The Game No-One Wanted To Review | Magic Carpet (ZX Spectrum) Review

It’s rare I come across a game that 
apparently got zero coverage in  
any of the magazines back in the day, but on 
playing magic carpet (this one, not the good one),  
I’m not surprised. There’s three levels. 
Three. That’s three single screens, not like,  
three big sprawling levels. Three damn screens of 
marginal joy and yes I know it’s a budget title,  
I know it only cost two quid but come on… There 
were budget titles for the same price that did a  
far better job of providing entertainment. Look 
how big Dizzy is for the same price, how much  
effort they actually put in. CodeMasters made 
budget gaming actually worthwhile. You’ll know  
something’s up as soon as you compare 
the cover art with the loading screen.
What is this dude? Why does he look like 
that? These aren’t the same people! This  
is like when you order a big mac expecting 
it to look like the photographs and it looks  
like someone sat on it before serving it up. So 
yeah, couple that with the very first instruction  
screen in which they didn’t even bother to 
spell check the name of their protagonist:  
Aladin, and you know you’re in for a budgetary 
treat… If that treat is a dog treat. Level one  
starts things simple and because there’s only 
three levels there’s not a great deal of room  
to grow from there, let’s be honest. This is 
you. This is Aladin. This. So we’ve downgraded  
from this, to this, to this

at this point. This
fella looks like a lowercase T with a quiff…
Sat on a plate. You’re tasked with… Not touching
anything or anyone, which i’m pretty sure is the
first line of dialogue you’ll hear when you’re
getting a job at the BBC these days. These are
planets or cheese wheels or the instructions
say they’re supposed to be boulders. Okay.
These are plungers. This is a penis or a stick
or something, I don’t know, it was the ’80s,
use your imagination. The level finishes at
this keyhole – you’d suspect maybe that you
need a key but no, no such fancy nonsense
here, you just fly into the giant keyhole.
Level two is horrible, a real shit of a level.
Firstly it’s full of bats but they’re mostly
pretty simple to deal with. The only bat you’ll
be concerned with for the most part is this one
because the timing required to get past it is
absolutely not something you’d list under fun
things you learned how to do this year. Look
at it, look at that, look at all of this.
So you’ve got to get into this lift – timed
perfectly so that you pop out when the bat
is moving away from you and then you have to
be so far up its arse by the time you reach
the end of the platform that you can squeeze
past it. This took me bloody ages and note
this thing here, this is the developer saying “I
know you hate this, I know you hate doing all of
this. Look there’s a gap here, you could easily
squeeze through that, but i’m going to put a laser
beam or something in the way because I hate you
and everything you stand for”. Thanks, you dick.
After that it’s plain sailing – you go
through a teleporter because apparently
those exist in Aladin times, and then you
just squeeze past these bats. Honestly,
once you get past the first bat the
rest of this area is a piece of piss.
Level three, final level, already, is probably
the easiest one out of all of them. You can
pretty much ignore this bat, squeeze through some
raindrops because of course water is dangerous
to a man on a flying carpet, why wouldn’t it be.
Time it right so you can squeeze under the dragon
and then clearly the developers just gave
up at this point because they put another
keyhole at the end presumably because there were
gonna be more levels and then they just went
“you know what, making a game takes
ages, should we just release this?”
and then they slapped a lamp in there and
called it a day don’t worry though your fun
won’t end there, the game restarts and this time
it’s faster. Which makes level two even worse,
because perfecting your timing on the first run
is completely out of the window here – the bat
is moving at a different speed which means
you have to relearn the entire thing again.
So i completed it again, and then
it started again… but faster.
So i just killed myself because I could not
be arsed doing this for one second more.
It’s pretty amazing that, for a game with a mere
three levels, there’s practically nothing good
i can say about any of it. It’s not like the
developer strived for three perfect levels,
the only thing that made me raise a smile
– completely unintentionally, by the by,
was upon completing all three levels you
get this absolutely ridiculous noise.
I mean it’s not really worth playing through
the game for but I guess it’s something.
Three levels then, the first one is boring, the
second one is annoying, and the third one is a
piece of piss. Literally play anything else. When
even the gaming magazines of the time can’t be
arsed to tell you not to buy it you don’t really
need me to inform you 30 years in the future.
Congratulations then, we’ve
all wasted our time here today.