Ali Baba translations/hacks

Ali Baba: The world’s most translated ZX Spectrum game

A retro maze classic reborn in 62+ languages – including right-to-left, vertical, and fictional scripts – with enhanced animation, cheats, bug fixes, and typographic care.

Originally a little-known 1985 Croatian ZX Spectrum arcade game, Ali Baba was never released beyond the Balkans – and certainly never imagined in Klingon, Mongolian, or Arabic. This ROM hack changes that. What began as a simple translation grew into months of reverse engineering, animation refinement, linguistic research, and 8-bit typography innovation – all to create something unprecedented: the most linguistically diverse ZX Spectrum game in history.

Unprecedented language support

62+ fully localized versions – from Greek and Ukrainian to Wolof, Inuktitut, and Amharic.

First-ever ZX Spectrum game in many of these languages – including Chinese (Simplified), Mongolian (Traditional vertical script), Hindi, and Korean.

Right-to-left (RTL) rendering for Arabic and Hebrew – correctly mirrored UI, aligned text, and culturally appropriate layout.

Vertical writing support for Mongolian, faithfully reproducing its classical top-to-bottom reading direction – a world first on the Spectrum platform.

Even fictional languages are fully implemented: Klingon (in both Latin and native script), Vulcan, and four distinct Romulan orthographies (including handwritten variants).

Animation and visual polish

The key's rotation frames were doubled from 8 to 16 hand-drawn frames, creating smooth 22.5° increments (vs. the original 45°). Timing was meticulously adjusted to preserve gameplay feel.

All in-game text is centered and visually balanced – a major upgrade over the sparse original menu.

Pseudo-variable-width typography: narrow letters (i, l, t, ') are kerned with appropriate spacing, and common letter combinations are pre-rendered as custom tiles to avoid the "stretched" look of fixed-width fonts. The result? Text that looks natural – even in complex scripts.

Bug fixes and QoL improvements

Fixed the level 256 crash and replaced with a "Congratulations!" screen.
Fixed lives counter overflow (99 → 0); now capped at 99 lives.
Redesigned the key redefinition screen: pressing SPACE now displays "SPACE" (localized) instead of an invisible character.

Cheat system (toggle during gameplay)

CAPS + g: Open all treasure gates instantly.
CAPS + h: Freeze movement anywhere (toggle on/off).
CAPS + i: 3-state toggle: invisible to red enemy → hide enemy → restore normal.
CAPS + k: Spawn the key.
CAPS + l: Gain one life.
CAPS + n: Skip to next level.
CAPS + t: Drain timer while held.

The Greek version is published by GreekRoms and is available here.

If you'd like to see Ali Baba translated into another language – or if you can help with linguistic verification – just leave a comment! We're open to adding more languages, and your suggestion might become the next one.

Arabic translation:

English translation:

Georgian translation:

Greek translation:

Hindi translation:

Klingon translation:

Mongolian translation:

Portuguese translation:

Ukranian translation:

Obsolete.gr is not affiliated with SUZY SOFT, the original developer of Ali Baba; copyright for the original game remains with them.

Translation and hacking was done by Vag.