Advertisement for the Arabian arcade game by Atari from the July 1983 issue of Electronic Games.
This ad for the Arabian arcade game released in 1983 by Atari is one of the more cringeworthy game ads I’ve seen. Eric Ginner, a high-score record holder on multiple games gives a…testimony for lack of a better word – on how great Arabian is. No doubt it was scripted by Atari.
Arabian is a platform game that takes the form of an Arabian Nights style story book. There are four pages/chapters/levels which include on board a ship, a maze of caves, on castle walls, and in a castle tower. The end goal is to rescue a princess. Sound familiar? Game play features walking, jumping, climbing (including clinging to vines), crawling and flying along on flying carpets. Your primary attack is a kick. Kicking multiple enemies at once gives you a bonus. A level is completed by collecting all the jugs with letters on them. Picking them up in the correct order so that ARABIAN is spelled results in a bonus. Once completed the princess is rescued and the next level begins.
Arabian wasn’t a that great of a game and it wasn’t very popular either. Game play was pretty simplistic, not very polished and not that consistent from level to level. The sound and graphics were okay but not particularly impressive. There was an NES port in 1985 but that was the only port. It was a pretty good conversion but given that it wasn’t a great game to begin with, that isn’t saying much. It wasn’t very popular either. If you do want to play this one, you’ll have to hunt down an original arcade game (or NES cartridge) or resort to emulation. You’ll likely get tired of it pretty quickly so emulation is probably good enough.
The ad above is from the July 1983 issue of Electronic Games. Screen shots are from the arcade version of the game.
