Retro Redux: Duck Tales

What was the best thing about the 80’s? Was it parachute pants or bangles? Flock of Seagulls or Duran Duran? The answer is, of course, none of those. It was the resurgence of video games thanks to the NES and the fact that licensed properties made good games back then. They weren’t made to take you through the same adventure the character in a movie or a TV show had. They simply took basic concepts from the property and threw them in a video game.

Our Retro Redux today is probably the best example of that. Duck Tales for the NES was, in my opinion, the best game based on a movie or TV show and rivaled many games of that era. There aren’t many people who owned an NES who didn’t love this game if they played it and it’s for good reason. The game is simply classic platforming at its best.

Released in September of 1989 by Capcom, it was one of the few titles that didn’t have the word Mega Man at the front they were involved with. It took many of the elements of the Blue Bomber’s adventures and put them in a setting people would instantly recognize. Duck Tales featured some unforgivable platform elements set in a beautifully rendered version of Scrooge McDuck’s world. The basic premise of the game was simple. Scrooge wanted to be the richest duck in the world and it was your job to help him. There was no elaborate set up to get involved with the story. You simply were given a title screen then a list of five areas to play through and you set off collecting as much treasure as you possibly could.

Duck Tales featured five worlds; the Amazon, Transylvania, The Moon, African Mines, and The Himalayas. You could pick any of these you wanted and play through them in any order. Each of the levels featured a very non-linear path that you could follow and many times you would find yourself going back over places you had previously been just exploring everything there was to see in the world. The end of each of these levels also contained a treasure worth $1,000,000 that Scrooge was trying to find. They were guarded by bosses, who were mostly generic and unforgettable. The one exception was the villain Magica DeSpell who awaited you at the end of the Transylvania level. Once you accumulated all the treasures each of the worlds contained you were transported back there for the final showdown with Magica and Flinthart Glomgold.

The big hook with Duck Tales was the cane mechanic. Scrooge carried a cane with him that he could use to hurl large boulders at enemies like a golf ball. It could be used to bounce over thorny areas that you would otherwise get hurt trying to cross. It could be used to fling treasure chests into walls and break them. It was one of the most versatile “weapons” of that gaming era. It was a simple item to use, but in order to master it you spent a lot of time practicing. You would have to jump and press down on the D-pad as well as the B button in order to use it as a pogo stick. You could then launch yourself high in the air or land on the head of enemies to kill them. It was a great item that people still remember fondly to this day.

The levels themselves rivaled anything you would find on the system at that time. Everything was extremely well designed; brightly lit and vibrant. There were hidden paths everywhere that you wouldn’t think to look and most likely stumbled across accidentally. It was the closest thing you could get to watching a Saturday morning cartoon and I can bet you spent almost as much time playing this game as you did watching the show it was based on.

There were cameos by a number of characters in the show. Most of them were simply to tell you little things, like maybe one of your nephews had been kidnapped and you needed to find them in another level. Launchpad McQuack was available in every level to take you back to Duckburg early for whatever reason it would be. Maybe you just wanted to replay some of the level to get more money or you found an item that was useful in another level. Mrs. Beakley would give you health replenishing items. It was a virtual who’s who from the TV show.

Probably most well remembered is the audio from the game. The music from the Moon Level has been redone more times than Kathy Griffin’s face has. Every level had a song that you couldn’t get out of your head and even years later if you heard a small part you could hum the rest of the tune from memory. It was some of Yoshihiro Sakaguchi’s most memorable compositions.

There were even multiple endings that could be gained based on how well you did in the game. IF you collected over $10,000,000 and found both the hidden treasures, which I won’t reveal even today, you got an ending that showed Scrooge in the newspaper with a crown on his head and a new headline. There was a bonus that you could get with Launchpad that would make this much easier to accomplish.

Now let’s move on and talk very briefly about the Game Boy version of the game.

Released a year later this version has everything the NES version had scaled down a bit. The levels were not as big and didn’t have as much going on. This was simply something that had to be done to get games onto the smaller system. This didn’t diminish the quality of this game any. It was just as hard, but just as fun as it’s console counterpart. It really gave you the ability to take Duck Tales on the road with you.

The graphics for this game were just as good as the NES version of the game and had just as much quality even though the screen was smaller. Everything was just as detailed, the only difference was this was done in the monochrome fashion of the Game Boy. You just didn’t get the vibrant color palette.

The controls were actually a little bit easier in the portable version. In order to do the pogo jump with Scrooge’s cane you simply had to press the B button rather than doing to combo of B and down on the D-pad. This made the platforming a little easier, but the jumps were still just as unforgiving as the console version. Also gone were some of the enemy placements that made jumps hard on the console. It was just not possible to get bees flying over every gap in the Amazon because it would cause the system to slow down too much.

Duck Tales is a very hard game to come by in a vintage store and if you do find one it’s going to cost you a bit of a premium. This is because it is just simply remembered so fondly by everyone that played it and if they own a copy they’re not going to get rid of it. There aren’t many games in a console library that can lay that claim to fame, but Duck Tales is one of them. It simply combined everything that gamers wanted back then into one brilliant package that was the best the system could offer.

This was a licensed game made for gamers and enjoyed by gamers everywhere. If you’re listening Capcom, do whatever it takes to get this game on the Virtual Console so a new generation of gamers can enjoy it.

Note: Due to this Retro Redux posting early I will have another posted tomorrow, Friday, when you should normally be getting them. So you get a bonus Retro Redux this week.

Retro Redux: Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers

Welcome, once again, to Retro Redux, our look back at games past. This week we'll be looking at Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Originally released in 1990 by Capcom, it was a side scrolling platformer based on the popular cartoon characters, and specifically the cartoon series by the same name. It starred the chipmunk duo of Chip, the level headed "brain" of the two, and Dale, the red-nosed, goofball. If you never saw the cartoon, the show was based around the two and their team of investigators, Gadget, Monterey Jack and Zipper, solving a new crime each week, as well as foiling the schemes of the villanous feline, Fat Cat. It's a slightly different take on the traditional damsel in distress scenario. You play as a small character in a big world and the environments are scaled accordingly.

Fat Cat has captured the team's technology wiz, Gadget, and it's up to Chip and Dale to rescue her. The adventure would take you through a series of levels and ultimately a fight against the mob boss himself. The different levels were laid out on a map, similar to Super Mario Bros. 3 and you had the option of choosing the path you took through the game. This was mainly deciding from one level or another since the branches ultimately brought you back to the main path. Rescue Rangers, as previously mentioned is a side scrolling platformer, and is a very easy one at that. From the title screen you could choose which of the titular duo you preferred to play as, though this choice was merely cosmetic as the two characters played identically to each other. From there you would enter the first level of the game and proceed to uncover the plot hatched by Fat Cat. As chipmunks are fairly non aggressive in reality, the two characters had no ability to attack outside of picking up objects in the game and throwing them at the various enemies trying to stop you from reaching your goal. You could pick up apples, crates, or bricks and throw them. Also littered throughout the levels are flower cards that you could collect, but I never really understood if they did anything.. You were given three hearts that constituted your life bar and each time you got hit you would lose one heart. Lose them and and you lost a life. You could replinish lost health by picking up acorns found in the world, and this was the only way to regain your health.

From the beginning you begin to understand this game might have been created simply to get fans of the show to buy it. You are greeted with the familiar theme and even after all these years I still remember it and can sing along with it. The level design is amazingly simple, and they don't take very long to traverse. Enemies are placed very sparsely throughout the levels and the only thing to do other than move to the right was pick up crates and throw them. These crates are everywhere and you can find collectibles under a few of them. While the levels were sparsely populated there was a lot going on in each level. There were multiple paths that you could take through the levels as well as a lot of stuff going on. Jack in the boxes would pop up during the level in a toy factory, poker chips flew back and forth in the casino, and water faucets had to be turned off to progress through the kitchen area. None of the tasks you had to undertake were difficult by any means, but they added a bit of interactivity no found in many games previous to this one. You could also carry the crates in levels around and duck under them to give you a brief shield. If you got hit while under a crate you would lose the crate, but would not take any damage. Other interactive elements were live power lines that had electricity moving back and forth that would cause damage to you if not jumped over and switches that needed to be activated to shut off obstacles. There were some puzzle elements to the game such as the aforementioned water faucets, but also occasionally you would have to create a sort of bridge from one part of a level to another. The boss fights in the game were all very similar. When you entered the boss area they would be on a platform of some sort and there would be a random object on the ground. You would need to pick up the object and thrown it at the boss five times in order to defeat them. Sometimes the boss would be static, but there would be traps on the ground you had to avoid, and other times the boss would move and fire different themed objects at you. Ultimately, though, all the boss fights were very much the same and if you could defeat one boss, none of the others were very hard. After defeating the boss you would be taken back to the world map and into the Rescue Rangers blimp to choose your next path towards Fat Cat's Lair.

If you didn't want to play alone a second player could join in on the fun as the other chipmunk for some co-operative play. This could be a double edged sword because if you got hit by a crate thrown by the other player you would be briefly stunned and vulnerable to attack. Dasterdly players could also throw their partners into enemies or down pits causing them to die. It was very helpful for families who enjoyed playing together because you could pick up your partner and carry them along if they were having difficulty getting through an area. There were not many games that had true co-op modes back then, but this one added a bit of fun to the adventure that could otherwise have been dull for one person. The other two members of the Rescue Rangers were not playable, but did make appearances to aid in the adventure. Monterey Jack would occasionally be lured into the action by the smell of cheese and during his trance like walk he would smash through walls that would allow you to continue to the next area. Zipper could be found stuck inside crates and if he was found he would fly ahead of you smacking enemies giving you a brief moment of invincibility. It would have been nice to be able to play as these characters and could have greatly increased the fun of the game. Zipper could fly and that could have made it possible to reach levels otherwise inaccesible to the team and Monterey Jack could have been used as a bit of a tank or just brute muscle and created a bit of diversity in the team.

While the game was simple, it was fun to play, especially if you had a friend along for the ride. Licensed properties based on movies and TV shows were and still are generally very generic, but every once in a while there are a few that stand out above the crowd. This one along with the Duck Tales game were two of the NES era that really stood out in my mind. Looking back on this one, though, I wonder why I liked it so much. Going back today it's not as much fun as I remember it, but I still enjoy it. I don't know if it's because the game is just generic and I've seen it a hundred times before or if I've just moved on and appreciate a different style of game. My children all really enjoy it, especially if they get the chance to throw dad down a hole and maybe that's part of it. They don't really know these characters, other than Chip and Dale, as they've never watched the show, so it can't be nostalgia for them. It's a complete trip down memory lane for me and that's why it's still part of my gaming collection. It's good for an hour of play every once in a while and still gets pulled out and popped into my NES. The interactivity of the levels, the bright environments and two of the cutest playable characters ever combine to bring you an experience you should play at least once. If you can find this game in a vintage store or online for a decent price it should be part of anyone's NES collection.

What are your thoughts on Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers? Was it one of those games you remember fondly or did you hate it? If there are any games that you would really like to see talked about in this feature or games you just want me to know about e-mail me and let me know or head over to the forums and let me know there.

The Original Zelda in 3D

The original Legend of Zelda was an amazing NES game. Now one fan is attempting to take it to the next level and bring the game into the third dimension. This is a demo of one of the dungeons. This is still a work in progress and it is not complete so be aware of that going in. Check it out.