Life is like a hurricane,
here in Duckburg.
Racecars, lasers, aeroplanes,
it’s a duck blur.
Might solve a mystery.
Or rewrite history…
“DuckTales,” the classic Disney half-hour afternoon cartoon that debuted in 1987 and ran for four seasons (though much longer in syndication), has shown a rare capacity for endurance that shows of its ilk rarely can even aspire to.
Don’t believe me? Sing the first couple of bars of that theme song in public and see if the people around you join in.
If they don’t, you’ll feel really silly, and that’s kind of funny.
But chances are, at least a few people will sing along (or at least crack a big goofy grin as you make a fool of yourself).
And with good reason, as the show, for a good number of Gen Xers, was a babysitter as they latch-keyed their way into their homes and killed time for the couple of hours until their parents got home from work.*
* Gen Xers are very proud of being latch-key and will bring that fact up on literally every occasion possible, in the same way that a vegetarian will always proudly tell you that they are vegetarian. How do you get a Gen Xer out of your house? Invite over their parents.
How good was DuckTales? Well, probably not as good as you remember. It leans heavily on other pieces of work and falls into simplistic tropes with dialogue that will mostly appeal to minors. And the animation itself isn’t ground-shaking either.
But that’s honestly okay, because a thing doesn’t have to be great to be important.
And DuckTales was absolutely an important piece of pop culture.
The show, itself a risk due to its heavy production demands for what might have been considered meager rewards in a traditionally low-viewed time slot, instead was immensely popular and paved the way for even more Disney afternoon animated shows like “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” and “Tailspin.”
In its own way, DuckTales can also be given some credit (or blame) for Disney’s ability to weather some lean years in the 1980s when the studio was having a difficult time finding success at the box office (prior to “The Little Mermaid,” that is).
The fondness and popularity for DuckTales eventually spawned a reboot of the show in 2017, once again for a few seasons, except this time it was objectively entertaining for adults. The test of time will likely be far kinder to the reboot in terms of actual repeat viewings, as the series, for any fans of the brand at all, is basically a must-watch, delightful and humorous and engaging. (It’s seriously THAT good … go watch it right now if you haven’t seen it yet.)
Of course, the reboot and all of the merchandise and crossovers and so forth and so on over all of the years … none of that tells the entire story, because the entire story wouldn’t be complete without an acknowledgement of the licensed video game that was developed and released alongside the cartoon in 1989.
That licensed video game, “DuckTales,” somehow became one of the greatest platformers of all time.
‘DuckTales’ at a glance:
Genre: Platformer
Released: 1989
Platform: NES
Nintendo Power’s No. 44 greatest game of all time
I say “somehow,” but that’s not entirely accurate, as we pretty much know how already.
Developed by several members of the team at Capcom responsible for the Mega Man franchise and built on that game’s architecture, DuckTales is widely considered one of Capcom’s best platforming success stories for good reason: Mega Man was some really good stuff, and it was a superb template for other games to build from.
Moreover, Mega Man 2 (No. 4 on this countdown) had been released the previous year, and it was a ginormous success, so the platforming secret formula here wasn’t merely “good” in an objective sense; it also was proven to be popular.
Disney, despite the aforementioned cinema-related struggles, was also very much still a reservoir of Midas-like licensing opportunities, so pairing them with Capcom, who was by now really getting their crap together in a major way*, was pretty much a sure thing.
* Street Fighter II ring a bell for anyone? Yeah, that was only another year down the road.
Unsurprisingly, the math on this still checks out.
Capcom + Disney license + Mega Man infrastructure = $$$.
That formula became a major piece of Capcom’s strategy in those heady NES days, as they released a series of games for the console with the Disney license that sold like gangbusters.
Rescue Rangers … Little Mermaid …Adventures in Magic Kingdom … Darkwing Duck …
That’s only a partial list of some genuine bangers, and we haven’t even spoken about the next-gen stuff on the SNES, where Capcom continued to work its Disney-sponsored magic. This was a partnership that was successful in a way – both commercially and critically – that’s hard to put into modern terms.
Maybe think to the Spider-Man games currently releasing on the Playstation? Critical darlings with a well known license attached that are extremely popular with audiences. Though even with Spider-Man, he’s not quite as popular with the kids (or seen as being “safe” by overzealously protective parents) as Ariel or Scrooge McDuck. THAT was the power of the Disney-Capcom pairing in the 80s and 90s: It was bigger than Spider-Man.
And, naturally, none of that comes to pass if DuckTales doesn’t stick the landing.
It managed to do so in a myriad of ways.
The bright, cartoony graphics and catchy, memorable soundtrack deserve mention at the outset, as those things were no small part of the overall package and a part of the success.
In a less definitive way, I would speculate that the game’s box art contributed to the game’s success as well. That’s harder to quantify, but it’s not a thing we’ve spent a lot of time discussing during this series, and I think in the case of DuckTales in particular, it’s a part of it.
The thing about box art being important is somewhat of a relic of a bygone era. Game reviews were harder to come by back in the day, so video game rentals were critical in terms of trying games on for size. And how did you decide what to rent as you strolled through the rental shop aisles? Box art was absolutely a critical piece of one’s consideration.
What catches a person’s eye?
The colorful drawing of familiar DuckTales characters in all their cartoon glory was of course a major point in this box art’s favor. Prominently displaying a popular license, in and of itself, was a no-brainer. But I also wouldn’t discount the familiar Capcom purple border, surrounding the main art. That purple border, at that point in time, would bring to mind games like Mega Man 2, Strider, and Mickey Mousecapade for consumers, and those games gave people warm fuzzies (for the most part).
Capcom had a great rep. And that purple border told you it was Capcom.
Of course, the whole box art discussion doesn’t *really* account for a game’s overall quality. It can speak to why a game is successful and why it might endure more than other games – and those things determine whether people will want to even play a game at all some years later – but it’s not directly tied to what makes a game enjoyable.
What truly makes DuckTales fun to play is the control of Scrooge McDuck through several distinct platforming levels. The levels varied in quite the interesting manner – Scrooge traveled from an African Mine to haunted Transylvania to the Himalayas all the way to the moon, sparking the imagination of gamers everywhere in the process. This was truly a world-trotting affair.
Similar to Mega Man, the gamer could choose what order to take those levels on, and even the individual levels themselves weren’t entirely linear, instead encouraging exploration in a time when that was fairly uncommon among platformers. And players were rewarded for hoarding treasure (this WAS Scrooge McDuck after all), motivating the gamer further to poke around and discover things.
Cameos by other characters from the cartoon kept things lively too … everytime someone new popped up, you’d get excited and point at the screen, “Hey, there’s so-and-so!”
Scrooge could whack things with his cane and execute a pogo jump with that cane, which would also defeat enemies and was immensely satisfying to execute in a way that’s difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t played this game (or perhaps Shovel Knight, which is directly inspired by this).
Suffice it to say, bouncing about the screen is super fun and awesome.
Super fun and awesome is good, my friends. And DuckTales is super fun and awesome.
So what makes it worth playing today?
There was a sweet spot on the NES, a time period in which the system took off for orbit while simultaneously being a time before I had managed to acquire the system for my own enjoyment. Epic game after epic game would drop, increasing my desire to have my own NES … but also ironically making it much less likely any of those desired games would be games I’d have the ability (re: funds) to purchase myself.
DuckTales was one of those games, a total hype-builder that wouldn’t make the cut for my own personal collection.
I played the game at friends’ houses and via rental (because of course!), and perhaps partly due to its brevity and relative easiness, it never became a priority for purchase. A weekend rental could suffice.
And that still holds true today. It’s not a game you’ll invest a ton of time into, and if you do return to it, you’ll do so because of how well crafted it is. Not for any sense of challenge mind you, but rather because it’s a short adventure that scratches a particular itch.
The game received the remake treatment in 2013, shined up and prettied for a different generation and nostalgists who wanted to bounce about for a bit as a penny-pinching duck. That version of the game, “DuckTales: Remastered” is well regarded and includes lots of fun touches, such as voice actors returning from the cartoon to reprise their roles and new playable areas.
But the original is still a fantastic way to spend some time. DuckTales is readily available today via Steam as part of the “Disney Afternoon Collection,” and that’s a perfect home for the game today, as part of an anthology. DuckTales, after all, is part of a larger story.
For this writer, DuckTales is the very best part of said story, and the one game from that era of Disney games that is an absolute must-play.
Life is like a hurricane…
Dave’s Score: 10/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware (NES)
- DuckTales: Remastered (PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii U)
- The Disney Afternoon Collection (PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One)