The Disney Afternoon Collection (Part 4)

Intro / DuckTales

Chip’n’Dale / TaleSpin

Darkwing Duck / DuckTales 2

Chip’n’Dale 2 / Conclusion

(Before we start... I want to wish everyone a happy new year. May your 2018 be better than your 2017! And if your 2017 was great... then, may your 2018 be even better!)

Chip’n Dale Rescue Rangers 2

This game starts as Chip and Dale learn through a news report of a bomb threat in a restaurant located downtown. They decide to go investigate. As soon as they leave, the news report continues, announcing Fat Cat’s escape from prison…

First thing you notice: The game has animated cutscenes, not only text with still images. Some effort went in this!

Boxes! Boxes boxes boxes... BOXES!

Second thing: As with any sequel, the controls are a little different. Now, Chip or Dale can even throw items diagonally. This is bound to be useful at some point, right? One downside is that, now, if you want to throw a crate near the floor, to hit an enemy’s bottom, you can’t shoot until the chipmunk is hidden inside the box. I suppose that made the previous game too easy! Once again, you only means of defence is to pick up boxes and throw them around. I suppose the steel boxes were OP, because they’re mysteriously absent outside of rare instances where you must cross a bed of spikes to reach the next platform.

DIAGONAL TOSS, MOFO!

Oh, I just love going into sewers... always makes for
pleasant levels... bleh, it stinks down here!

In the original Chip’n Dale, there were two levels you could skip. Here, none. But that’s okay, it’s about the same length anyway. The levels are once again split in sections, so you restart at the beginning of the section you died in instead of restarting the whole level (unless you get a Game Over and use a continue, which takes you back to the start of the level). The flowers from the original have been replaced by RR symbols, for Rescue Rangers, and the stars are almost absent – since this time around, stars are clear 1-Ups. You can collect up to 99 RR symbols in a level, because that’s where the counter ends. In the first, each time you collected 100, the counter went back to 0 and you gained an extra life after a level. Here, once you get 50, you gain a larger RR emblem, which stacks wth the previous ones earned. The use for those is never explained in the game, but I noticed that once you had collected enough of those, you gained extra hearts for your life bar, going from 3 to 4, and then 5. So, you know, the game at least stays fair by giving you more HP for the upcoming levels… It’s also very easy to reach 50 RR symbols in a level (note that they all respawn if you die). You can only get one larger RR emblem per level, too – since the counter ends at 99, you can’t get to 100, which would give you two emblems.

Ready to go again!

The next thing you notice is the difficulty level. Much like in Darkwing Duck, many enemies here take more than one hit to go down – and many others have effective means of defending themselves against the crates you throw at them. We even get enemies disguised as crates in the first level! You don’t expect this kind of trick so early into the game! Indeed, I personally believe this game is harder than the previous one. However, it’s merciful: Three lives each time, three continues. That should give you a chance to learn the game. And thank God for that!

You gotta wait till this guy spawns a rock before you can
properly hurt it. Even there, you gotta strike before it
vanishes.

The levels are tricky, but so are the bosses! You know how, in the first Chip’n Dale game, you always had a red ball to throw at the boss, from the start, and you could always pick it up again instantly? Yeah, they got rid of that. Instead, all bosses must be killed by the crates and blocks that either fall onto the field or are summoned by said bosses. The first, Water Rabbit, must be killed with crates that fall from the top of the screen. Did I mention that this takes place in a giant dishwasher, and the water currents drag you and the boxes downwards? It keeps going, too: The second boss, a flying cat (BatCat?), throws rocks that must be picked up and thrown back at it. A ghost summons rocks, a wrecking ball on a machine hits the ground to produce blocks… You get the idea. Also, unlike the original, most bosses here actually freaking move around the screen. NOW that’s some difficulty! I mean, I don’t like when things are too hard, but when they’re too easy it’s no fun either. The bosses here are harder, and that’s good! Many of them are pretty long to beat, though, since you must rely on blocks summoned by the boss or the field.

I have to make this bomb blow in this robot's face!
...Or else, it's gonna blow up in MY face!

The final boss, in particular, is very difficult. It’s a robot version of Fat Cat, and it has many different attacks. Its main move is to rise and disappear at the top of the screen, drop a bomb, and fall down shortly afterwards. You have to pick up the bomb and throw it at the boss… but only when it reaches the 0 of its 3-second countdown! For, you see, getting hit by the bomb won’t harm it, only the explosion will. And it has about 10 Hit Points, with some attacks that are easy to avoid, some that are predictable due to their telegraphing… and, for some reason, one that causes the game to lag a bit when it happens, but it’s not too bad. Once the Fat Cat robot is broken, we get a final cutscene in which we learn that Fat Cat escaped, but since we’ve laid waste to his primary base of operations, the Rescue Rangers should be able to deal with him soon. The end!

Yeah… that’s it. I’m a bit disappointed as a Steam achievement about beating this game said “Return Fat Cat to the slammer”, and that doesn’t even happen. Oh well!

Chip'n Dale 2 has a lot of tricky platforming section, as well
as devilish sections like this one.

I’m a bit torn on this one. While the graphics and music are still very good, a staple of all Capcom Disney titles in this collection, I have a few criticisms about the controls and system this time around. The difficulty level has increased, but the game as a whole is still fair – I’d even say it’s more creative than the first in that it tries to think up good reasons for crates and other blocks to appear during boss battles, sometimes with unique twists. They did away with the apples and the bombs from the original, kept in the steel blocks (which appear only twice), and the red balls appear only during the bonus game at the end of a level (in which it’s a lot trickier to get an extra life than it was in the first CnD game). The increase in Hit Points is also welcome, considering the rising difficulty of the later levels.

Big cogs everywhere? What is this, Great Mouse Detective?

The controls still work fine, and I’m glad that we can now throw diagonally upwards (that would have been useful before!). However, some changes to the system annoy me, like the clear delay needed before Chip or Dale can throw a crate at ground level. They absolutely have to be hiding in the crate before throwing it that way, which is annoying when you’re trying to kill enemies smaller than the chipmunks. The game also makes frequent use of moving platforms, like treadmills in the final level, or spinning cogs in a clock tower level (in my opinion, the most annoying of them all). The NES graphics can do wonder, but sometimes you can’t tell the direction in which a cog is spinning until you jump on it. And, well, sometimes you get tossed off the platform and to your doom (since the game scrolls only forward and there are many sections where Chip or Dale is going upwards, with the bottom of the screen turning into a deadly pit). Also, the RR enblems should have been explained better.

All in all, a very good game, some good improvements, although I’m not sure I like it more than the original. It’s pretty good, definitely not a bad game, but I don’t see it as quite as good as some others in this collection.

Conclusion

Can you make it into the Top 10?
Because I sure as Hell can't.

Well, that was quite a ride! To properly do this review, I had to beat each game in each available mode.

I started with the Boss Rush Mode, since it was the shorter one and it would give me a chance to try out the controls before getting into the various games. Playing on a keyboard isn’t the same as using a USB NES controller. To its credit, this mode pits you against all the bosses in each game, although it’s always in the same order (either the order of progression or the order of difficulty).

Got 4 Hit Points here because it's the normal Play mode.
In Boss Battles, you gotta survive with 3.
Might as well give up. Or maybe not.

There’s also a little problem with this mode, when it comes to games where you can get extra hit points: It’s not consistent with these. In Chip’n Dale 2, you almost instantly get extra hit points, up to 5, as you progress. And you start the Boss Rush mode with these 5 Hit Points. In both DuckTales games, the additional HP are either found or bought. And as a result, you go through the Boss Rush mode with only 3 HP the whole time. Yes, even against the freaking golem in DuckTales 2. Good luck! It’s a bit of a problem, though if you know the bosses you can defeat them with relative ease (after all, the point of Boss Rush is to speedrun through them and get a low end time).

The Play option is just that: Play the game as it was meant to be played back when it was on the NES… with a slight difference. You can Rewind your playthrough (usually with the Q button) for any major mistake you made, allowing you as many tries as you want – which, okay, I suppose that’s a nifty feature for young players who are discovering these games, or for people who just want a less-effort playthrough. Just go through the levels, rewind if necessary, beat the game. There’s one achievement for each, and you don’t lose the achievement if you rewind.

The Time Attack mode is where it gets tough: Once again, you play through the whole game (including menus and cutscenes, but it ends as soon as the final boss is defeated). This time, however, rewinding is not allowed, and the timer never stops unless you leave the game and restart (or pause the Disney Afternoon Collection, not the single NES game). The timer doesn’t start over if you get a complete, no-Continues-left Game Over, either. But don’t worry, the achievements are actually very easy to get, as long as you can beat these games in less than 2 hours each. Many of them can be beaten in a third of that time, with enough skill and luck.

If you devote about twenty hours to this game, you should go through the whole collection relatively easily and collect every achievement (including the one in which you must beat any game without rewinding). The collection of achievements is pretty basic, really - a little too basic and simplistic, in fact. It’s a weird point of criticism to have, but I have it. (I’ll say more later).

"I am the bat with fake wings that hookshots at
fixtures in the night! I am... Darkwing Duck!"

There isn’t much to say about the Collection itself. It’s great that it features all of the musical tracks from the six titles you can play here, and I also like the Gallery – it also offers loads of information you might not know about the production and content of these games. However, it seems to be quite unequal in the presentation of bonus content, as though there was more to show about the more famous titles. I would have liked to read more trivia about DuckTales 2, as an example. Then again, if there’s little to say about one of these games, I guess it makes sense that they wouldn’t be discussed as much.

A final thing about the achievements: There could have been a few, more special ones outside f the obvious stuff. Here’s a few I can think of:

-Beat a game that has Continues without using any;

-Get the best ending on either DuckTales game;

-Get the worst ending;

-Beat Chip’n Dale 1 without skipping any levels;

-Find every secret million-dollar treasure in DuckTales 1 and 2;

-Buy all of the upgrades in TaleSpin;

-Beat any final boss without getting hit once.

But really, that’s just a minor point of criticism. All in all, this collection is awesome, and if you’ve ever owned any of these classic titles, or wanted to own any of these classic titles, or played DuckTales Remastered and want to try the original one… Seriously, whichever the reason you give yourself to get this game, you really should. The Disney Afternoon Collection is amazing. Worth the price you pay for it!

Next week… something different!