Reviews

5 screens of finickety platforming jug collection are separated by 3 scrolling journies between settings - by pedallo and flying carpet of course.
You are bolloxed in this game if you can't spell ARABIAN.
Plenty of annoyances to contend with including a jug you have to collect placed too high to safely drop down from right on the first screen (though the screen is completeable) and plenty of Speccy platformer favourite nuances such as brick work you can in fact pass through.
Its a nicely drawn platform game, no music or notable fx, short, fussy collision detection but neverless slammed more harshly than necessary in quite a funny Crash review, and in the end analysis, passable.
If you love playing around with big jugs even if the endgame is frustrating, give Tales of the Arabian Nights a try.

Your task is to learn how to spell "Arabian". But you won't.

Nice presentation , poor game-play . . . 3 / 5 .

Apparently this was based on a coin-op called Arabian which i've never played, nor can I remember another spectrum version so maybe it wasn't much good to start with! On the 1st screen you have to collect the lettered jars spread around a ship in the right order so they spell ARABIAN. Stopping you are a bloody annoying bird, a cannon and an octopus. I got to ARABI and then had to watch a video run-through in the tip shop.

The graphics are big which means you really have to employ split second timing to avoid the unforgiving collision detection. Also climbing the ladders and jumping takes a bit of practice as its very exact, and once up, you sometimes can't get down without dying! It all has to be done in a certain order, at the right time and one mistake and you're back to the beginning - frustrating. Next its a sideways scroller on a river avoiding obstacles and that's as far as i got, although the demo shows more platform screens. Thing is, the Spectrum is spoilt for platformers with around 20 v.good to excellant examples, and probally the same amount of decent ones, so unless you want to play an average one with the hardest 1st screen ever i wouldn't waste your time. I only persevered because i wanted to get past the 1st screen to spite the programmer!

Nice graphics but the gameplay is far too frustrating to enjoy.

Arabian Nights is based around an arcade game with a level of difficulty already high, but not so much as the platform levels of the Spectrum version.
The game features different levels with 2 different purposes, the first is to collect the yellow pots in the correct order thus spelling the word "ARABIAN", this is by far the most difficult part of the game and makes it very frustrating.
This happens mainly for lack of skills of the programmer, the collision detection routine is specially badly done, making the game either too sensitive or sloppy and somtimes you die without even touching any baddies, just being near to them makes it happen.
The original game is quite nice and addictive, the Spectrum version requires lots of patience and trial and error and because the first level is harder than some of the last levels in, lets say, Manic Miner, most people just put the game aside.

I couldn't get any sense on enjoyment out of this at all. The A and R were all I could get before I get wiped out. This would have been a waste of money then and it's a waste of time now. No thank you, never again.

A poor platform/collect-em-up game which already looked and played very dated when it came out in 1985 (I was going to add "sounded" but there is no sound to speak of). Tales Of The Arabian Nightmares, rather.