0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Adiboo & Paziral's Secret

       

Adiboo & Paziral's Secret is a children’s action adventure games developed by French studio Coktel Visions, and published by Vivendi Games for the Playstation 1 and Windows, the game released exclusively in Europe on October 24^th 2003, the game also goes by different titles around Europe in Italy the game goes by Adibù E Il Segreto De Paziral, in France it is titled Adibou & Le secret de Paziral, in Spain it goes by the name Adiboo y el secreto de Paziral, and in Germany it is called Adiboo & Das Geheimnis von Paziral.

The game is made up of two types of gameplay your have, side scrolling platform sections, think Crash, very old school platforming gameplay, with players either jumping left or right and collecting various and numerous valuables, the game also features more open 3D adventure sections as well, including a boat race down a river of lava.

In total there are five distinct locations for the player to explore and platform their way through, obviously the aforementioned Volcano stage, there is also lagoon, forest, temple, and metal island, the game also includes racing and arcade sections.

Adiboo is an intrepid explorer who sets out on another adventure this time on a planet called Celesta, a small world made up of countless islands, life on these islands is usually peaceful, however when an island made of metal mysteriously disappears, its leader Paziral wreaks havoc on the nearby Tonies Island one of the most ancient islands on Celesta, this is when the tiny inhabitants of Tonies Island the Tiltilli ask for Adiboo’s help.

With this being a late release in the Playstation 1s life cycle, reviews are quite hard to come by, Metacritic don’t even have this game on their site, and Gamerankings don’t have a single review for the game.

I have managed to find one critic review for the game from French website Jeuxvideo.com, with a very late review for the game, coming in February of 2013 nearly a decade after the games release, with the site giving the game an above average 13/20 with their reviewer concluding it has appreciable qualities, such as a good diversity in its levels, and an accessibility to the reach of the audience it targets.

Unfortunately, it would be hypocritical to close your eyes to its lifespan, the result of content that is far too stingy for surprises. In short, a good pick, but that will have the unfortunate tendency to end before you are ready to finished playing.

Next we head to GameFAQs for some user ratings of the game, only 3 users have rated the game at the time of writing this, with the game averaging at 3.17/5, with two users giving the game a 3.5/5 with the remaining user awarding the game a 2.5/5.

Difficulty wise it is an even split between the three users, with one each rating the game easy, just right and tough, when it comes to overall lifespan of the game all three have rated the game the same at 1 hour, I personally have not played the game so I don’t know if 1 hour is how long the game is, however the one review I did find did mention the game is short.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude and eStarland.com and Retrogames.co.uk with neither of these stores carrying this game so we head to Amazon.co.uk, with the dot.com version of the site not stocking this game either.

So the co.uk version does have this game available, with two versions currently on sale the English version as well as the German, starting with the German version a used very good quality copy of the game is priced at £5.98, with an additional £4.06 for shipping which comes to a grand total of £10.04, which converts to €11.06 in Euro region countries, in the US you will be looking at an outlay of around $13, while in Syria you are looking at a price of 6696.5 Syrian Pounds.

A new copy of the German edition is on the market as well, which is priced up at £27.80, this comes with free UK shipping so will likely be over the £30 mark for outside of the UK shipping.

The English version of the game currently has three copies on the market and is considerably more exspenisve than the German version, with a used like new copy of the game priced up at £38.47, which is more expensive than a new copy of the game, even with shipping added in with a new copy is on the market for £32.99 + £2.10 for shipping, with a total cost of £35.09 for a new copy.

This converts to 23404.4 Syrian Pounds, in the US you will be looking at a cost of $45.45 while in the Euro region countries you are looking at a price of €38.66.

Moving on to Ebay.com where a handful of copies of the game are on sale, with additional versions available, with the English and German versions as well as French, Italian and Spanish versions of the game, with German versions of the game starting around the $6 mark once you add in the shipping costs however that price is raised to $10, which converts to around €8.51.

For a French version of the game, for the disc only you are looking at a cost of around $6 once shipping has been added in which convert to around the €5.10, for a complete copy of the French version you are looking at a price of around the $11 mark once again after shipping has been added, this converts to around €9.36.

Italian and Spanish versions of the games are priced between $17 and $23, however once you add in shipping costs that price does shoot up with a minimum price around the $30 mark for an Italian version, and $35 for a Spanish copy, which convert to around €25 and €30.

Written by

P J Gibbon