Game:

Arabian Fight (1992)

Duration: 8:25

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Arabian Fight is a mixed bag of a beat-em-up game developed and released back in the early 90s by Sega with a lot of style but little substance. The story revolves around the corrupt Sheikh Sazabiss who has abducted Princess Lurana, which he uses along with the many forces of evil to give himself a position of power and ultimately rule the world. Four heroes depart to stop Sazabiss and his forces while rescuing the princess.

The game is a no-brainer to play in most cases and didn't see much success, but there was one thing almost everyone agreed on; the visuals were amazing in many respects with large sprites, great scaling, and fancy magic attacks (which is one reason the game was never ported to consoles; it was complex to alter the game on 16 or even 32 bit consoles). The characters also utilized special magic attacks where they'd jump into the foreground and animate like in an anime (enemies also appeared in the foreground). There weren't too many games back in 1991 and 1992 that looked quite this good. There are some cheap elements like various character animations and sloppy screen scolling in multiplayer, but it still brings about a certain "WOW" factor like an Arcade game should.

Sadly, while the game mostly looks great, the same can't be said about the gameplay. There are four characters; First is Sinbat, the main handsome male character who might as well be Sinbad. Secondly, you have Ramaya, the beautiful female counterpart to Sinbat. Next is Datta, a bald spiritual fighter. Last but not least, you have Goldor, who is the token "big and strong" guy. Sadly, there is almost no difference in the way they dispatch enemies and the enemies, while varied, nearly all fall for the same "strategy". Most enemies can be defeated by just standing in place and letting them walk into your fists, and characters execute weak combos (can take ages to kill some bosses with them) but powerful spells (which don't carry over from screen to screen). You can execute "Joy" moves with characters for a little bit of health that get enemies from around you and if you're playing with friends, you can execute an ultra cheap team attack that makes short work of bosses by paralyzing them (hit detection in these instances vary and is generally poor).

The music isn't very appealing, but it's at least appropriate for the levels you are in. The soundtrack certainly isn't something I'd burn to a CD to listen to on the go. It has a few voice samples typical to games of its time that aren't very good, but they work and are amazingly nostalgic. This doesn't match other Sega efforts like Golden Axe or Streets of Rage, but it's amusing enough to play at least once. This is a video of some of the game. Enjoy.