"Life is like a hurricane"

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Back in the late 80′s, Disney had a brilliant idea: To bring well produced cartoons to the after school time slot that was normally filled with soap operas and reruns of The Flintstones. It was a great tactic that produced some very popular series. At some point along the way, Disney made a deal with Capcom to make games based on a few of their shows. DuckTales, a flagship series for “Disney Afternoon”, was one of the first games produced and one of the most popular.

What we didn’t know at the time was that we were getting a game produced by several key members of the Mega Man team, including Keiji Inafune, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, and Tokuro Fujiwara. This lead not only to the creation of a very tight platformer, but also to some amazing original tunes, most notably the Moon’s theme.

You control Scrooge McDuck (the richest duck in the world) on a quest to become even richer by searching the world (and beyond) for lost treasures. Much like Mega Man, the game starts with a level select screen. There are no advantages to playing the levels in any particular order, though The Mines level requires you to retrieve a key from Transylvania.

Scrooge is armed only with his trusty cane, which factors heavily into the gameplay. To attack, you have to first jump and then hit down and “A”. Scrooge will then use his cane as a pogo stick, allowing you to jump higher and cause damage to your enemies. If you are pushed up against an object, Scrooge can swing his cane like a golf club and send it flying.

Not only are you trying to defeat the boss at the end of each stage, but one of the main goals is to collect as much treasure as possible. There is even a secret ending if you can get a total of $10,000,000 by the end of the game and find both hidden treasures. The stages allow for a lot of exploration and are full of hidden passages that lead to a bigger haul.

You are helped along the way by many of the characters from the TV show. They give you hints and tips, and Launchpad McQuack will even take you back to the stage select screen. Since you keep what you’ve already found, this let’s you build up a huge score.

The final boss has you return, once again, to Transylvania where you battle Dracula Duck (Count Duckula was taken) and then ends with a climactic race with Scrooge’s arch rival, Flintheart Glomgold.

After everything is said and done, Scrooge even learns a valuable lesson that the real treasure is his family. A fitting end to a game based on a children’s show about an anthropomorphic duck that is constantly learning that same lesson.

Why did I pick this game?

This was one of my favorite games as a kid. My friends and I loved the cartoon and became obsessed with this game. We would play it over and over again, spending hours looking for the hidden treasures and trying to get the best ending.

I first played it at my friend Tim’s house. He rented a copy and liked it so much that he went out and bought it the same day (his grandparents had just given him the giant change jar they had filled over the years). It was the first time I had ever held two copies of the same game in my hands. The novelty of that stayed with me for a long time. I was ten at the time.

How does it hold up?

I was pleasantly surprised to find that DuckTales holds up very well. The game is still fun to explore and find the hidden treasures. I remembered where the majority of them were, but didn’t quite get the best ending in this recent play-through.

One thing that seemed a lot trickier than I remember was the pogo-jumping. I had that timing down to a science as a kid and had a lot more trouble getting the rhythm down now than I did back then. I also noticed that if you hit the edge of a surface you were trying to land on, you would come to a jarring stop. Your brain was expecting you to pogo back up, but you’d just sit there like a lump.

The race at the end is also a lot less climactic than I remember. It consists solely of you climbing up a rope and jumping to a treasure chest before Glomgold. I remember it being a lot more dramatic than it really is.

DuckTales still holds up as a great 8-bit platformer. It is a must-play for all old-school enthusiasts. The only catch now is that you will have to track down a physical cartridge, as the licensing is so complicated that it is unlikely to ever get a re-release.

Tags: capcom, Count Duckula, Disney, DuckTales, Friday Old Games, licensed games, NES, platformer, Scrooge McDuck, Transylvania

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.