Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Night

~ DORAEMON NOBITA NO DORABIAN NIGHT ~

Hudson Soft

HuCard

1991

This isn't a good game, but it really, really should've been. It offers the sort of stage variety one likes to find in a cartoony platformer, with environments as diverse as prehistoric jungles, dusky graveyards, and Arabian palaces. Large sprites roam these areas (which look all the nicer when parallax is present), so the visuals are better than adequate (though some of the enemy sketches are quite crude).

You can explore the decent-looking lands to build up your stock of weapons (which will ultimately include a stun gun, lock-on bombs, and a behemoth-shrinking wand) and items (such as a propeller-topped cap that grants you the ability to fly for a brief period). Some trinkets even allow you to unearth secrets held by conquered stages (which you will be given frequent opportunities to return to). Make a successful march to a world's end and you'll battle a boss (of course), with two tough guys making huge impressions: a horned knight whose bolts you must deflect with your trusty mantle and a crazy-large bastard at the journey's conclusion.

Along the way, you can take a few breaks and play some mini-games for bonus lives and power. This is strictly Gameboy-quality stuff, but hey, there's nothing wrong with a little simple fun here and there.

And there are even some comedic "sketches" to relay the story and endow the game with extra personality.

This is all good. Unfortunately, Dorabian Night actually kind of sucks. It's extremely slow and easy and tedious--a flat-out bore, in the end. The pace is set at lackadaisical right at the start, but matters become monotonous when you're stuck waiting for the usual floating platforms to arrive and provide slow conveyance to the next dull strip. Hell, even something as simple as stepping through a doorway seems to take this slow-footed fool an eternity. While you may occasionally find interesting things to do (such as riding a dinosaur--a slow-walking one, but still...), you'll spend most of your time engaged in tired, tedious routines: hopping repeatedly to avoid quicksand's deadly clutches, tiptoeing along in fear of pop-up spikes and falling chandeliers, utilizing springboards or trampolines to ascend to high places where you'll often find little but duplicates of items already in tow. It's worn-out material, an outdated slide show that proceeds at a crawl.

The enemies don't help the cause. They can be split into two groups, the first of which consists of small goofs who float about in slow, wavy patterns, basically begging to be picked off. Then there are the larger dopes, who are far too slow and stupid to ever cause any sort of harm, but who can take lots and lots of hits, causing you to come to frequent stops and slowing things down even further. It all really drags after a while. And although the two bosses mentioned earlier are fun to confront, their peers are easy-to-crush jokes.

I guess it just goes to show that designers can put all the nice ideas in the world into a platformer, but if they neglect to make it exciting in some way, their efforts will simply go for naught. It's very sad and a bit baffling that Dorabian Night ended up this way, but that's just how it is.