Magic Carpet (PC/DOS) 1994, Bullfrog, EA

[@defranken]

I remember playing this as a kid and have absolutely no idea what I was doing.

[@Boofatcha]

LOL same. I remember it took a while to boot up on my Grandpa's old machine but I thought the graphics were great back then and didn't care too much that I didn't understand the goal of the game at all.

[@2Dzz]

same. all i can remember about it was "this game sucks"

[@sithius99]

Same! My Windows 95 PC was stolen by a piece of shit thief who lived down the road, but I remember distinctly playing this game. Fun fucking times. The nostalgia is very real. I also remember not knowing what I was doing and I also remember the graphics being far better than they actually were, lol.

[@stevegek]

I was just looking at this vid with the exact same feeling. I recognized so many enemies, weapons, etc... but never had any clue what I did haha.

[@HiredGoonage]

Loved the intro but didn't run great on my PC. Like with you guys it wasn't real clear what to do. I flew around for a bit and then quit to play something else.

[@stevenkaye1625]

I remember as a kid, thinking this was the pinnacle of graphics.

[@basteagui]

it looks pretty good! compared to other games of that time and a few that came after.

[@doraanaisnin5199]

@@basteagui does it (?

[@brayanargandonaflorentino548]

It's still better than most of every triple A games where graphics is just a marketing ploy

[@lotharschramm5000]

Really? Even as a kid I found this game ugly lol

[@thefonzkiss]

It was the pinnacle of graphics.

[@joaoandrebernardino]

Some games are just elegant and timeless... this is one of those pearls

[@CopiousDoinksLLC]

It really is. I played through it again about 2-3 years back and it actually holds up. Those rival mages are every bit as annoying as I remembered, lol.

[@reaty05]

Ez but hard at same time

[@NuntiusLegis]

Good graphics and sound, haunting atmosphere, but the gameplay is just "shoot at everything"?

[@joaoandrebernardino]

@sLegis Like all other shoot'em ups?! There was space for nuanced gameplay... where to drop your fortress to reach specific places faster, or prey and attack rival wizards when they were engaged with another problem or situation... etc. Not sure if you played it then... but in 1994, it was just amazing. 94 was a special year (Tie Fighter, Doom2, System Shock, Magic Carpet, Elder Scrolls Arena, Master of Magic, Theme Park)!

[@NuntiusLegis]

@@joaoandrebernardino I think I played it (a demo?) for a while, probably longer than I usually play shhot'em ups (= 10 seconds) because it looked interesting, and couldn't quite figure it out.

[@direzza9643]

a remake of this would be so amazing

[@xAngoryx]

This game was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond its days

[@realretrorelapse]

I had no idea how to play this game as a kid. I just flew around everywhere randomly.

[@SecretOfMonkeyIsland784]

This game was so popular back in 1994 it was even featured prominently in the Neighbours TV show soap, one of the Kennedys kids played it.

[@teebles]

I remember reading the manual of this game. It says to take a rest every 15 minutes otherwise there'll be a chance off motion sickness. I played like 3 hours straight lol

[@thefonzkiss]

RIP

[@chap87]

Haha, I remember a friend of mine pitching the game to me that it is so intense and advanced you get motion sickness. We were 10 years old at the time.

[@ericmm6822]

EA devouring and destroying Bullfrog was a tragedy.

[@legendarysnake]

Peter molineux left the company

[@krux02]

@@legendarysnake not sure if molineux was the main guy making this game as good as it is.

[@Cyril86]

@@krux02 Definitely not the only guy, at least.

[@zacharyfindlay-maddox171]

I had a PC demo of this game back in 1995 I believe, cool game.

[@raphaelpraxedes3727]

I have one demo too

[@abloba]

thats the only way i ever played it lol

[@anthonyjolly1175]

Has to be the reason I played this game as well

[@bruxdlux595]

I got wrapped up in this game it was the first game that I didn’t finish the final sorcerer was too strong for me. Bullfrog had a golden period when everything they released was a hit.

[@kujo5998]

Oh man. Ive thought about these random memories as a kid, playing some game where i turned gold balls a different color, by shooting them, and sometimes after beating a boss there would be HUNDREDS of them!! For some reason i associated it with the words “magic carpet”! Lol I did a search to see if i’d get lucky and holy shit!! This is IT!!! I spent HOURS & DAYS playing this as a kid!! Wow thx for posting!!

[@KvltKommando]

wow, havent seen this game since I was a kid. Wow, I had no idea what was going on in the game back then, and... I still don't think I do.

[@reaty05]

Intro is all the story you'll get

[@realnull]

Looks like I was the only one that used the castle as an offensive spell, throw a castle spell at a group of enemies, and they are destroyed in the vicinity of the castle, then quickly claim mana around it, and since it is very close to the castle it gets into it without need for a balloon to pick it up, and with so much mana in the castle you can generate an upgrade for the castle and there you are in the loop :), you get to tier 3-5 castle within a minute

[@billedefoudre]

Holy crap, such a good strategy xD

[@seasider101]

Yep... cast the castle spell, then sit on top of it killing and collecting mana was such a fast way to get started... watching this made my teeth itch.

[@lotharschramm5000]

No it was a common strategy

[@mhjmstultiens]

The game was so creepy when I was young. That sound of bees attacking! (20:38 ) Love the dynamic music.

[@Mzuka-Moto]

Hated the bees always scared me

[@firstandlastname6194]

Needs a remake, solid gameplay. Also, looks better than I remember

[@xenoclassical4058]

If I get rich enough to not have to work again as a sw developer I will develop this. I swear. Just to be able to play a game like this again

[@dudersaurus]

you could play this game in a 3d/magiceye mode.. you did that cross eye thing and play the game in magiceye 3d.. was hard to do, made you sick too but was so very cool

[@Ching582]

Omg. Finding this game 25 years. I play demo game at 1999. Thanks

[@teraboo9086]

This game deserves many awards.

[@ascender816]

This game is burned into my mind. Especially the music. I don't mind.

[@Sweemops]

we saw this game in a computer store. it was a setup where you could try the game, showing the skills of modern pcs. One was using the mouse, the other the keyboard. We had no clue of the objectives but it didnt matter anyway. this game still has a great atmosphere.

[@tinman2173]

Next time you get swarmed by those bees if you have not built your castle let them get on top of you and fire your castle at the ground below you. As your castle is building it will destroy any creature in the area as it builds.. this includes when you expand it... And then the mana is right the to be collected :)

[@Civsuccess2]

I still had the nightmare of getting zapped by the electric monster.

[@danieldeldaniel3919]

I would love more games with that kind of esthetic

[@time-zero]

One of the best designed games ever made

[@chinoAlexfc]

Nostálgic. Great game.

[@Yaveshtolethien]

Decades ahead of its time.

[@robbyzoom5453]

I love to see a revival of this: in VR!!

[@DeadRaymanWalking]

If that happens, I'd like to have that in the form of a VR game/ride at Dave & Buster's. I'd be having the time of my life!

[@rowtow13]

This game actually had support for VR headsets at launch.

[@danwroy]

Only read about this one in gaming mags but I was completely blown away you could do a game like that

[@TortureBot]

I remember having a downloadable either shareware or demo version of this on a BBS I ran in the mid to late 90's. Cool game.

[@pelimies1818]

To make this go smooth in -94 was well beyond my wallet.

[@doddsino]

Just that opening scene... watching that at the correct frame rate after all these years...it just didn't seem right.

[@Xan0906]

@@doddsino It's running too fast here a lot of the time, not to mention the wrong aspect ratio. There's no framerate cap in this game so on a high-end Pentium 90 from the time the game would run too fast in VGA mode while SVGA would be a slideshow.

[@Banzeken]

@@Xan0906 In my experience (as an owner of a P90 tower with S3 Vision964 graphics card) Magic Carpet runs at just about perfectly normal speed at 90Mhz using the highest (Pentium-detected) graphical settings in VGA resolution, unless you stare into the sky in which case everything speeds up as the frame-rate increases. If this speed is still somehow too fast for one’s taste, enabling “smoothing” (the game’s take on anti-aliasing) using the appropriate function key will slow down performance ever so slightly more but not so much that it doesn’t play fluidly. Activating “speed blur” on top of that works pretty fine as well. A Pentium 90Mhz is pretty much the perfect CPU for playing this game, from my perspective.

[@Banzeken]

@@doddsino The speed of the cutscene is tied to the read speed of the CD-ROM drive as the game did not install cutscenes to the hard drive originally. Drive speed was typically around 2x or 4x in November 1994 (when Magic Carpet came out) and when I last tried the game using a 2x CD drive (Toshiba XM3401 specifically) on an old 1994 tower PC it ran even slower than in this KZbin video but it didn’t feel too slow still. The speed also depends on the size of each frame being loaded from the CD so you will still have some scenes/cuts in the opening video running at higher frame-rates/speeds than others even on old 2x drives.

[@Xan0906]

@@Banzeken I have a similar setup, and have to disagree on that. Even with the "slow" Neptune chipset and the P90, the demo played fast enough to feel broken, and you're flying a lot into the sky anyway in this game, so it just feels inconsistent. If youtube wasn't deleting posts with links in them I'd link a google groups post from 1995 where someone mentioned this issue, the game being too fast in VGA but crawling in SVGA on a P100. Though with something like this I can see why there can be disagreements. Really, all of those Bullfrog games should have had framerate caps in the first place. Thinking about that, maybe having to target 70hz (VGA) and 60hz (SVGA) is what tripped some developers up during that period.

[@doddsino]

I wish I knew what that screeching bird sound was called. It's one of my favorite sound effects of all time.

[@racefaceec90]

i loved the playstation version of this (couldn't afford a pc). nothing else quite like it even now.

[@edgarector]

I remember, that was one of the first games I played on my Sega Saturn! Memories!

[@ito12347]

That water looks better than some games today , water moves realistically with decent speculations and shadows

[@Tterraphorm]

I just remembered this game... so weird

[@Smilies-hb3mr]

when i was young i played this game a ton. it's an amazing game. music is great too. i finished it a lot lol.

[@---dp3yb]

Such a nostalgic game - later on it got really hard, level 25 or 50 made your spells disappear and you had to find them again with tons of extremy dangerous mobs and enemy npc players around. The bee trap i rememgber well (minute 20) and some later mobs have a mirror spell. First time I met a dragon i threw a meteorite at it only for it to fly right back into my face and instakilling me ^^

[@contrabandresearch8409]

It would be crazy to go around on a magic carpet blasting everything with fireballs.

[@ВаняШтауфенберг]

An ellegant game from more civilized times . (c)

[@Scaley_Reptile]

I remember this (and 6 other games) was with the ps1 I bought wghen I was about 20.. I remember struggling to understand it, and dying OVER AND OVER, but I really loved this game, was something unique and special about it.. I'm here to try work out HOW its MEANT to be played.. try it again on my jailbreak.

[@waynemallette8668]

Thank you for posting this

[@xaxoon69]

TY 4 the video!!!!!! It's a shame that today's developers no longer think about developing such innovative games and have only been programming the same crap for many years.

[@alfonszitterbacke318]

Nobody knew what an "IRQ" and a "DMA" is, and nobody knew what to do in this game.

[@lotharschramm5000]

Reading manuals is hard.

[@iareanon]

Damn I love this game

[@mimmoum3236]

C'était un claque ce jeu. Un précurseur pour 1994. J'y ai joué des jours.

[@Caleb-fv5fp]

Fully polygonal texture mapped in 1994

[@marshallalexander8228]

Way ahead of It's time

[@amjadsulieman1148]

Don't think that Era of gaming can ever be replicated.. there's something about it..

[@XlmxVeronel97]

Still have this game lol.

[@FuchsiaShock]

wow. Remember it so well :)

[@JLongbow]

All I remember from this game is "URRRGH!"

[@SilverMiner]

Wow! There are even evil wizards on the carpets

[@hughlingard]

bullfrog is easily one of the greatest developers of all-time.

[@tubecollector100]

in the old days i owned a expansion pack with extra levels , sadly lost it in all those years ... does anyone know where to find it ?

[@IRGhost0]

GOG

[@Simone_songwriter]

Back in the days I had problems running it lol

[@PeterSmith-ky1iv]

One of my absolute favorite games. Did no-one tell you about the High-res mode? I think you hit ALT-G. It was an early SVGA game :) Ok other videos say it was just "R", so maybe that's the combo :) Anyways!

[@thefonzkiss]

Watching this 25 years later to finally find out what the f you had to do in this game …

[@spaceghostcqc2137]

They need to make some new games in this genre. The Magic Carpets were really cool and never got iterated on. VR could be a good fit.

[@FineBakedPastry]

The music is reminiscent of another Bullfrog game, Syndicate.

[@CFootprints]

Looking at this footage, apparently what I was doing as a kid, being shooting at everything and flying around all over the place, wasn't that far off from how you were supposed to play the game after all. Never did quite make it past the first level though.

[@RotundRager]

"You must return the world to order." *summons giant volcano for no reason*

[@AriaArgento101]

I love that game as a kid!

[@TheSpacey52]

20:37 "Wait what is that?! No not the bees! Ahhhh! NO THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AHHHHHH!!!"

[@terrylandess6072]

The pacing of this gem reminds me a bit of what the mobile designers are trying to emulate. I just wish the PC market today wasn't trying to emulate mobile games. :)

[@Technobabylon]

Gosh, it certainly didn't run this smoothly on my old 486!

[@julienjalageas779]

This game used to creep me out

[@Demetrius3663]

Pura nostalgia , voltei mais de 20 anos kkk

[@michar9242]

Great game, spent many hours

[@_Reynolds_]

Still hope the Amiga version will appear once... or at least a playable preview...

[@wild8074]

Amazing ❤

[@masterkeygeofam6185]

Нельзя далеко отлетать от места забора маны, а лучше подождать прилёта воздушного шара. Половину готовой маны просто отдаёшь врагу)

[@AngryCalvin]

I remembered getting ambushed the second I would go through a warp zone and another dude riding on a carpet would start firing away. You would take so much damage you could not even turn around quickly enough to defend yourself. Such cheap shots from your opponent. Of course you would do the same exact thing to them if you were in their position. LOL!

[@YeenMage]

The OUCH sound for the player and other wizards were irritating. I'm glad they changed it in Magic Carpet 2.

[@larryleelethbridge8027]

Cant get it on steam,I had this one back then as well,high tec at the time.

[@BrutalGoerge]

i remember getting rekd by those bees too

[@OpenDoorEnglish]

Kill others sorcerers and then nuke their castle to stop them respawning. Makes life a lot easier!

[@RaymondKarlVeasey75]

This Game Needs A Remake.

[@afinteresting8817]

when are they going to make the remake!

[@kras908]

Господи. Моя первая игра детства

[@hedition9346]

I broke many mouse playing this game. I left click so much the button broken and I had to change mouse several times.

[@Tigrou7777]

Sounds in this game : urgh, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, urgh, urgh, .........

[@masterkeygeofam6185]

Ностальгия)

[@enragedninja]

Classic.

[@ynage11-w6d]

those damn bees

[@Alexman47]

Where can we download this game?

[@adrianvega7774]

Que recuerdos ❤

[@RandyOrlok]

1:36:30 This sound effect have in Prince of Persia Sand Of Time

[@Jlibby63]

Nice!

[@legendarysnake]

My only complain is the drawn distance

[@davejones542]

awesome game remake please

[@emberleona6671]

press spacebar the world was restored 31:28 oi Vodor has died

[@reaty05]

Only to level 7?

[@johntrevy1]

This needs to be reverse engineered to work on Quest 2.

[@AntonBillJon]

Völlige Zerstörung im Multiplayer Modus.

[@Firebat15]

Led Zeppelin -In The Light tell me that song doesnt remind you of the music at 24:30

[@xuedalong]

Those kraken bastards at around 1:20:00...

[@thefonzkiss]

Aspect ratio fail, should be 4:3, and the game didn’t run as fast as this. I had a Pentium200 in the mid/late 90s and it wasn’t this fast. Let alone with a 486 in 94 or a top of the line Pentium100 in 95.

[@TheOzoneLayerHatesMe]

I HATED the bees as a 5 year old

[@ytcio]

Haluk Bilginer sesi mi la bu