When it came out on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1993, Disney’s Aladdin was a well-liked action-platformer that won people over with its 16-bit stages and sense of height. The magic of the original game is lost in the NES version, which is a shame.
The game does a decent job of remaking the stages, but the controls are a nightmare. Buttons take too long to respond, and sword attacks go right through enemies without hurting them. This makes combat frustrating. Worse of all, you can’t tell by looking if you’ve chosen your sword or apples, which means you waste a lot of projectiles.
Because of the bad sprite flicker and bad collision detection, you can hit enemies by throwing apples over their heads, making the game less challenging. Also, the character sprites are tiny, and the terrible color palette doesn’t make use of the console’s power.
The music tends to speed up and slow down slightly, like a warped vinyl record. This is very distracting, and the cut-scene text is very hard to read because the font is hard to read and the colors are too bright.
Overall, the NES version of Aladdin is a bad port of a classic platformer. The game might be fun for people who liked the first one, but the controls are hard to use, the graphics aren’t very good, and the music and text are distracting.
Summary
The NES port of Disney’s Aladdin is a disappointing platformer with frustrating controls, poor graphics, and distracting music and text.
