Tales of the Arabian Nights

Tales of the Arabian Nights

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Rule Sheet v1.2 (6/23/97)
– IT’S ABOUT TIME!
By Joshua Lehan
Introduction

This is another great game by John Popadiuk Jr. It is clearly inspired by his earlier success, Theatre of Magic. The difficulty level is about the same; even though it is much easier to progress through the modes and reach the final mode, the playfield is more difficult. The game is based on the Arabian Nights, of course, with a Lamp, a Genie, and a flying carpet ramp. It has a beautiful and detailed backglass, which reminds me of a Magic card – can you guess which expansion it would be from? 🙂

Surprisingly, it is a very low scoring game. Williams seems to have done what Mexico did a few year ago, and chop three zeroes off their “currency”. Scores are about one thousand times less than Attack from Mars. Replay is usually around 10-20 million, high scores around 40 million or so, anything over 100 million is a world-class score. Highest score I’ve ever seen is over one billion! The font for the high scores is the same as AFM, there’s a lot of empty space where the billions would have been. The game rolls over at one billion, good luck getting there…

Another unique thing about Tales from the Arabian Nights (TOTAN) is that it goes out of its way to tell players free games are available. Instead of “Replay at…” it flashes “Free game at…” at the start of the last ball. During Match, it tells the players that a free game is possible if they match. This is a good feature for people new to pinball, who might not know about the Match feature.

I would like to thank the people who helped me with this. Their names and email addresses are listed at the end of this Rule Sheet.