Magic Carpet 1001 (Homebrew)

About

Magic Carpet 1001 (called "Arabian Nights" in Chinese) is an unlicensed shoot-'em-up developed by Mega Soft (NTDEC) and distributed by NTDEC in 1991, Caltron and Gluk Video in 1992 and Asder in 1993 as part of the Asder 20-in-1 multicart. Its Caltron 6-in-1 incarnation is arguably the most well-known. The game is a standard NES shoot-'em-up. It is four levels long and mostly takes place in an Arabian setting, with the fourth level being in space. There are many enemies that stand in the way of your character (an Aladdin-type who rides a magic carpet, although the title screen suggests he is a genie) which follow set patterns that become more complex with each level. As well as this, all four levels have a different boss; a witch, a snake in a flying jar, a giant skull and giant lips respectively, with the latter often being considered to be far too difficult. Numerous power-ups can be collected at random by wiping out a certain group of enemies before they disappear, with P power-ups upgrading your weapon, S power-ups increasing the player's speed, an icon of your character's face for an extra life and hearts giving you several hit points, and a magic lamp in the fourth level which maxes out your character's health. By default, your character starts with 6 lives, dies in one hit and he can only fire one shot on the screen at a time. Oddly for a shooter, this game does not have a score system whatsoever and the levels progress with the only warning being that the screen fades out after the boss. The ending is a picture of your character and (presumably) the damsel in distress you were rescuing, followed by a credits screen which has some of the names that appear in other Mega Soft games. This game was later hacked in 1995 to produce Aladdin III, which is identical apart from the title screen which removes the company name and logo, as well as decreasing protagonist's minimal speed. This one appears on several multicarts. It is also unrelated to the Hummer Team pirate.