Super Arabian

Super Arabian is a single-screen platform game developed and published by Sunsoft for the Famicom in 1985. It is an expanded home version of Sun Electronics’ 1983 arcade game Arabian, which Atari distributed in North America. Despite commonly being classified as an NES title, Super Arabian was officially released only in Japan. Its setting and characters draw loosely upon stories associated with One Thousand and One Nights, casting the player as an Arabian prince attempting to rescue a captive princess.

Each stage is presented as a page in a storybook and takes place on a single screen filled with platforms, ladders, ropes and other obstacles. The prince can walk, jump, climb, crawl through narrow spaces and travel on flying carpets. Enemies include birds, genies and other fantastic creatures, which can be temporarily dispatched with a kick. Striking several opponents at once rewards the player with temporary invulnerability, making careful positioning an important part of the action.

The objective is to collect all the lettered jars scattered around each stage. A word is displayed at the top of the screen, and gathering the jars in the correct order to spell it awards bonus points. Collecting every jar completes the stage even when the letters are taken in a different sequence. This combination of platforming and ordered item collection gives the game a mild puzzle element reminiscent of early single-screen titles such as Donkey Kong, Popeye and Mappy.

The adventure consists of four basic environments, including a ship, a cave, castle walls and a tower. After these stages have been completed, they repeat in progressively more difficult variations, with altered jar positions and increasingly troublesome enemies. Like many arcade games of its period, Super Arabian therefore relies on repeated cycles and rising difficulty rather than a long sequence of entirely new levels. It also supports two players, although they participate alternately rather than simultaneously.

The Famicom conversion simplifies some of the arcade game’s visual detail but preserves its unusual movement system and central letter-collecting mechanic. Its compact stages and varied methods of traversal distinguish it from more conventional platform games, although imprecise jumping, unpredictable enemy behaviour and the repetition of the same four layouts can make later rounds frustrating. Super Arabian is consequently best viewed as an early example of Famicom arcade design: limited in scope and sometimes awkward to control, but built around a distinctive mixture of platform action, route planning and word formation.