The Game: Bring your turban up to speed! As you’re serenaded with a monophonic rendition of Rimsky Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”, you climb and jump and kick your way to collecting all the letters on the screen. If you collect them in the correct order to spell ARABIAN, you get a bonus before moving on to the next screen. And watch out for the big genie… (Atari, 1983)
Memories: This is a rather cute and simplistic game, but it’s not a pushover. I can’t tell you how many quarters Arabian relieved me of. And even while playing it in MAME to grab screen stills for this page, it kicked my scrawny little pixellated butt.
Arabian is a very, very basic climbing game whose only real innovation seems to be its Thousand and One Arabian Nights-inspired theme. On its flying carpet screen, it even borrows a couple of play elements which reminded me of Frogger.
And the hand-over-hand maneuvers, where your player crosses over various perils by hanging from overhead vines, reminds me a little bit of the original Lode Runner.”
