The Magic of Scheherazade was a game created by Culture Brain in 1989 for the NES 8bit console. This title is quite unique as it uses two classic gameplay styles : a hack and slash style mostly like in the game Legend of Zelda and also it uses turn by turn RPG battle system used for example in the Dragon Warrior series.

The story is quite simple : you are a young magician that tried to fight in vain the evil wizard Sabaron, and he took away your sweetheart, the princess Scheherazade. You must of course, rescue her.

When you start, you can choose which class you want to be, you have the choice to be a Fighter, a Magician or a Saint. The Fighter have a long saber to fight with and with sabers upgrades, he can throw daggers at the same time. The Magician is IMHO the best class in the game, he can use his rod to destroy target at a distance. Rods upgrades will increases the fire speed of the rod and also more than one "bolt" can come out at the same time. The Saint is the most useless class of the game, he doesn't have any special saber or rod but can cross "damage zones" without tacking any damage. You can change your class anytime in the game, provided you have the money.

Between hack and slash screen, you have a random chance to get into a turn by turn battle, which are not that hard. In those battle, you can choose up to 2 party members to help you out with the monsters. Choosing specific members can unlock special magic powers that are terribly effective against some monsters. Those party members are collected during the story lines. In hack and slash scenes, you are alone to fight the monsters.

The game is divided into 5 Chapters, each chapter have a present time and either a past time or a future time. You have always to access the later times to continue your quest, unlike many game involving time changes, this game doesn't try to twist your mind. Each chapter have a rod and saber upgrades and the end of each chapter is always concluded with a boss to fight in a hack and slash scene (this is why the Magician class shines).

One annoying feature of the game is the lack of battery backed RAM and you must record password on peices of paper that will get, like always, lost. The original game cart is very hard to get by, but thanks to emulators, we can still play this very good games on our computers.