Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds

aka: Magic Carpet 2, Magic Carpet 2: Niederwelten
Moby ID: 790
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

The evil demon lord Vissuluth has taken control of the realms of the Netherworld. Once prosperous lands have been infested with monsters and several evil wizards, Vissuluth's side-kicks, are up to no good either. Fortunately the magician Kafkar knows a promising young apprentice who may stand up to Vissuluth. You're that apprentice!

Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds is the sequel to Magic Carpet and uses a new 3D engine to produce better looking graphics. New spells and monsters are also included. It's an action game with some elements from other genres thrown into the mix. The biggest part of the gameplay is FPS action. You fly around on your magic carpet, clearing levels by killing monsters and battling other wizards. Instead of guns, you use offensive spells like fireball, meteor, lightning, tornado etc.

Every monster you kill leaves behind a certain amount of mana which you can possess and store in your castle. You need this mana to cast spells and if you store it in your castle other wizards can't steal it (in some levels you need to defend your castle from attacks by monsters and rival wizards). With enough mana you can upgrade your castle which allows you to cast more powerful spells. During the course of the game you'll get all kinds of new spells and improve the ones you already have.

Like many other games by Bullfrog Magic Carpet 2 is also a bit of a god game. Many realms are inhabited by neutral citizens; you can help them by destroying monsters that attack them or destroy their cities yourself. You can also completely transform each game world with spells like volcano, earthquake and gravity well.

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Credits (DOS version)

67 People (61 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Project Leader
Engine Programming
Lead Programming
Programming
Lead Artist
Graphics and Art
Introductory Sequence
Scripting
Level Design
Sound & Music
Voice Overs
Technical Support
PR
Playguide
Playguide Design
Testing
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 18 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 38 ratings with 4 reviews)

Wonderful game

The Good
The game was unbelievably good, at first I wasn't expecting this game to be very good but it had it all, good graphics, good story line, the gameplay was easy to learn, after a while I couldn't stop playing. I really hope magic carpet 3 is one game that should be made in the near future.

The Bad
For me it was difficult at the begining but when you get used to the controles it becomes really easier.

The Bottom Line
This is one classic every gamer should have.

DOS · by Djinn (11) · 2000

Amazing. Amazing amazing amazing amazing amazing.

The Good
This game is one of the best I ever played, no surprise coming from a young and original development team at Bullfrog. It has the best 3D engine I've seen to that date (only surpassed by Quake, which came quite a bit later and was completely different): fast, smooth, great-looking and even works in SVGA if your computer is fast enough. Simply amazing graphics, great controls, great sound effects and music and most importantly: GREAT GAMEPLAY! I still remember searching the caverns and fighting much stronger wizards until I was finally strong enough to defeat them. The spellcasting system is innovative and well-thought out, the levels are cool, the setting is neat, everything - this is without a doubt one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played, and with half a dozen secret levels and typical Bullfrog style, how can you go wrong?

The Bad
Too easy. Otherwise it's perfect.

The Bottom Line
One of the best games ever created. Go play it now, you're missing out.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

If I ever composed a list of underrated games, Magic Carpet 2 would definitely be in the Top 5

The Good
Magic Carpet 2 is another example of the “hybrid god sim” genre that the legendary UK designer Peter Molyneux worked on for Bullfrog in early to mid 1995, shortly before he left the company to found Lionhead Productions. Despite being an ahead of its time, both technically and artistically, and receiving favourable reviews, MC2 went almost unnoticed by gamers. Now, it is extremely difficult to find. I came to own my copy by virtue of my dad, who gave it to me a few weeks ago. He received it as a free software sample while he was working as editor for the now-defunct Australian Electronics magazine.

MC2 is visually impressive, even today. It supports an SVGA 480x640 resolution or just plain VGA. Despite the resolution, the fully morphable landscape, gouraud shading, intelligent light sources, reflections and a number of other small nuances in the graphics make it almost as fun to watch as it is to play.

As far as storylines go, we’ve just got the generic “hero-vs-evil-baddie” plot. After the first war, the tattered realms are just beginning to regain some semblance of order when Vissuluth appears. Exploiting a natural loophole between the world and the “otherworld” (as we’re told in the manual), he invades with a host of demonic creatures. Soon the very fabric of reality begins to warp and meld, and the creatures of the very land are corrupted. You, one of the few wizards who survived the first war, are called by the spirit of your slain master Kafka to spearhead the assault against Vissuluth. You fly from realm to realm, equipped with the titular carpet and a arsenal of spells to use, blasting to smithereens monsters and giant insects and rival wizards and other stuff I won’t enlarge upon until the final showdown with Vissuluth himself. It might not sound like the most original of plots, but after playing through the first couple of levels you soon find yourself becoming as involved in the story as if had it contained three-thousand word narratives.

At a glance, MC2 looks like a standard first-person-shooter. However, on closer inspection it is a lot more than that. There are adventure parts, and even traces of city building and economic management. All the realms you journey into are populated by people, who are neither friend nor foe. These people reproduce, and over time the population grows. They build and expand cities, and after a while they even recruit little armies to drive away Vissuluth’s creatures which frequently attack them. If you are nice to them, they will aid you in your quest. But if you fire offensive spells at them, they start attacking you. If you have the time and breathing space (which you won’t, in most levels), you could sit back and observe the human population, and watch them grow like a colony of sea monkeys.

The spells avaliable are varied, to say the least. There are over 20 of them. They range from the standard fireball, to the devastating meteor, to the life-saving teleport, to the indispensable heal. Some of them are spectacular to watch, such as the volcano spell, which creates an enormous lava-spewing mountain on the spot.

“Mana” is the critical lynchpin in MC2. It is energy, the more mana you have, the more spells you’ll be able to use, and the more health you’ll get. Mana is represented by little golden balls. At the start of the game, you have a “possession” spell. You can cast this spell on mana, and it will come under your control. But other wizards can simply come along and capture it off you with a possession spell of their own. So, you must build a fortress to store your captured mana. Fortresses are extremely important, they allow you to store an unlimited supply of mana where it can’t be captured by enemies. Over time, you can enlarge it, and even equip it with troops to defend it against enemy wizards.

Speaking of enemy wizards, they are another unique factor in magic carpet. There are seven of them: Nyphur, Rahn, Jark, Belix, Elyssa, Yragore, and Prish. They are like you. They need mana, they use spells, they can build a castle to hoard mana in. And you need to beat them all to progress to the next level. This is the true beauty of MC2 – the competition. Fighting against rival wizards, while staying on good terms with the people, and collecting mana. Not every problem can be solved by blazing away with the trusty fireball spell. MC2 achieves a depth of gameplay that is rare indeed in the FPS genre.. It is really more strategy than shooter.

The Bad
The game is too easy. I was able to knock the 25 levels over in about three days. The various monsters you face are generally as dumb as a bag of hammers, and even the wizards don’t pose a massive threat once you get a fortress and a decent supply of mana. Usually the opening moments of the game are the most tense, as you don’t have a fortress and must fend for yourself against hordes of monsters. But once you get a fortress (and troops to defend it), it is almost impossible to really die, even if the enemy wizards gang up against you –- as they often do.

MC2 also suffers from repetition. Some of the levels have unique mission objectives, such as “collect X amount of mana”, or “build your fortress up to X level”, or “eliminate all monsters of X type”, but usually the developers have resorted to the standard “kill all enemies”. While it is fun the first few times, having to do it again and again and again, with no conceivable reward but to do more of the same on the next level is not what I’d call overly exciting. This problem is compounded by the fact that eliminating enemy wizards is so difficult. To completely banish them from the realm, you must a) destroy their castle, and b) kill them before they get the chance to build a new one. The trouble is, they build a new castle almost instantly, and the process repeats itself ad infinitum until they run out of mana.

One of the differences between MC1 and MC2 is that in MC2 some missions happen underground, in caverns. With a few exceptions, these cavern missions are dismal failures. The lighting is terrible, it is way too dark and I had to crank up the contrast on my monitor to see properly. The tunnels are so narrow that I was constantly crashing, losing my orientation, and going completely the wrong way. Another problem is that the game’s engine often does funny stuff with narrow confines. Sometimes I’d get attacked by monsters that could, apparently, shoot through solid walls. Also, finding enough flat ground to construct a fortress is a pain, and my balloon (which is a thing that automatically harvests your captured mana and then stores it in the fortress) kept on getting trapped in between stalactites and therefore rendered useless. I soon found myself groaning whenever I had to play through a cavern mission.

The game doesn’t perform terribly well on modern OSes. Even while running in Win95 compatibility mode, I suffered from frequent crashes and lockups. Sometimes the game would slow down to be almost unplayable, with an extremely choppy framerate. Which is actually a bit of a laugh when considering the system requirements. I experienced similar problems both with my Windows ME and Windows 98 machines.

The Bottom Line
Despite all of its merits, MC2 was the first Bullfrog game to commercially fail. I can only wonder why.

DOS · by Maw (833) · 2004

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Selecting upgraded spells adhawkins Jul 18, 2012

Trivia

German version

Translations how they should not be. On the back of the German cover the advertisement want to state that Magic Carpet 2 is still an action game and that the action is faster than before. Unfortunately the word "action" was also translated and now the advertisement state something about faster activity and activity parts within the game. Strange, they have managed to keep the word "action" within the first sentence of the advertisement.

Intel

Magic Carpet 2 features several references to the Intel Pentium processor. In several of the regular levels you can find an entrance to bonus Demon Lord levels. While these Demon Lord are being loaded, briefly a screen with the Intel Inside logo and the message "Pentium processor detected, configuring for optimal performance" is shown. The funny thing is, you also get to see this message when your PC is equipped with an AMD processor.

Music

One of the advanced command line parameters for executing this game from CDROM is: NETHERW -MUSIC2 which allows the gamer to listen to alternative music from the original Magic Carpet.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1996 - Best 3D Action Game in 1995
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1996 – Best ActionGame in 1995

Information also contributed by jaXen and Roedie

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  • MobyGames ID: 790
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Teg.

Macintosh, Windows added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, Roger Wilco, Roedie, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger.

Game added January 24, 2000. Last modified January 29, 2024.