Welcome to a new edition of Friday's Retro Arena and we have a battle between two versions of Disney Aladdin. Due to an edition of Retro Arena being uploaded on last New Year’s Eve, I wanted to make this a tradition from now on. Disney’s Aladdin needs no further introduction from the company’s own take on the old tale. Whether it’s the animated film or the live action remake, Aladdin was a massive success across both takes. Like any movie that becomes a massive hit also attracted toy and game companies. At the height of movie's 1992 release, Sega wanted a game based off the film for their systems. While Capcom also wanted to cash in on the success by developing the Super NES version. As we already reviewed both games they each played completely different with their own gameplay and level design. Each one is under the action platformer genre and has aged well over time. Check out my two Aladdin reviews for the Super NES version and the Genesis game in these links highlighted in this sentence. However, which version of Aladdin is truly the better one? Does Sega and Virgin have to slash their way through its opponent to win or will Capcom’s experience in Disney games give them the victory? Gameplay Super NES The Super NES version was an action platformer, but it had completely different level designs and gameplay mechanics. Unlike on Genesis; the player makes use of Aladdin's acrobatic skills to fend off the enemies and go through the obstacles. Aladdin doesn't wield a sword but jumps on enemies and uses acrobatics to hit them like swinging forward from a pole sticking out of a wall. The player can also grab on to ledges like in Prince of Persia to reach other platformers or edges. These mechanics were the defining features of the gameplay as it allowed for flexibility and recovery. The level design provided unique challenges to overcome between the terrain and hazards like spikes and lava. Each stage had its own difficulty and obstacles to get through and at times you had to use Aladdin’s acrobatic abilities. The Ancient Pyramid area is my personal favorite as it took the hazards up a notch with spikes and moving sand that led to pits. Capcom designed the gameplay to start off simple but progressively becomes harder as you pass an area. That’s just textbook level design and this version's concept excels in more ways than one. Even though the bosses are only a few but when you got to them, they were worth the wait. Jafar’s battles exceeded what Virgin tried to do and truly felt cinematic especially when the player had to reach him to deliver a blow. Thanks to Capcom's experience each stage had a unique challenge to overcome. The Ancient Pyramid along with the Inferno Cave of Wonders still had the best challenges since you had to overcome the natural and man made obstacles. Of course the battle with Jafar as seen in the second image truly defined the last battle in the game. You literally had to avoid Jafar lowing his body down to the flames while trying to reach the top of his head by jumping on the eggs for a boost. Sega Genesis The levels mostly followed the film's plot with starting from the streets of Agrabah to the confrontation with Jafar at his Palace. There are nine stages as you go from Point A to B fighting enemies with your scimitar and getting through the stages' environments. The key difference between this edition and its rivals is Aladdin uses the scimitar for most actions. The best feature is being able to deflect attacks away from you and back at the enemies. You can also deflect melee swings from the skinny and big guards. The apples here play as a secondary attack from a distance. The level design did follow the more traditional challenges that appeared in titles like this. It’s still fun to kill enemies with the sword as you get through each obstacle. Escaping the lava filled Cave of Wonders is the only stage that has you listen to indicators on when and where to move. The game does have its few issues like the hit detection not landing a blow on its target for most enemies. The next problems stems from quirky level design choices with the player needing to time their actions to get by. Virgin's inexperience also allowed for the player to exploit the bosses by spamming using apples to beat them. Despite a few problems, the gameplay is still a fun experience and feels better than most license titles on the Genesis. Deflecting an enemies projectiles especially at them was the best gameplay mechanic on the Genesis version. However, with high difficulty spikes suddenly from the later levels really made these simple mechanics hard to control due to them not being flexible. The boss battles relied on spamming the same move of either sword slashing or throwing apples while avoiding the attacks. The battle with Jafar is easily exploited by jumping where Aladdin is in second image and simply throwing apples. When compared to the Super NES version above you can clearly see which is better. Conclusion: The Super NES takes the victory for this round as it got many things right in the gameplay. Both games play very similar to the other, but it came down to Super NES having accessible mechanics. Using Aladdin's acrobatic moves to swing from poles, jumping on enemies and grabbing ledges went further. You need more then sword slashing to give better gameplay, a false perception I see often in gaming. The level design wasn’t annoying and provided a balanced difficultly between the obstacles and enemies. The problem with the Genesis title is its levels would receive a spike in difficulty too quickly. In the Cave of Wonders lava stage, a boulder comes down and chases you down a long path. If the player messes up just once you lose a life and there are several in this stage. The hit detection is just as bad as the Neutopia games and there were many times where my slashes missed despite hitting the enemies. The bosses unlike on Super NES had the same repetitive exploits and allowed the player to spam throwing apples to win. Compare the boss fights of Jafar on Super NES to the Genesis, and it’s not even a comparison. You had to do more like deal with an environment and using skill to defeat Jafar instead of relying on spamming a secondary attack. Graphics/Presentation Super NES The beautiful thing about this console is how developers took advantage of 32,000 colors to create broad visuals. Every environment was a mirror image of the film’s key areas in the Arabian kingdom. The areas that had the most attention to detail came from the inferno Cave of Wonders, the Ancient Pyramid and Jafar’s transformed palace. Those tiny details appear throughout these stages from environmental effects to little animations from the foregrounds. You will be surprised how much sounds effects can add to the visual depiction of the environment in any game. Jafar’s Palace had it the best with several dark areas and lightning striking in a red sky. The sprites also had broad representation of similar characters like the guards. Their animation might come off stiff and limited compared to its rival, but the broad depiction makes up for it. The music was a little better here thanks to Super NES's superior sound chip as the soundtracks had that dynamic tone. I always found the Super NES to play a bit more accurate especially from "A Whole New World" and it even sounded great in its 16-bit rendered form. One thing that was a little better were those story panels that acted like the cut scene from the movies. That’s something Sega's own lacked which is surprising when other licenses had them on this system. The Super NES games always had the dynamic appearance to them no matter if it was an A title or those B type games that tried copying from the bigger releases. The environments capture that Disney magic we often see in the films and take the first image of Aladdin and Jasmine flying through the night sky while a 16-bit rendering of "A Whole New World" plays. The animated backgrounds were another good attention to detail I always loved about this edition. The second image depicts Jafar's Palace as a dark menacing place with lightning crackling in the red dark sky. Sega Genesis Virgin’s work is truly amazing as this is considered one of the better looking Genesis games. The animation was top notice as it shouldn't be a surprise when Virgin Interactive worked closely with Disney animators. The detail and animation were exactly the way the movie was done, and it still looks good even till this day. The music wasn't bad like in other license games and the composers did a great job using the Genesis’ sound chip the best they could. It’s the best soundtrack I have heard from a third party and usually Sega is the one that knew how to work around the crappy sound chip. Of course, we can’t forget the visuals and playing through the game felt as if I was watching the film. That was a smart business decision to let Virgin work closely with Disney’s animators. As you can tell it paid off and the visuals are some of the best the Genesis had to offer. The animation for the sprites and special effects were animated with fluent movement. Even the sprites had comical idle actions and went beyond the stiff animation found on the Super NES. The only issues I noticed is the dark tint on the picture as its very noticeable. You can tell the developers tried their best to work around the console’s limited 512 colors. However, as mentioned in my review, don't tell me they couldn’t clean this up if other title like Sonic 3 and Knuckles had a clear picture. The next one is not really the soundtrack’s fault or the composer but the crappy sound chip. Every song has this monotone sounding like it’s a cheap knock off done in a synthesizer by an amateur. The stunning animation for 16-bits still looks amazing and mixed in with lush hand drawn backgrounds only add to this presentation. However, this version is missing the dynamic visuals, I mean compare the carpet ride on the Super NES game to here and again you can tell which had the most effort put into it. On Genesis it only had a still image of a full moon on a star filled background with just the couple's shadow on Carpet flying away into the night. Conclusion: Both license games had great visuals with broad special effects however, the Genesis takes the win this time. It simply came down to animation, and the Genesis game truly excels at that in the best way possible. At the time this had the best 2D animation a game could have on any 16-bit platform that came close to the movie. On Super NES, the graphics had broad detail too that took advantage of system’s massive pool of colors to use. The problem is despite having broad visuals and detailed expansive backgrounds, the sprites would lack fluid animation. They moved slower and lacked the movie animation the Genesis version easily had. Now, both titles have tradeoffs as the Genesis game has a noticeable dark tint on the screen. The music also didn’t have a proper tone thanks to the system's low quality sound chip. While on the Super NES the picture was much clearer showcasing the bright colors and the soundtrack captured that Disney magic in terms of tone. It all came down to which version had the better animation despite both having tradeoffs. Features/Content Super NES Most licensing games are not known for their overall content since developers focus on the single player experience. The Super NES game followed the usual standard in having many levels and for a license title had plenty to enjoy. The levels have their own uniqueness to them and do a great job replicating what would appear in the film. There is a challenge for each stage with getting those red gems and are counted during the password reveal. I have never collected the red gems but obtaining all of them gives an ending of Aladdin and Jasmine on Carpet fly through all the stages. Not a compelling way to entice gamers to collecting them if this special ending isn’t that great. For once it’s good to come across a password system that isn’t the dreaded 16 letters. In the past Capcom's license titles like Willow always had that as a cheap save function. Using four characters was the best feature any studio did when it came to that generation. My biggest issue for this version is how the studio went back to using two controllers to enable any cheats. They should have learned from Super Ghouls N Ghosts not to enable such a convoluted way to access codes. Sega Genesis Virgin Games’ take on the license had the player venture through nine of the film’s most iconic places. After each stage if you collected the gold relic, the player would enter a bonus round where they can earn extra lives and points. You basically play as Abu and dodge projectiles and using the scimitar. Of course, what classic game isn’t complete without the infamous Debug Mode. It's unlocked in a classic manner by pressing a combination of buttons on the Option Menu. Ever get tired of playing through the game’s most difficult areas as seen in level 8, then the Invincibility cheat does the trick. No longer will those cheap obstacles prevent any from getting through the game and it’s the perfect cheat to mess around with. There’s even a stage selection without putting in eight or sixteen letter passwords. That now leads us to an issue, and the lacking password system hurts this edition the most. The game on any difficulty can come off challenging and would’ve helped if one was in place. I know there are only nine stages but when compared to the Super NES edition, Capcom still programmed a password. However, it’s possible to say that the Debug Menu helped get around the issue unless the player knew the combination. Conclusion: The Super NES game takes the win thanks to its many levels as well as the password system. With 19 stages took the player across Agrabah and its many places around the desert. It wasn’t a “quantity over quality” scenario as all of the stages had unique challenges of their own. The password using four characters was a solid tradeoff from a traditional cheat menu. The fact Capcom wasn’t using the dreaded 16 letter system was a god send as they improved this concept from earlier Disney titles. The problem with the Genesis title is it got limited to nine levels and is half of the content of the other version. These weren’t long areas either as they were the same length as Capcom’s designs. The only thing that stands out are the cheat codes and this was done better here. The only issue present on the Super NES is Capcom’s idea to input codes using two controllers. They fixed the password but for some odd reason choose to do the same concept from Super Ghouls n Ghosts for the cheats. Final Conclusion In an age where studios put effort into a license product in gaming, both titles from Capcom and Virgin provided great results. However, the Super NES version is the clear winner in this battle for many reasons. Capcom’s experience designing platformers since Mega Man in 1987 helped them improve their formula. It came down to flexible mechanics and balanced level design to make this an enjoyable experience. Another thing that helped this edition score the victory is how there is 19 stages with their own unique level designs. Last but not least was the four character password combination as for once a studio developed a proper one. I can’t reiterate how much those long lettered passwords got on my nerves and wasted so much time. The problem with the Genesis version is how limited its mechanics worked for the gameplay. Half the levels easily frustrated me on many occasions especially during those timed moments with the boulder chases. Another problem comes from the content in terms of stages and with their being only nine means more could’ve been designed. The only feature that Virgin had over Capcom is fluent animation for the sprites thanks to their teamwork with the Disney. However, you need more then amazing animation to make a complete package work. Virgin’s inexperience played the biggest factor as this studio is only known for producing ports to lesser consoles. Aladdin on Genesis has made it final wish, the winner is the Super NES edition. Winner: Aladdin (Super NES)
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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