Aladdin II (Mega Drive)

This article is about the Mega Drive version. For the Famicom version, see Aladdin II (Famicom).

Aladdin II
Title screen.
Publisher	X Boy (?)
Developer	Ex-Chuanpu (?)
Console	Sega Mega Drive
Date	1996/97 (?)
Engine	Chuanpu MD engine
Sound engine	High Seas Havoc (Mega Drive)

Aladdin II is an unlicensed Mega Drive port of the SNES version of Disney's Aladdin, originally made by Capcom in 1994. It might has been developed by ex-workers from Chuanpu Technology and was likely published by X Boy. This port can be considered the "opposite" of Aladdin 2000, a port of Virgin's Aladdin to the SNES.

Summary

The game is just a port of the SNES version, it features all the stages from the original game, although with fairy different color palettes. The game only has some predefined enemies and they show the same color palette in every stage.

Unlike the legit SNES version, the Mega Drive port lacks of the bonus mini-games that appear once you complete each stage. The game still shows a Continue screen once the player loses all the lifes, which has been very well recreated, but lacks Aladdin's monkey Abu (who doesn't appear outside of cutscenes)

The sound effects used in the game are pretty generic and mediocre, similar to what happens in other games like Hercules 2, Mulan or Pocket Monster and its sequel, the last two showing more noticeable similarities.

Similarities to other EX-Chaunpu platformers

Similar to what happens in other games supposedly developed by ex-Chuanpu developers, like Pocket Monster and its sequel, the game has some noticeable features and glitches.

• Due to the game programming, once you defeat an enemy and refresh the screen, it will appear again.
• When you land on an enemy, you can jump higher.

Gallery

Cartridge

A preview of the Crash Handler screen.

Video

Pirate Showcase -52- Aladdin II

Gameplay with text commentary, some glitches and effects of the Crash Handler screen are shown as well.

Trivia

• Hercules 2 and Lion King 3 may have reused assets from Aladdin II; they both appear to be connected to X Boy and contain enemies and level graphics from the SNES Aladdin.
• Looking at the game headers of Aladdin II and the two Pocket Monsters games for the Mega Drive, we can notice they're almost identical. This, along with some research about the cartridge chip ID's, would suggest that they actually share the same engine. In fact, because the jumping ability is glitched in the Pocket Monster games, but not in Aladdin II, the last would have been published later.
• In-game, there's a debug screen you can currently turn on. The debug screen is easily accessible by pressing A, B, & C at the same time. The debug screen is actually a crash handler, which shows the 68k registers and the current stack (which appears to be set to the very first address in RAM), you can navigate by pressing up or down in the D-Pad as well. You can press start to exit the debug screen. The color pallete of several sprites become corrupted as soon as you turn it on, but changes back to normal when the character dies or after you beat the current stage.
• The theme from the first level is not based on the music from the SNES version; however, it does closely resemble the Western Desert theme from Barver Battle Saga: Tai Kong Zhan Shi, further suggesting a Chuanpu connection.