Disney's Aladdin (1993)

There are two things I've always known to be true about Disney's Aladdin on the Super Nintendo: 1. This is far superior to the Genesis version, no matter what anyone (wrongly) says, and 2. This deserves to be in the canon of fantastic Nintendo/Disney/Capcom games made in this period. Much like games like Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, DuckTales, and The Little Mermaid, Aladdin is a perfect blend of challenging, but fairly easy to manage games that really captured the spirit of the source material.

I'm a sucker for these games that simply tell us the story of the movie, and find clever ways to bring that to a new form of media. This has to pad things out with levels in a random pyramid, or within Genie's lamp, but it's such a solid platformer that no one minds. It's also a game that isn't against slowing things down and just having a level entirely centered around the "A Whole New World" part of the movie.

But I think what makes this such a great Nintendo/Disney/Capcom game are the controls, which make Aladdin feel a bit bouncy and floaty in just the right way. The introduction of a sheet early on that you can use as a parachute makes the sometimes frustrating platforming much more manageable, and I often am reminded of how Scrooge moved in the DuckTales game so smoothly when I'm playing this game.

Aladdin is a stunning-looking SNES game that controls well, has some fun platforming with just the right amount of difficulty, and is the kind of movie-based game I want from this period. Capcom had a bit of a harder time managing expectations in the SNES days, but they truly nailed it with Aladdin.