11-11-1993		11-12-1993
	11-11-1993		-

Aladdin was released during the holiday season in 1992. This was almost a full year after the release of the blockbuster film Beauty and the Beast.
Aladdin on the SNES was released by Capcom, who at the time was the sole distributor of Disney related games on the Nintendo systems. The license expired later, thus The Lion King was released by Virgin.
Aladdin featured great graphics for the SNES, and had great character/enemy movement. In the game, you follow Aladdin as he works his way through various stages. It is very close to the movie, with the exception of the Lamp, and Pyramid stages. The game itself is very similar to the movie, in the different stages follow the different scenarios in the film. Aladdin will go through the streets of Agrabah, The Cave of Wonders, and return to the palace to face Jafar. There was two new sections not seen in the film. One was a stage set inside Genie's Lamp. This was like a surreal fantasy land, where there were little in the way of enemies, and geared more towards a fun house.
The second stage was a pyramid, that Abu gets trapped in. I wondered to myself if these were not elements that were meant to be a part of the film. Similar to how the matrix games were made to fill in spots not seen in the films.
Graphically, the game is pretty good. The character sprites are very much like the actual characters from the movie. The backgrounds are done very well too. They are are a bit more darker in coloring than most other Disney games, but the areas that the most game is covering is inside caves, pyramids, and Jafar's palace. There are several different enemies in the game, and they are also well detailed. There are small, what would be considered cut scenes, between several of the stages, that are parts of the actual story line. This was a major rarety in the time of the SNES. That said, they are not the cut scenes people of today are expecting from a game. Still they are good cut scenes providing some story in between stages.
The story, is non-existent, in terms of the game. But there is little need of one, since it follows the movie very well. You are in control of Aladdin, as he travels through different points in the story of the movie. He is accompanied by his faithful sidekick Abu. The music of the game is also taken form the movie, and is done quite well in the game. Through each level, you are given a different score from the film. The sound is of great quality for the SNES, and is one of the better sounding games on the system. Sadly, this game has very little in the way of difficulty. For a good platformer, you can have this game completed in a afternoon. (I got it completed in 4 hours for Disney Kingdom) It is perhaps why the following games to come from Disney (The Lion King, Jungle Book, and Gargoyles) were created with a much higher difficulty level. Still, it is a great platform game, and is worth a play. It does the movie justice, and is one of the better titles from Disney's pioneering days of video games.