That’s not a typo, by the way, it appears it was common to spell Baghdad without the ‘H’ until about the time of the Gulf War… I guess exposure to the correct spelling was fairly limited until that time. Anyway...
If you show a sheet of graph paper and an HB pencil to most people who played games in the 80’s, they will be immediately swept away on a tide of nostalgia to their era appropriate childhood bedroom: Lamborghini Countach poster on the wall, barely used Big Track in the corner, and a self-drawn map for the latest ZX Spectrum game bathed in the radioactive light from a television the size of a small family car.
Personally, however, I would be swept back to a maths class: Trigonometry poster on the wall, barely used overhead projector in the corner, and me dutifully plotting the reference points for a parabolic curve.
It’s not that I wasn’t playing games in the eighties, it’s just that I wasn’t really into the sort of games that required a map to play, I can’t even tell you why. In later years I came to love Metroidvanias and other adventure games where referring to the built in map is essential - but I was never interested in creating cartography for myself - something that many players of similar vintage consider an essential part of the experience.
Certainly, ‘Sceptre of Bagdad’ is borderline impossible without a map and, as such, feels borderline impossible to me.
You’ll find ‘Sceptre of Bagdad’ filed on most resources as an Arcade Adventure, but in today’s parlance it’s 100% a puzzle game, with a hint of Metroidvania about it.
You play in the pointy-toed shoes of the Caliph of Bagdad as he searches for the titular Sceptre in order to lift a curse from the palace, and prove his right to rule over the lands.
Everything is presented in a very Spectrum style, with tons of colour-clash, bright palette, black background, and large protagonist-sprite that has the unfortunate look of a bear in a turban. The sound is similarly basic, limited mostly to your footsteps - but there is a, genuinely helpful, whirring to let you know when you’re taking damage.
But what, at first, seems like pretty basic presentation, is actually perfect for the representations of the in game objects that comprise the puzzles. These are of the standard ‘lock and key’ type, but are elevated above this through the ingenious design in keeping with the 'One Thousand and One Nights' theme. There are wings and whips, swords and sandals, and, thanks to the simple but detailed graphics, it’s usually very easy to understand what’s what in your, incredibly limited, inventory.
It’s really the location of these key-objects, paired with the two-item inventory, that is the core of the gameplay.
The whole game feels like a giant version of the famous Fox, Chicken, and Hen puzzles, and with your character dropping an item every time you pick one up, the locations are constantly changing. As a bloke with both a terrible short-term memory and appalling sense of direction, you can imagine how challenging this is.
But there’s a charm to this old budget effort that is undeniable. It’s similar to a simplified version of ‘Myth: History in the Making’ and even features puzzles centred on Medusa and the Cyclops. Items are ‘used’ by simply carrying them to a certain point on the map.
Get too close to Medusa and you’ll turn to stone, but walk up to her with a mirror in your inventory and she’ll evaporate, clearing the way to the next section of the map.
It’s also of benefit to the game that each ‘key’ has only one ‘lock’; the mirror used on Medusa in the example above can be swapped for the next object you find with no need to remember where you left it.
It all adds up to a game that has intrigued me more than I expected. These old Spectrum games can be a bit of a tough sell, but this is one that I will likely return to with a map from the internet - and I’d highly recommend this Myth-lite adventure to anyone of the home-mapper persuasion.
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