Magic of Scheherazade, The (NES - 1987)
Video games, for many years, were an industry that heavily revolved around firsts. Retrospective articles about the apex games of yesteryear often cite examples of their greatness by saying “It was one of the first games that…” And while these statements may vary greatly in reliability from author to author depending on their level of experience and knowledge, this is nonetheless a testament to the importance of relative novelty in determining the gaming zeniths of our lives. Final Fantasy IV was, for a lot of people, the first game with a progressively developing plot. Street Fighter II, for a lot of people, was the first fighting game with any level of sophistication. Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64 were, for a lot of people, the first true 3D gaming experience of their lives. These games will always maintain a powerful hold on their longtime fans primarily because of their convenient timing and innovation.
It is curious, then, that Magic of Scheherazade is so relatively unknown considering that I can scarcely imagine a game that simultaneously harbors so many “firsts” within the confines of its plastic casing and silicon board.
I suppose a great deal of why this is would be the title. First, it’s awkward and unpronounceable. That alone is enough to deter your average Reagan-born, pubescent gamer. And second, it tells you absolutely nothing about the game therein. Is the dialogue in Yiddish? Is it a magic trick game set on the West Bank? A bar mitzvah simulator? The cover art and blurbs on the back of the box wouldn't have thrust your average, red-blooded, Captain N-watching Nintendo fanboy in one direction or another either. The former makes the game look an awful lot like Prince of Persia with pterodactyls, the latter has confusing lines like “It’s the fantasy role-playing game that’s unlike anything you’ve encountered. It’s the action-adventure game you’ve been waiting for.” Well, which one is it? Fantasy role-playing AND action-adventure? Surely, that must be a typo.
But it isn't a typo. Indeed, one of the things Magic of Scheherazade prides itself on is its ability to host multiple gaming conventions simultaneously, and while this is probably the most unique thing about the game (I mean really, I can't think of any other game that plays quite like it), it is also the very thing that holds it back from being a benchmark title on NES. You see, Magic of Scheherazade has a bit of an identity crisis. At first glance, it's Zelda. You guide your character around from your bird's eye perspective and strike enemies with attacks that are carried out at the press of a button. And then, as you're meandering about, something happens, the screen flickers, the music changes, and all of the sudden you've got ugly creatures lining up horizontally in front of you, there's numbers, text and window frames all over the place and hey… this looks a lot like that one game with the dragons and the questing where you take turns. Lame.
So what you have here is a game that wants to be an action-adventure and a console RPG at the same time, standard fare today for sure, but in 1987, when we were still figuring out just what the hell a console RPG was, this was a pretty tall order, and one that the game serves up admirably. Consider this: Magic of Scheherazade came out in September of 1987, more than three months before Final Fantasy. This makes it the first console JRPG (barring Japanese ports of the Ultima series) with selectable character classes, and only the second with recruitable party members (the first, Dragon Quest II, had two, Scheherazade has eleven, not counting the 4 generic grunts you can hire. Take that, Final Fantasy VI). The combat is also significantly more complex than anything on the NES up to that point. The game even has team attacks a la Chrono Trigger.
Team attacks aren't the only parallel between Scheherazade and Chrono Trigger, though, as the game also sports multiple time periods that the otherwise simplistic narrative is interwoven between. This is probably the most progressive concept in the game, since Chrono Trigger, nearly 8 years Scheherazade's junior, was for a lot of people, the first time they can remember playing a game where you could actively travel between multiple time periods. As archaic as it looks and often feels, it's impossible to deny that few games could see the future quite as clearly as Scheherazade does, and while it may merely be coincidence, I can't shake this feeling that Tokita, Kitase, Sakaguchi, and a few other people above the production line on Chrono Trigger's budget weren't influenced by it.
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