The Disney Afternoon Collection (Part 1)

Intro / DuckTales

Chip’n’Dale / TaleSpin

Darkwing Duck / DuckTales 2

Chip’n’Dale 2 / Conclusion

I began the year with a review of DuckTales Remastered. During the year, a game came out on Steam, cataloguing six 8-bit Disney titles, including the original DuckTales. It’s called The Disney Afternoon Collection, and it’s six beloved NES games in one, with some additional modes and new stuff to try!

So many memories for so many kids of the 90s...

Many gamers have grown up with Capcom’s Disney NES games, most of them based on animated TV series that aired during the Disney Afternoon programming block on the Disney Channel between 1990 and 1999. Among others, the block featured DuckTales, Chip’n’Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck. Of course, that’s before Disney tried to appeal to children of the 1990s and we ended up with shows like The Mighty Ducks or Quack Pack. (Speaking of, I think the new DuckTales series actually takes cues from Quack Pack in portraying Huey, Dewey and Louie with different personalities instead of being completely interchangeable individuals, and actually does it right… but that’s a tangent for a cartoon reviewer.)

The Disney Afternoon Collection was released on April 18^th, 2017, developed by Capcom and Digital Eclipse, and published by Capcom. It’s practically brand new! And a true blast to the past, for anyone who grew up with either of the six titles, and who can now play them again!

Here’s how this review will work: I’ll first explain the modes and options available, then I’ll try to spend only a little more than 1000 words discussing each game. I mean, it’s still going to take me four parts for all this! Wow, I really ended the year with a lot of long reviews…

(By the way, since it's currently the Steam Winter sale, if you want it, it's got 60% off the regular price!)

I like to have my options open.

As soon as one starts playing the Disney Afternoon Collection, they hit a menu stating “Games”, “Music”, “Gallery” and “Options”. Be sure to configure the controls just the way you want them, choose between full screen or windowed, and of course, the language you wish to see in the game! Many options: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazil Portuguese (I think?) or Russian. You can even watch the credits there! (For the record, it only changes the language for the instructions that you can read with every game's "How To Play" option, it doesn't change the text in the games themselves.)

The Gallery shows a lot of images from the development phase of every game. One of them shows the original drawn pictures and how they were translated to 8-bit, pixel form. One shows the original artwork on the game covers, minus text. The Museum part shows the old game cartridges’ boxes, including the original Game Boy versions for the games that were re-edited for Nintendo’s first portable console. The final section of the Gallery reveals concept art and other oddities surrounding the history of these six titles, including pictures of the set used in a TV advertisement for DuckTales, a picture of a poster that has now become a collector’s item, or ads for these games published in various magazines and comic books. Interesting!

Then there’s the Music section, which contains a jukebox containing each game’s tracks. In total, about over 100 tracks, though most of them are less than one minute long, as it includes the jingles for stuff like invincibility, Game Overs, lives lost, bosses beaten or treasures found – jingles which, obviously, are a few seconds long at most.

So each game is available in 3 different modes,
that makes a whopping 18 options!

But enough with the extra stuff. You’re here to play games, right? Well, when you pick the “Games” option, you’re brought to a game selection menu, and then picking a game brings you to another menu: “Play”, “Time Attack”, “Boss Rush” and “How to Play”. The last option will bring a full menu explaining how everything works in the game, which is extremely useful for newcomers to these titles. Many Disney games by Capcom make use of unexpected gameplay techniques, like Scrooge’s pogo-cane jump, which is required to defeat most enemies, or Darkwing Duck’s platform hanging. I already said, back in my review of DuckTales Remastered, that I originally got the game when I didn’t understand English, so I was at a loss as to how that pogo cane worked. I think I either found the solution online or figured it out by myself. It’s great that the makers of the Disney Afternoon Collection added the game guides in there, it’s going to help a lot.

“Play” just brings you to the game as it played back on the classic console. Title screen, modes and options included (so if you want to try and beat DuckTales on Hard, you still can). You get a Steam achievement for each game beaten.

Speed up! The fastest player has already beaten the game!
You gotta do better than that!

The “Time Attack” mode does the same thing, but you’re encouraged to beat the game in the shortest time possible. There’s an achievement for each game you beat in under two hours (but the timer keeps going if, say, you get a Game Over and you have to start back from the beginning). You can merely play the game again to try and get the best time, or you can race against someone else’s best time. For, yes, this collection keeps track of other users’ best Time Attack performances, and you can try to beat them! I don’t recommend it, though, these people are speedrun masters. Can you imagine beating DuckTales in 7 minutes 17 seconds? Someone did it. You cannot beat that. Even #10 in the Top 10 has achieved this in less than 8 minutes! Oh, you can try if you want to. Doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. The last option, “Watch”, allows you to watch the Top 10 players’ speedruns. It’s astounding. Oh, and if you thought you could just skip some stuff by beating Time Attack first, which takes you through the whole game, so that you get both the “game beaten” and “time attack completed” achievements… Nope! Gotta beat it twice, once in the regular mode, once in Time Attack mode!

Sorry man, you're not seeing the ending during
Time Attack mode.

Thanks to the Disney Afternoon Collection, we now know
the names of every boss! Like that's helpful.

Then there’s the “Boss Rush” mode, which regroups all bosses from a game into a sequence. You lose no lives in this mode, so you can try to beat every boss as often as you need. Once again, your performance is timed, so you can go up against the best speedrunners and see if you can outdo them. (Again: You probably won’t, but hey, you’re free to try.) Once more, you can race against other players, or watch their performances. There’s an achievemet for beating this mode in every game under an hour – which is a ridiculously long time if you ask me, most games in this collection don’t even have 10 bosses, and you should be able to get through all of them in 20 minutes, at most, even if you’re struggling.

Well, that covers everything – I suppose it’s time to jump into the available games in this collection, one by one! Let’s start with…

DuckTales

It’s kinda funny to end the year with a review of the original DuckTales when I started it with a review of its updated remaster, no? Perhaps some comparisons can be made.

So apparently, all of these locations happen on the same
continent. I didn't know the Disney Duck Universe
took place on Pangaea.

You know the story: Scrooge found a treasure map leading to five legendary treasures scattered across the world (and one on the Moon, somehow), with the promise of an even greater treasure once he’s found them all, so he embarks on this new adventure. Five locations available: The Amazon, Transylvania, African Mines, the Himalayas and the Moon.

DuckTales Remastered, as an homage to the original game, improved on the story, turning each level into a story arc of some kind. In the Amazon, you have to find eight tokens to open the way towards the fortress. In the Himalayas, you must gather the pieces of an item dropped by Launchpad. In Transylvania, you must save the nephews. And on the Moon, you must find the pieces of Fenton’s GizmoDuck suit, while in the original you only needed the remote control (though it was behind a locked door, and you had to find the key).

Extra Hit Point, you will be so useful to me!

The original DuckTales? Nah, you don't have much of that for the most part, you’re not forced into exploring as much as possible. Found a shortcut? Take it. You want to gather diamonds and rubies, and take your time? You can! (Especially if you want the happy ending at 10 Millions.) You just want to rush your way to the end? Yep, that’s possible too. The greatness of the original DuckTales game was that you could explore it at your leisure. Every level was a bit mazelike, and you had to find your way around – and if you found a shortcut, that was just a quicker way to the boss! The game rewarded exploring players, too, since it was possible to find two additional treasures and two boosts to your health meter. And once again, you can visit the levels in any desired order.

The spaceship is still one of the better levels in the original.
The music certainly helps.

Of course, since the Disney Afternoon Collection uses the original games, you can also see the original’s poor translation in all its glory. As well as the actual lack of story or explanation as to what’s going on. I mean, we get the basics: Five treasures, where to get them… then the five items are thrown away from Scrooge at the end and we have to go back to fight Dracula Duck? Wait-wait-what?? And as it turns out, this second visit to Transylvania is the same level, stripped of all diamonds and rubies, because it’s totally not boring to go through the same level again without the possibility of making any more money. That was lazy from Capcom. (Yes, the final level in Remastered was brand-new, and appropriately tough, so that was much better).

A boss so easy, it's the first one in the Boss Battles mode.

The bosses were also ridiculously easy back then, each resorting to only one or two attack for the entire duration of the fight. All the Aztec statue could do was move left and right and jump to shake the ground. all Magica could do was fly around as a vulture and throw thunder in her normal anthropomorphic form. The African sphere king could only roll around his boss room. The abominable snowman would jump around and make a few snowballs fall down, also it was small enough to jump on. The Moon Rat was not only unexplained, it also could only run around and jump on platforms – which, to be fair, was a surprisingly effective strategy since it seemed to randomize its movements. Dracula? He threw bats at Scrooge; that was all. Pogo-cane the bat, pogo-cane the undead bloodsucker duck on the cranium.

Hey you! I'm over here!

Just climb the rope. Lazy easy.

You want to talk about lazy some more?  That race between Scrooge and the Glomgold-Magica Duo, in which Scrooge merely has to climb a rope and be faster than his enemies. This, too, was heavily improved in the remaster.

I mean, is DuckTales a perfect game? No. But it has been a part in the nostalgia of many a gamer, just as much as the TV show. This is in spite of its issues, including, as I said, the laziness of the final level, and the very simple bosses (the difficulty of the levels makes up for it, however). The music is stuck in our heads, especially the Moon Theme, and the graphics were very impressive at the time. I can also say that I prefer the free exploration of the original to the forced exploration in the remaster.

Gravity decided to comeback from its day off after letting
these stones in midair for way too long.

The game does suffer from poor translation, which obviously has been untouched as this is the old game, unchanged. The game is relatively easy – it does have some tough sections, delving sometimes into fake difficulty (looking at you, falling bridge in the Amazon). It can still be really hard the first time you play, especially if you don’t know about the various secrets and struggle through the game with only three Hit Points. I’m also slightly annoyed by Launchpad’s appearances in most levels, where he asks Scrooge whether he wants to go back to Duckburg – A for yes, B for no. Pray you did not tap A accidentally, especially when Launchpad is found in the latter part of some of the tougher levels, which means having to go through the whole difficult level again!

Last but not least, the game also feels rather short overall, since you can’t go back to explore beaten levels in this version. However, it’s still very enjoyable. Sure it has its flaws, but it’s pretty fun. Then again, I know the game inside and out, which is something I cannot say about some of the later titles in this collection…

Join me next Monday as I look at two more games in the collection!