Hello!
Re-playing some NES classics is an activity I enjoy doing every year. Since I know most games by heart, most of them last a weekend (or a day), but they are still very enjoyable. This time, the DuckTales franchise took its turn, particularly DuckTales 2, and boy was it fun. I'll review the game, pointing out best things so as to use them in some game of mine someday.
The DuckTales games are based on Disney's cartoons from late 1980s and early 1990s. The games take Uncle Scrooge as a treasure hunter, exploring many places in the world (and the moon), interacting with his nephews and a couple of the show's characters. Despite being a game based on a franchise, there was a great deal of effort put into making them enjoyable and not just taking advantage of the well-known cartoon series.
The gameplay
These games' real genre is Treasure-Hunting. The game is a mix of side-scrolling action, treasure-finding, platform-jumping and boss-beating. The game features a couple of levels where the player will have to search for treasure and beat the final boss (who typically guards the important treasure), meeting characters and finding secret treasures (ocassionally solving mysteries) along the way. Besides, upon finishing each level, an 'item-shop' phase is entered, where the player can buy extra-lives, cakes to replenish hearts, continue-globes and some other items which show up.
 |
| The level-selection screen |
In terms of presentation, each stage has a short description told by fellow pilot Launchpad, with the option of exploring each stage in any order, and being able to replay them if some treasure was missed. The player has the additional task of finding Giro, the show's inventor, who'll give Uncle Scrooge a power-up if found. The power-up, however, does not make the player more powerful, but it makes him more resourceful in their treasure-finding ability. Being able to break and hit rocks with cane-bounces and pull statues unravels new parts of levels, which almost always hold treasures, diamonds or lives.
The fun thing is that treasures are everywhere in this game, as there're plenty of invisible walls, secret pathways, statues to push and pull, and even a riddle to be deciphered. In the second game, there's a sidequest which has Uncle Scrooge find 7 pieces of a map leading to a secret treasure. Finding the pieces is entirely optional, but if gathered, a secret stage is revealed and the ending of the game changes (albeit a little, but then again, NES endings were usually 3 screens with images and minimal text).
The graphics and the music
 |
| ...it's Uncle Scrooge... in Egypt! |
Graphics are nice and colorful for a NES game, and most of the shows' characters appear in the games as sprites, and even have some lines to say. The levels are well-designed, being easy to see and navigate, depicting Bermuda, The Lost Island of Mu, a pyramid in Egypt, Niagara falls and a castle in Scotland. There's plenty of variety in each level, as most of them take place inside and outside, with subtle pallette changes.
Surprisingly, the music is... really good! There's one track for the main menu, a track for level-select, a track for each level (6-7), a track for the boss-fights and a last one for the ending, not counting the 'I lost' and gameover tunes. The music proves to be enjoyable, for the nostalgia 8-bit trip and for the tunes themselves.
Replayability
What's great in a game is the amount of secrets it can hold. This game has many, most of them being optional to discover. The idea to throw in entirely optional game-content proves to be worthwhile, as there's great satisfaction upon discovering the secrets and finishing the game with the "real" ending, even if it's almost the same.
Conclusions/Points of interest
Firstly, the concept of a treasure-hunting / platform game is swell. Secrets in games have always existed (take Mario Bros' Warp Zone for instance), but DuckTales games performs very well in these. Secret passages in walls, climbing the edges of the screen so as to reveal hidden areas, and an optional sidequest involving getting parts of a map. This last element was even somewhat 'new' to platformers, though already experimented in RPGs such as Final Fantasy's.Secondly, the dispersed characters from the show who sporadically appear give the player the illusion that the whole family is exploring each place. Playing the game felt very comfortable this way, as characters appeared every few screens... they helped making the game more interesting, less boring, it felt refreshing. This aspect took full advantage of the franchise.
All in all... a very enjoyable game, which makes us think why did franchise games rock in the 90's and suck nowadays, and gives us a couple of ideas to use in a game.
