man flying canisters! No wonder the year 20XX is lousy with them.

What's the difference between enemies fought on the field and the RPG battles, other than the obvious? It seems strange and redundant to have both types.

Well, the RPG enemies tend to give more (like, a LOT more) money, but are much crummier when it comes to experience. Those pink lizards, for instance, gave me 15 coins, and I could easily wipe out an entire field worth of enemies without any dropping even a single one.

Of course, the RPG battles are also much more dangerous, since taking damage is entirely out of your hands to control. And HOLY CRAP are they slow-paced. I'm quite glad the emulator lets me frame-skip.

So wait, this game has action and RPG elements. Holy cannoli!

But seriously though, it seems like a weird combination.

What are the numbers under the enemies? Why are the cat's stats below him while Todd's are beside him?

When you get a larger party where do they fit that screen looks full as it is.

The numbers under the enemies are their current HP, which is a handy resource.

Coronyas stats are lined up differently from TODD ARMSTRONGs, since that's how they made it fit a whole party.

And the maximum party size is 3, but each party member has a different set of skills, so there's theoretically some strategy involved to the battles. Of couse, picking Battle Formations auto-sets your party, so there's that. You can hire Troops to assist too, but I haven't done that yet.

I have no idea what is going on in the "story." It looks like crap happens, then you kill stuff, then you go back in time and more crap happens. And then OMFG eclipse! Seriously, what the heck is going on?

And I love how running from the action enemies lead you to an RPG battle. It's like the worst of both worlds!

You've summed up all my opinions on the game so far pretty consisely, actually.

But the Zelda-y bits are fun. So it's all good!

I think you could get away with combining action battles with RPG random battles in a game, but only if you clearly separate them, like by area/geography/chapter, so you can't run from one into another like this. I think a (Super) Paper Mario game could do something like that well. It's just that combining the threats would get really annoying.

Now, any straaaaange incidents revolving a change to TODD ARMSTRONGs status now could be explained by subtle manipulations of the time stream by Sabarons minions… or possibly by me losing my game save and needing to restart.

Whichever floats your boat.



This TODD ARMSTRONG also found the Magic University on his travels. For a nominal fee, the professors of the Magic University will teach TODD ARMSTRONG a new formation to use in the RPG battles, or extremely useful information. Using the right Formation against the right combination of enemies will either severely weaken the enemy, prevent them from accessing certain abilities or just deal hella-high damage. So learning the Formations is a good use of money.

This Universities courses are:



Cygnus: Which increases defense and grants “magical powers” when fighting the right enemy formation.



Monecom Teaches me that there are Wise Men hidden throughout the game, and Moroons will teach me the Monecom spell, which can only be used during a Solar Eclipse. Turns out that the guy who knows that spell is in that tunnel I was in last time.



Alalart tells me that Eclipses are awesome, since they screw around with probability in the casino and let you plant money trees, plus the aforementioned access to super-magic.

Besides the info, I also got a Flame, and a Scimitar, which upgrade my Rod and Sword, respectively. All in all, not a bad use of $50.



Heading back through that Dinosaur-Cave on my way to track down that old man, I come afoul of what look to be Ancient Arabian Giant Mecha-Monsters. Which… which is pretty kickass. But, TODD ARMSTRONG is lacking in the HP department at the moment, so he bravely beats a hasty retreat.



And, luckily, TODD ARMSTRONG stumbles across the Old Man at the end of the tunnel. The Old Man teaches the dashing movie star the spell and sends him along his merry way.



In the next town, TODD ARMSTRONG learns of Moroons plight of a moving lake, which is threatening to consume the various locals. Specifically this town. The general population is understandably distraught about all this.



They are truly, truly devastated.

LUCKILY, besides a bunch of people who alternate between being sad, and kind of indifferent about the impending destruction of their home, the Sinking Town is also the home of the barely-mentioned, never seen, Faruk!

…well, actually, other then when I first went back in time, Faruk wasn't mentioned once. There's something of an explanation for this, but I'm not sure if it's my fault or the games. The gist of it is that Faruk (who is a genie) and TODD ARMSTRONGs ancestor, Isfa (who released Faruk, and might also be TODD ARMSTRONG) were buddies in time-long-past and they stopped the evil of a guy named Goragora… then Faruk disappeared in the previous 50 years, presumably being swallowed up with the rest of Horen by the moving Lake.

And now… you know… the rest of the story. Good night?

Anyhow, Faruk, agrees to join your party, on the grounds that he’s a genie, and genie ownership can be inherited. Genies are pretty handy like that.

There’s nothing else to do in the distant past, so TODD ARMSTRONG heads Back… to the FUTURE! Or present. Or Past. Whatever, to 50 Years from where he is presently.



On the way, TODD ARMSTRONG encounters the monster group he was taught about in the University. Lets see how his lessons paid off;



…dude.

A single one of those fish things is pretty hard to fight, since their magic can hit my entire party and their physical attacks are pretty strong. And I just slaughtered them all with one attack at no cost to myself.

Well… no cost except that 10 gold to learn the Cygnus formation and, with it, the GYGATORN spell. Which, as previously noted, was money well spent.

And I guess Coronya and Faruk spent some MP, but I just had everyone do physical attacks anyway, so no big loss.



Back in the… err… 50 Years Later then it was a moment ago, Isfa heads to a town directly north of the Time Door and finds a fortune teller named Dogos;



Okay, I think I was supposed to talk to Dogos before I went to the past. Well, whatever, I stumbled upon the right thing to do by accident. Probably would have made more sense to make it so I’d find the person who tells me that I need to find Faruk before the guy who tells me how to find Faruk. Anyhow, now that I know what I need Faruk for, I can use his power to breathe underwater to can go into a submerged castle and fight Sabaron. Which… honestly, I didn’t think I’d be doing this early in the game.



A short ways from that town is the North Cape that Dogos mentioned. And so…



TODD ARMSTRONG JUMPS IN!

Stay TUNED, true believers!