Ducktales

[Dracos]

So, this last planetrip I sort of got stuck down waiting for some five or so hours in an airport.  During this time I proceeded to have a classic movie scene involving hobos, traveling gambling, and learning cheap moral sayings that make people feel good about watching a crappy ass movie…  or I played some of the best classic games of all time, including Ducktales.

   Well, best might be pushing it, though darn good wouldn’t be.  Capcom produced Ducktales for the NES an age and so ago in cooperation with Disney.  It is the story of Uncle Scrooge, the rich old duck, and his family of ducky friends from the television show of Ducktales.  It works on a fairly simple premise: Scrooge has located a variety of expensive treasures and being a greedy old coot wants them for himself, so he goes out to get them, facing enemies from the show, new ones, and eventually battling some older coot from the show who wants his loot.  Like most Disney stuff of that era, it has trite moralisms running through it.

   This is mostly irrelevant.  What you got under it is Capcom during one of their better eras of sidescrolling games doing what they do best.  Uncle Scrooge controls smoothly with his grand total of two moves, both fitting the old geezer well.  He can golf swing things and sometimes yank things by doing that to move them or pogo jump.  That’s it.  Not a lot of variety in motion, so it’s all a question of what is done with it.

   The game shines in the level design, giving plenty of use to these simple mechanics and a fair shake of puzzle solving elements.  Each level has a boss, some friendly characters in it, some enemies, a hidden special treasure, and a variety of challenges to overcome including making tons of money and stealing keys from aliens.  While it’s definitely not a perfect example of level design, it’s very fun to play and encouragingly is short enough not to outlive its design.  They do generally have the problem that you cannot return to old levels, meaning that if you encounter the boss too quick and win, you’re pretty much screwed with regards to maxing your treasure.  You also have a timer to compete with which really doesn’t do much for appreciating the level design.
   
   Ducktales lasts about 2-3 hours, sports decent enough music for the ears, and allows you to pogo on evil doers for the sake of accumulating vast amounts of unnecessary wealth in order to maintain your status as richest duck in the world.  Something everyone should play really.