Pulling from Arabian lore, The Magic of Skippy doesn't REALLY use any material from the actual story of Scheherazade, aside from using her ridiculous name for princess identification purposes. The evil magician Sabaron has conjured up a terrible dragon beast that had once ravaged the land. He's also kidnapped Princess Scheherazade! It's up to you, descendant of the historically-relevant magician Isfa, to live up to your bloodly heritage and save the world from its impending peril. But let's make it even more irritating by sending you to a different time period and having you make your way back. Yeah, that's good.

First darn thing that annoyed me before anything else was the password system. Now I thought that the exceptionally lengthy passwords of Super Ninja Boy were beyond excessive and a bit draining to enter. The passwords of The Magic of Skippy manage to do the impossible: they're even longer! A typical password is 41 characters long! This is preposterous! They sure didn't put the "brain" in Culture Brain over at Development HQ. This is an RPG: put a battery back-up in! The Legend of Zelda did it two years earlier, so why couldn't they? No excuse other than being cheap. To make matters worse, your password always takes you to the first town you visit in each chapter, regardless of which town you were in when you received that password. That means extra pointless trekking to extend the life of this game. At least all of your stats and items are kept intact.

At the beginning of the game, you choose what class you will be, from the list of Fighter, Saint, or Magician. The fighter is excellent with a sword, doing extra damage with it and is even able to reflect bullets with it. The saint can use a shield to fend off stray bullets as well and can avoid damage on such zones. The magician? Well, he is good with...magic? Actually, they all can use magic. Speaking of magic, what's the deal with the names of spells in this game? Unless you are staring right at the manual, you'll have no idea what some of these things are for. What are the healing spells called? No, not "HEAL"; let's go with "PAMPOO" and "MARITA". Okay, Pampoo makes PERFECT sense. Marita? What does the guy from The Karate Kid have to do with anything? Need to find hidden staircases and caves? Use "OPRIN". Oprin... it's not medicine for a headache, it's used to uncover secrets. Perhaps this is short for "oprin sesame!" And, I kid you not, "MYMY". What's it for? According to manual writer experts, MYMY "stops the enemy's movement and changes it in to a hamburger." I could not have made that up (nor could I have fabricated the strange grammar that is "in to a hamburger").

Oh, and "SEAL" stops the enemy's magic and transforms the enemy into a cake. Deeeeelicious!

Raise your scimitar in the air! Wave it like you just don't care!

The Magic of Skippy tries to be the jack of all trades, just as Super Ninja Boy ended up doing years later on the SNES. It's a blend of both action and turn-based RPG elements. Most of your time will be spent roaming the plains, screen by screen à la Zelda, in search of something. You may not even be entirely sure what, but at least you get the daily recommended dose of exercise. Brandishing either a magic rod or a scimitar of sorts, you'll get to beat the chest hairs off enemies as they randomly appear after a screen transition. The more you kill, the more experience you earn, the more money you can potentially earn, and the more intrinsic satisfaction you'll receive from stabbing a non-physical sprite resembling a crazed Arabian ruffian or a tempura sand shrimp. Ah, the joys of adventuring. By the way, you can only increase your stats by five experience levels in each chapter. They planned it that way. ...They PLANNED it that way!

Boy, these areas can be pretty big. Better see if you can buy a map. Turns out the unpleasant shopkeepers occasionally are stocked up with maps, although they can only be used for mazes and palaces (basically, areas that are indoors or underground). That means the overworld is simply a place Or, better yet, have a friend take a cartography course while you enter a password, and you'll be fine.

And then, for no rhyme or reason, screen transitions will randomly bring about a turn-based RPG battle that I didn't want to play. Seriously, these can be brutal, causing more damage to your party than any pleasant skip along the hillside could ever do. Sad part is that you can choose which type of enemy to attack, but not the SPECIFIC enemy. Oh, Culture Brain, you make me want to just tuck your cute little cartridge in a basket and send it down a river. A river of death, perhaps. You can hire husky-looking soldiers for 100 rupias (cue in knock-off Zelda chimes) to give you extra offensive power, and they are quite invaluable if you can't escape the battle.

Now hold on a second, me! Did I just say I had a "party"? Oh yes, you and your demigod crony allies... You pick these folks up on your travels and are necessary to progress storywise. Some of them help you out during boss battles, which definitely gets a thumbs-up from me because those are hard enough as it is. But who came up with the names for these guys? "Kebabu"? "Pukin"? "Gun Meca"? Wait, GUN MECA?! (It says "Gan Meca" in the instruction manual, but I'm just going to pretend that the manual is like the non-canonical Archie Comics side-story.) And there's an ally that can make it rain. Now what name should we give him?

Rainy. His name is Rainy. Feelin' the love here.

You can make special formations with certain characters that will result in extra powerful spells, but the formations only work against one particular set of enemies and will be useless against all others. These specific formations can be learned at various Magic University locations by a VERY creepy-looking professor. Yes, I said the Magic University. It's not that the university itself is magical by any means. It's just a place to learn. The universities are usually in little cave-like shacks, just like most other Ivy League schools. Many of them even have exams! Believe me: they ask the tough questions, like what the heck the course was called! Actually, that's the only question. Going to the university isn't cheap, but neither is going to actual university, unless you live in Europe and/or are a lucky person.

The Magic of Skippy doesn't look half-bad for its time. The sprites are actually large, and the enemies (especially the bosses) are somewhat attractive to the eye. Purely platonic way, you know? No kissin' with the locals, y'know, yep. The different regions start to get dull after a while, especially since terrain tends to repeat over all five chapters. It's green grass! I get it! The music sometimes has that Arabian feel to it that is hard to describe. I will say this, though: after staying at a hotel, the sleeping music reminds me of dropping an elephant in a well: very unusual. As well, the "you just made a plot-based achievement in this game" jingle sounds too familiar... like from Super Ninja Boy again! But this game came first, so I'll let this one slide, but I will scowl at the Culture Brain composition team.

Oh, and did I mention fun conversation starters like this?

Yes, that's The Magic of Skippy/Scheherazade in a nutshell. It's very unusual to play, and many a casual gamer will be turned away from its somewhat opaque dialogue, confusing maze-like areas, and irritating battles. But if you dig deep enough and maintain a certain level of patience, you'll discover that it's not entirely bad. Journeying through the countryside has its charm at times, and nothing beats the thrill of jabbing a green bee in the neck fat as it flies innocently and aimlessly around one square parcel of land. Yes, The Magic of Scheherazade is alive in all our hearts. It just gives us arrhythmia.