Cinderella: Magical Dreams

Cinderella doesn't seem the most obvious choice to base a platform game on and yet there is a Nintendo Gameboy Advance title that does just that.

Following the story of Cinderella pretty closely, including a number of slightly jerky cut scenes, players guide characters through a variety of side-scrolling levels.  Some levels feature Cinderella, some feature Jaq and Gus as the player-controlled character.

The opening level involves Cinderella making her way through the farmyard and surrounding fields gathering apples and feeding horses.  It's not the most taxing, nor most fun of levels.  The next level, though, is more appealing and slightly more challenging and involves controlling Jaq and Gus (who move as one) through the beams and passages secreted between the walls and under the floors of the house.  They bounce on spider webs, throw things at spiders and avoid jets of hot steam.  Then follows a sort of 'boss level' where Jaq has to throw buttons at Lucifer whilst avoiding his swiping paw.  

After this level we change characters again as the player controls the Fairy Godmother.  Her task is to pop drifting balloons of various colours causing the various items to magically change.  Arriving at the ball, the player returns to controlling Cinderella, this time dancing with the Prince.  This is actually quite a tricky level as the player has to stay in a moving spotlight, avoid other dancers and perform dance moves by pressing the right combination of controls.  This one actually took me a couple of attempts to get through successfully.

The next level finds Cinderella escaping the palace whilst pursued by guards.  The player has to avoid obstacles whilst staying ahead of her pursuers.  After this, we're back to Jaq and Gus navigating a table of food.  This also had some trickier elements especially jumping across a bowl of soup with floating, and disappearing, platforms of bread or somesuch.  After this, Jaq and Gus make their way up the inner workings of a clock avoiding cogs and bells, to throw a selection of levers.  

Successfully completing this, players then arrive and the final level where they have to control Gus as he pushes a key towards Cinderella's locked room, whilst avoiding Lucifer.  This is another tricky level which took me a couple of attempts to complete.

Between all these levels are cut scenes moving the story forward and the whole game ends with Cinderella and the Prince heading off in their carriage after their wedding.

Overall, this game is actually quite fun and in some places, satisfyingly challenging.  It's a darn sight more playable than the Gameboy Snow White game but is easier than the Pinocchio game which had some very difficult levels within in.

As with most of these classic games, it is available to play online through various emulators and I'd recommend doing so.