Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Invisible Ring. Enjoy!
If you could have one wish, what would it be?
A) More Invisible Ring guest posts?
B) The second half of my pirate movie?
C) Poptropica to be revived in all its former glory: Monkey Wrench, Realms, classic common rooms, etc.
I wish! Don’t we all…
Unfortunately, I’m not a genie, so wish C is beyond my power to grant. I AM a poptropican with a magical craft table though! So, while I keep concocting the difficult spell of wish B, I shall now grant to you wish A.
From the scribe that brought you my comparison of the dream islands Fairytale Island and Goofball Island, comes the final dream island post, Jade Scarab vs. Arabian Nights– which are the first and last dream islands in Poptropica’s history!
Comparisons
Both of these islands are absolutely ✨magical✨, filled with magical secrets and deep-rooted legends from different parts of the world. They’re also both full of rich culture and beauty while also being challenging and exciting like most popular Poptropica islands. They even share some of the same musical soundtracks!
There were only four episodic adventures ever made, and Arabian Nights is the last of its kind. Similarly, there were only four Dream Islands ever made, and Jade Scarab is also the last of its kind! Talk about a coincidence.
Contrasts
Jade Scarab was one of the three 2020 Dream Island winners that eventually launched in 2022, while Arabian Nights was the 2013 Dream Island winner that launched in 2014. While Jade Scarab is one complete island, Arabian Nights is an episodic adventure that is split between three parts.
Fun fact: Arabian Nights is the only dream Island with any common rooms in it! 🤓 Jade Scarab doesn’t have one, however.
The medals are all different too! All of the dream islands have a different medallion and a different story to tell.
The Fairytale medallion has a royal purple strap and an etching of the mysterious villain Rumpelstiltskin, which leads me to believe Rumpelstiltskin himself dropped the medallion when he turned into smoke and escaped the fairytale castle.
The Goofball medallion has an indigo strap and a picture of a piñata. With a dull color and a fun picture, this medallion embodies the balance of goofiness and dullness that is ultimately delivered on Goofball Island.
The Jade Scarab medallion has a jade green strap and an etching of the island’s magical mascot, the Scarab. Need I say more?
The Arabian Nights medallion shows up at the end of each of the three island episodes. Three medallions? That’s as many as the rest of the dream islands put together! All three Arabian Nights medallions all look exactly alike too. They each have a blood-red strap and a sword. Surely these bold and deadly medals were either worn by thieves, made for thieves, or even made BY thieves! Heck, they could’ve even been stolen by thieves too!
But enough about fun facts and medallions. How do the actual quests compare and contrast?
Each quest revolves around an expedition to find a special treasure; an archeological expedition to find the Jade Scarab and an infiltration expedition to finding the Arabian Nights genie lamp. Each treasure has its decoy, but only the one on Arabian Nights has a dangerous curse if you don’t find the real treasure.
There’s a curse on Jade Scarab Island, too, but it only happens to the bad guys who try to stage fake curses and lock people in caves. It’s really just the supernatural Jade Scarab guardian protecting the treasure and punishing the thieves for their shenanigans.
Arabian Nights has a supernatural being too, Samhal the genie. But he was no guardian. He was a dangerous trickster, granting wishes with cruel twists everywhere he went.
But what made the Arabian Nights quest even MORE dangerous were the villains. While Jade Scarab had one or two thieves, Arabian Nights had 40 of them! Among the thieves was the most ruthless one of all, Scheherazade: leader of the thieves and the infamous genie of destruction. Yes, Arabian Nights was one among many of the scary and suspenseful islands that were coming out from 2013-2015.
Jade Scarab, however, stayed true to the traditions of the first dozen or so islands from the early days of Poptropica. It’s a lighthearted, humorous, and not too serious island that has a fun quest and a museum where you can learn lots of cool stuff in the process!
So why is one island so serious and the other is not? In my opinion, it all comes back to the two treasures, the lamp and the Jade Scarab.
As you play these quests, you learn that the Jade Scarab is good and must be protected in the museum. But no good came from the Arabian Nights lamp. That treasure wasn’t going to any museum. It had to be eliminated.
And that brings us to the biggest (and best) comparison. There are happy endings to both islands! Curses are broken, towns are restored, amends are made, and all peoples have a chance to get a new start and a chance to be prosperous again.
Aww, what nice stories for both islands! Which one do you like better? Better yet, which of the four dream islands is your favorite one of all?
Feel free to leave a comment below, and if you want more dream island comparison posts, then you are welcome to share with me your own dream island adventures from the dream island contests of long ago. (If I receive readers’ entries, I will try to be as fair as I was in my comparisons of the official dream island winners.)
Thank you for reading, and I hope to pop to you all again real soon!
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Invisible Ring. If you did, you might also enjoy watching her full-length Poptropica fan movie, Battle Morale!
The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you!
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