DuckTales (video game)

From TheAlmightyGuru
Jump to: navigation, search
DuckTales

DuckTales - NES - USA.jpg

NES - USA - 1st Edition.

Developer Capcom
Publisher Capcom
Published 1989-09-??
Platforms Game Boy, NES
Genres Licensed, Platformer
Themes Adventure, Cartoon
Series DuckTales
Distribution Commercial

DuckTales is a platform adventure-action game developed and published by Capcom and first released on the NES in September of 1989, then Game Boy in 1990. The game was designed largely by the same team who made the first two Mega Man games and ended up being Capcom's most successful game on the NES and Game Boy, selling over a million copies in each platform. The game takes place in the DuckTales universe.

In the game's story, Uncle Scrooge is trying to increase his already vast fortune by collecting five lost treasures from around the world.

Personal

Own?No.
Won?Yes. Easy difficulty.
Finished2010-07-04.

I remember being interested in this game because it was pretty popular in Nintendo advertising, and because I enjoyed the television show. However, nobody I knew owned the game, so I didn't play it at the time. I tried it a few times in emulators, but didn't put much effort into it until around 2010 when I played it properly and found it to be a delightful game.

Review

Video Game Review Icon - Enjoyment.png Video Game Review Icon - Control.png Video Game Review Icon - Appearance.png Video Game Review Icon - Sound.png Video Game Review Icon - Replayability.png
6 5 6 7 6

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

  • The graphics are fantastic, and accurately depict the various DuckTales characters.
  • A lot of effort was made to include most of the DuckTales imagery, which rarely happens in licensed games. The title music is a great rendering of the TV show's theme.
  • Hiroshige Tonomura composed a very nice soundtrack.
  • Despite the game showing up on lists as being one of the easiest NES games on the platform, I think the game offers a pretty good challenge to a new player even on the easiest difficulty. I also like the feature where you can adjust the difficulty for harder game play, even if it merely alters the player's hit points.
  • Each area has a fair amount of hidden rooms and treasures which keeps it interesting after multiple play-throughs.

Bad

  • With only 5 stages, the game is a bit on the short side. The designers elongate play time by forcing you to go through the same maps multiple times, but this is a cheap trick.
  • The difficulty setting doesn't increase the complexity of the game, it just causes enemies to deal more damage. This is a lazy difficulty setting.

Ugly

  • The mine cart riding portion is kind of annoying. It requires very accurate timing on a couple jumps for no real reason other than to kill you. And, if you succeed, Scrooge seems unperturbed at watching his nephews fall to their death!

Media

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Screenshots

Videos

Game Boy Works, review.
Longplay - Game Boy.
Longplay - NES.

Play Online

Game Boy (Europe), Game Boy (Japan), Game Boy (USA), Famicom, NES (Europe), NES (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?FailWebbigail, Mrs. Beakly, and Magica De Spell all appear, but none are important.
Bechdel test?FailNo women talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?FailThere are no human characters.
Queer character?FailThere are no queer characters.

Titles

Language Native Transliteration Translation
English DuckTales
Japanese わんぱくダック夢冒険 Wanpaku Dakku Yume Boken Naughty Duck's Dream Adventures

Links

Link-MobyGames.png  Link-Wikipedia.png  Link-GameFAQs.png  Link-VGMPF.png  Link-ROMDetectives.png  link=https://tcrf.net/DuckTales_(NES) tcrf.net/DuckTales_(NES)