This is a review I’ve wanted to write for at least two years.

Back when I first thought about writing a “Games from the Crypt” installment for Eric Goldberg’s 1985 masterpiece TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS two years ago, the game was woefully out of print and outrageously expensive in the aftermarket. I had just played it for the first time thanks to a cheap ding-and-dent copy of the German language edition published in 2000 that I acquired and arduously pasted up with English text and printing new components- including the entre Book of Tales- to make the game playable.

I had missed the game in the 1980s, but the first few games I played of it completely blew me away. From the first game I felt that extremely rare sensation of being in the presence of creative greatness, that sense that you’re experiencing something that really is at the absolute peak of the form. And I wanted to write about it so badly, to get the word out that this was another one of those games that the hobby community shouldn’t have dismissed in favor of various bean-counting exercises and rote fantasy adventure games based around rigid templates. But right before I resolved to put pen to paper, so to speak, there was news of a reprint thanks to Zev Shalsinger’s Z-Man Games, and I decided that I wanted to wait until everyone could easily pick up a copy of this incredible game before I covered it here at Cracked LCD.

The third edition of TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS is widely available as of this writing and it is without a doubt the definitive edition of this classic game. There are some changes here and there, mostly minor ones, but anyone who hasn’t played before would never notice anyway. There are new tales to be told, and some of the more antiquated parts of the game have been modernized and streamlined, placing the game on an equal footing with what are its new contemporaries.

I cover a lot of games in this column that I really like a lot or think have something special to offer but there are very few that I think are really significant, meaningful additions to any gamer’s collection.

This is one of them.

I believe that TotAN is one of the finest examples of hobby board gaming ever released. It is a completely enchanting game full of magic, wonder, and surprise in which only the very jaded or analytical will not find themselves ensorcelled. Based on and around 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS, the game completely captures the ribaldry, heroism, folly, and excitement of those stories.

TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, graced with a tremendous production featuring nicely executed artwork and graphic design, is a paragraph-based adventure game. This means that all of the encounters, quests, adventures, and other events of the game are relayed to the player through numbered paragraphs that are indicated by game actions, decisions, and matrix results. It is a genre that more or less does not exist anymore today, although ARKHAM HORROR disguises its paragraphs among thousands of cards.