Retronauts - 633: Donald Duck

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Quacking the case! Throwing an apoplectic tantrum about that most Disneyest of ducks with host Stuart Gipp and guests Thomas Nickel and John Linneman. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, moving on from Mickey Mouse to the character that people actually like. show, I'm your host, once again, Stuart Gip, and I'm continuing my massive, massive, like, Manchild revisiting of beloved cartoon characters who I grew up watching, and their various tie-in games, which I grew up playing. Now, unless these come in out of sequence, and if they do, I apologize for that, we've already covered Disney's illusion games, which are sort of broadly speaking, Mickey Mouse games, but also Donald does show up, one of them, don't. don't tell anyone, because, you know, that breaks the whole premise. But today, we're examining Donald Duck games.

Now, as I mentioned in the intro, Donald Duck is, in my experience, quite more liked than Mickey Mouse in terms of actually being quite an entertaining character rather than just kind of a corporate mascot. But maybe Mickey got kind of a raw deal there, I don't know. It's just when I try and think of Donald Duck scenes that make me laugh, I can easily think of several. And when I try and think of Mickey Mouse scenes that make me laugh, the only one I can think of is in symphony out when he pulls a gun on me on donald in fact um that's very funny

you don't usually see micky mouse pull out a realistic pistol and point it at don't duck's face do you just they wouldn't do that now but anyway forget all that let's find out who's uh who's who's here with me today i don't think that it's going to be that surprising considering but we're gonna we'll see maybe maybe you'll be shocked out of your skin we'll go alphabetically once again by by first name so who's with us today uh don't be shocked it's me john lineman from digital Foundry again, and I don't have any jokes because I was considering attempting a Donald Doug voice, and then I realize I value my throat more than I do the joke, you know. It's just not worth it. It's true. I mean, we all want to hear that, but it's not worth it, no. And who else is

with us today? Why, hello, I'm Thomas Nickel once again, and in honor of our protagonist today, I will not be bearing any pen for the duration of this recording. Oh my gosh, yes, That was good. I enjoyed that. Thank you. I wish I'd thought of it, to be honest. I mean, I also... You can still do it. I also am not wearing pants, but I didn't think of the connection at all. Like, it just didn't occur to me.

But yes, with Donald Duck, it's going to be slightly messier than the Mickey Mouse cast of Lusion 1, because there isn't a distinct series here. It's all over the place, basically, with a few kind of maybe arguable sub-series happening, with all kinds of different developers and all kinds of different consoles it's not just going to be

Sega stuff this type I wanted to sort of divvy up because I wanted to do the Mickey Mouse Nintendo stuff in a future episode so keep an eye out for that or an ear out for that I suppose would be more appropriate but I think the first thing I'd like to ask

I'll start with you again John what was your sort of Donald Duck game experience back in the day? So originally in terms of games I played around release I only played two of them specifically at that time. First of all, quackshot for the Sega Genesis. I'll call it to Genesis since that's where I was when I first played it.

That's fair. And yeah, I love that game. It was a very, very cool platformer with beautiful, just stunning pixel art graphics. It really looked like a cartoon running on your screen and just the amount of colors, sprites. We'll get into that. That's great. I love that game, though. And then I actually did not touch any other Donald Duck games.

as well. I wasn't into Master's System or anything like that. Oh, dear. How come? I'm sorry. It was just not the thing to do over there. But I did play Donald Duck going quackers. Specifically, I played the Dreamcast version, which in my mind I thought meant I had played the game. But as it turns out, and we will discuss later, I only played basically one fifth of that game. What a weird, weird game that one is. Yeah, we'll definitely get to that. And, Thomas, what about what about you? It was your Donald experience.

So, my first experience with Donald is actually a game that we won't really talk about today because it's more of an entertainment game. Yeah, I decided not to include entertainment because I hate the idea of learning. I just wanted to, you know, excise that. Yeah, the game was Donald Jack's playground made by the famous L.O. I played at my cousin's Amiga back in the day. I understood maybe half of it. I understood the game where you have to catch fruit, the other ones,

not so much because I was very young and very stupid. bit. And this was my first one. And then of course, just like John Crackshot was the big one on the Mega Drive. Donald Duck's playground, that was Al-Low design, that was presumably about Donald trying to lose his virginity, right? That was what that

was for. No, as I understand it, it was actually... I think so, which is why I didn't get it. It was the game that broke Al-Low, and he was like, all right, we need no more this kid's stuff. Yeah, I'm not surprised. He did Black Caldron before that, presumably. Yeah. Oh, man. Al-Alow. there's got to be an aloe episode at some point for sure

I gotta get him on here actually I'll probably yeah I'll give him a guy He's a great guy I met him once Such a friendly guy You know what I'll say when I when I call him up I'll go Hello Hello hello

Okay Would you allow us to be on the podcast That's also good That's also good Let's insert some cricket sounds there Yeah and some Maybe the sound of one guy coughing him that really far away in the auditorium.

I think we also just drove every listener of, so I think we can now just go ahead. We can say whatever we want. Oh my God. Mario sucks. I fucking hate Mario. It's garbage. I've never liked it. No, anyway, I think we should talk about very briefly

the cancelled prototype game, Donald Duck's Speedboat. I think maybe before we do that, I want to mention one thing, because what surprised me most here is how little games they are, actually. Yeah. Well, when I heard, okay, let's talk to Donald games. I thought, okay, this would be a ton of games on every system, and no, there is not, and I don't understand why, to be honest, because he's such a, such an icon, and it's, I mean, there hasn't been any New Donald games in ages now. He's priced himself out of the market.

He's priced himself out, that's why. Thomas, I actually do kind of think that by the time we reach the point in video game history where mascot-based games could be made, I'd imagine most, but not all companies, would have been more interesting. in owning their intellectual property. Yeah. I mean, yes, there was plenty of licensed stuff, but I don't know what the Disney licensing costs were like back then. I'm sure they were more reasonable than they are now, but I can see that being potentially a reason why they may not go after the Donald IP, right?

There's a sort of, I mean, this is very broad, of course, and there are exceptions. Disney licenses were kind of like set up and take notice in the 8 and 16-bit era, thanks to the likes of Capcom and Sega, I would say. Because they made good games, yeah. Because they made excellent games, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Once you get into PS1 and PS2 years, that quality bar lowers a lot.

And I'm not saying there aren't good ones, but we're talking about the distinction between stuff like, you know, let's say the Travelers Tales Toy Story game, which I think is really good, personally. And let's say, Monsters Inc. Scare Island, or like the Lilo and Stitch games. The Emperor's New Groove on PlayStation. stuff like that.

They're just not horrible, but they're not. They're serviceable, but they're not events. Yeah, so maybe it isn't so much a cost thing and more just, I don't know, people struggling to figure out what can we do with Donald? What can we do to make an interesting game? Having said that, it's interesting that

they failed that right off the bat with this Donald Duck Speedboat. They sure did. Atari VCS, by the way, 1983, they canceled this. Maybe because of the whole video game crash thing, maybe because they realized it was shit. I don't know.

But it's this speedboat game where you basically just go from left to right in what is amounted to be a speedboat, but actually goes at the pace of an absolute crawl. Yeah, probably the slow speedboat I've ever seen in my life, to be honest. Yeah. I'd call it more of a slow boat way. Ooh, shots fired. Yeah, I know you say that. So this is an interesting one because, first of all, Atari games, if you look back,

generally I find with this limited number of pixels, it's difficult to actually use. recognize any sort of figure in the game. But when you look at the sprite work for this game, you can actually pick out Donald. It looks, it looks like a very simplistic rendition of the Donald character, which by itself is kind of an accomplishment given the platform. Yeah, yeah. But as you say, the core gameplay is exceptionally slow. It's like being in a rowboat or a paddleboat.

He just sort of putters around screen by screen. I'd assume that the state of the American video game market around 80s. is likely the reason for its demise. Probably the same as a setting of the game. Although, so apparently it was originally called Donald Duck's Regatta, according to AtariProtos.com. I mean, that would make slightly more sense in terms of the pace of the goddamn thing, like... Yeah, exactly.

I don't know why they thought the name Speedboat would make any sense, but its creator, though, actually, Suki Lee is somewhat notable in that, you know, an early, woman working in the gaming industry, programming games for Atari. She actually did. Her first game was called Math Grand Prix, but then she also did an Obelix game, which is pretty interesting, right? So with that in mind, you know, it feels like moving on to Donald Duck is a natural fit, but unfortunately, that didn't release, and she left gaming behind to go on and work at

web TV, she worked at Apple, a bunch of other companies like that. So she's done well just with this early stint at Atari. and I suspected the cancellation of two of her games including Donald Duck's speedboat I'd be enough to drive you out of Atari Yeah do we know if that game is complete or is it purely only a prototype Which the Donald Duck game?

Yeah From what I can tell it seems to be basically complete And nearly ready for release I played it back when I did a video on YouTube about Donald Duck games I did play it on stellar emulator Yes I deleted the ROM 24 hours etc etc um i'm more interested because this is the kind of thing that makes my eyebrow twitch upwards in the fact that they also made an obelix game because that means there is another connection

between donald duck games and asterix games which is just yeah yeah as we had in the mickeybass games already yeah with of course ubysoft or ubysoft made a lot of asterix games and they also made several donald duck games so now i'm just fascinated by this person and of course same with sega as well yeah yeah absolutely that well they just Just maybe, I mean, do you think it's a Eurocomic thing? Because Donald was very popular in Eurocomic. I think there's a connection, yeah. No hesitance there.

I love it. Do you think it's a Eurocomic thing? Yes. I love it. What else would it be? Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, is like, also her asterix, or sorry, her Obelix game, also has very

recognizable characters. She did a great job sort of representing asterix and obelix in the very low pixel format, which again, that's a pretty impressive piece of work there. Like, it looks great for Atari 2,600. Yeah, I mean, Donald Duck's Speedboat, the problems with that game, none of them are visual. It's actually quite impressive looking for Atari VCS game, I would say. The game looks and plays very poorly. It's extremely worried.

And it never came out. You can get the rum, and if you want to play it, but it never came out. I would say, you know what? Don't delete the rum after 24 hours, because what are they going to do? Nobody cares. What are they going to do? Well, it's Disney. They can do a lot, I think.

Oh, that's a good point, yeah. Do you think they know this exists? Is this in the Disney Vault? There's a Disney vault And there's also a Disney light flaming bin Trash can, yeah It's in there But there's a pitch somewhere probably

We're not getting to the To the super good stuff yet But the next game that That occurs to me Is the Famicom game Donald Duck Which was actually Released in the US

But it was completely overhauled Into a Charlie Brown Into a Snoopy game A Peanats game That happened a lot, didn't it? I think that there were more more than one game that was overhauled into a Snoopy game.

It's not just Snoopy, but like this idea of taking a Western IP and a Japanese developed game and then between regions they change up the IP, right? Like Bugs Bunny, birthday. Right. They had a lot with the Crazy Castle, yeah. The Crazy Castle, yeah. Crazy Castle is, yeah, I mean, Crazy

Castle keeps jumping between the likes of like Woody Woodpecker, Dog, and who was the other one again? Also, Mickey Mouse, I think. yeah there was also one that was really kind of less oh yeah Roger Rabbit one of them was Roger Rabbit oh yeah that's right but then there's that really famous there's that chemco game which is Royal Ghostbusters and Mickey Mouse and Garfield depending on

oh yeah yeah that's right by Garfield Labrard well in Japan those were mostly Mickey Mouse games up to a certain point there was like Mickey Mouse 5 like one through five yeah yeah and it was like Bugs Bunny kid clown real Ghostbusters like all the stuff it's it's super weird yeah kid cloud in nightmare world is a i think is a mickey game overseas or it's associated in some way with it i could be wrong there isn't any donald game though in this no no but there is a hugo version which is uh oh god you know you go you got to play it over the phone that's how i know hugo from kids tv shows where they play the hugo games over the phone i was like well it's kind of cool that i developed these really simple crappy games

just to he played over the phone, then I found out you actually could just buy those games, and they were exactly the same. Did you have it in the UK as well, Hugo? Yeah, we got loads of Hugo games over here. Oh, dear, I'm very sorry for you guys. My understanding is that some of the later ones are okay-ish, but I'm not going to, like, pretend that.

I hold it to my theory, which is, oh, can I cite my theory? It's not that relevant, but I'm going to do it anyway because I have the space to do so. My theory is, if you take an old review for a video game from the PS1 or PS2 era from, say, magazine. Let's say they score out of 10, right? If it's in percentage, just pretend it's out of 10. But if they score out of 10, whatever it was back then, you add two to it now. Okay?

Like, a game that scored like four back then, to me, is now a six. That's how I roll. That's my theory. Now, if that takes it over 100%, or over 10 out of 10, then so be it. It's just that good. Okay. That's how it works. But my view is just that, like, the quality of those games is just like we took it for granted we just took them for granted that's that's how I feel yeah well I can't disagree here Although, in the case of Donald Duck, the first game that we're really getting into here that was released, the Famicom game, well, I think what would you have scored this had have been released as a Donald Duck game in the West? I mean, I don't know what I'd have scored it. I can't pretend I didn't have some fun playing it, like, because it is so silly.

But as an actual, like, experience, like a coherent kind of gaming. experience. I mean, it's not really something I would choose to play ever. So basically, so what this is is essentially one of those games that places a licensed character into any number of sporting events, right? You're basically doing sports. Sporting events in heavy quote marks that. Yes, yes. So I say that because this is something that happened with other IP that I hold dear and I found disappointing every time it occurred, specifically Tiny Tunes, where they had both, there's the second. one on NES, which takes you to like some weird theme park thing, and then there's the

the sports, wacky sports challenge or whatever on the 16-bit machines, neither of them are anywhere near as good as the games that preceded them. And so I've always had something against these games that take something that you might love and then just turn it into like this weird events-based thing. And that's basically what this is. See, the second Tiny Tunes NES game is the tip of the iceberg, because it is still kind of a platform, a kind of. But it's still

It's like the world's most boring roller coaster level Like where most of the time You're just kind of standing there But no, that's not this So I apologize, I won't get into that Stay tuned for the tiny tune episode coming up soon

That already happened What? Oh, damn it Although I wouldn't mind doing it again Okay No, but no The events you've got here, for example, are a game that's a bit like

Gladiator's where you're kind of fighting on like a on a gondola sort of thing yeah a bit sumo style i think you just push each other into the water there's a game where you are carrying a sack of pancakes and you have to balance them and it doesn't really work because of the way the controls work but i won't worry about that of course they have the leaning tower of pizza pizza yeah yeah oh of course it's the pizza not not pancakes of course i didn't occur in the country yeah i mean the whole game is take place in italy oh really so yeah he's like balancing pizzas with the cow right think of the intro of course because don't it goes into the plane at the state and flies to italy oh i probably skipped over that

it was just like don't care yeah they actually have like the italian flag in there it's like during the intro so you know where he's going donald duck he gets around a lot doesn't he uh yeah there's also a pogo stick game where you bounce over obstacles like a sort of hurdles on a pogo stick and it's quite fun actually that one it's it's it's it's really knockabout and you will get hit loads but it is quite fun there's one way you there's well there's the sport of

welly wangling in which a Wellington boot is like thrown as far as possible what you do there is you got to sort of do a spin on the D pad and then press at the right time to throw and it's actually quite funny and then you've got a sack race where you have to tap the A button

rhythmically and if you get far enough yeah if you get far enough ahead Donald like one of the nephews pushes your opponent towards you with a broom so that you're always in competition which is kind of funny but also annoying and the last one as has been noted here is the pole vault and i like in brackets didn't manage that a single time yeah neither did i yeah yeah that's me who wrote it i tried i i really tried but i couldn't figure it i made it quite a bit but i always let into the water in the end i don't know how to cross that that gap i think every single minigame collection like this where

there isn't documentation, has one mini-game that nobody knows how to do it. There's definitely some other examples I can think of. But, yeah, there's a javeling game in an Asterix game I used to play that I don't know how to play at all. And there doesn't seem to be any way of finding out, so that's fun. Yeah, I mean, one thing I can say for the game is certainly, it looks quite nice. They have some nice parallax effect in there. Yeah, many of the disciplines. That's actually the one comment I wanted to make here is that what they've done is that sort of,

horizontal or I guess vertical interrupt thing where no it's a horizontal I guess where essentially they're changing the scan lines at a different rate based on how far down the screen it is so they're able to you notice none of it overlaps because they'll like move the the background mountain at one speed or not at all they'll move the the next layer at a different speed and then the layer that the player is actually performing the action on moves at a fastest faster speed yeah it does give that really nice impression of actual parallel And because the artwork itself is rather detailed, I would say, it ends up looking like really nice.

It's very strong. For a 1988 Famicom game, I'd say it looks really good. Yeah. I don't hate this. I mean, it's nowhere near pretty much anything else that we're going to talk about, I'd say. But I don't hate it. On multiplayer, I have played it on multiplayer before, and it is fun. It's better than Donald Duck's Speedboat.

Yeah. I mean, I can see myself back in the day if I had this game. when I was around 10. I would have had a nice afternoon with friends and just playing that and laughing at how silly it is. I would have been pretty angry if I spent my money on this, to be honest. Because it's not a bad little game,

but there's not much here. Would be a rental, of course. Yeah. That's... Or even better, how about this? One of your friends owns it, so not only do you get to play it, but you get to make fun of them.

Oh, yeah, that's all the best. Okay, yeah, that's the best way to do it. You know, Thank you. So moving on from that We can get to what can only be described as a banger It's a, or should I say a quacking game A cracking good time

Quacking good time, yeah And that's quack shot, as in crack shot That's the joke there took me far too long to Think of that one out Oh Yeah Just mind blown here And I never got it until right now

Yeah Wow, okay You know what, I'm not going to make fun because I didn't get Miles Prower till I was like 30 So, please do I deserve it Okay Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

So I wish I didn't get the joke Okay Also known as I love Donald Duck Grusia uno Hi I don't know I can't speak I don't know how sad that

John please do the honors You can do it better than I Grusia onohiho So I guess that means Close enough I can actually read that But it means It means

King Garousia's treasure. Oh, that's... Yeah, yeah. I knew the he-ho part because of Rudia... What's it called? That's a snas game. Rulha. Rudra.

Udra. No, Ghiah. That's the one. And then, Garusia is that name of that king whose treasure, Donald, is searching for. Is that mentioned in the game? I don't recall the... Yep, in the intro. Okay, that's great, then. Again, the intro, which I just massively mash the start button to skip

every time I would boot every game up. Man, rather good intro is. I mean, not so much nowadays, but back in the day, I would have, so now by sheer like force of habit, I would do the same. But anyway, Quackshot, 1991 for the Megadrive slash Genesis. This game kind of kicks ass. It's really good. I would even say this is the big one for the day, isn't it? This is the game all of us really love?

I would say, yes, for the majority of people, this is the big one. For me, it's lucky dime caper, but that's because I grew up with it. I did not grow up with this. I didn't play this until I was a bit older, but I recognize. the quality of it. Now, what it is, if you're not familiar with it, anyone listening, it's a platform game, as you'd expect, in which take control of Donald Duck in this kind of Indiana Jones-ish, like, Explorer kind of mode. And it's not like Metroidvania, so speak. In fact, I'd say it's a little bit more close to a microcomputer game like Dizzy.

Sorry for mentioning Dizzy. Everyone always gets mad when I mentioned Dizzy. It's all right. As a Japanese developed game, I really think this is more influenced by the type of game that the monster world titles out of the non-linear but still level-based adventure game what it essentially amounts to is the reason I compare it to Disney is because you get items you have to use in certain spots and that's my frame of reference for that kind of thing

but you'll like for example just to make it sort of very clear you make your way through the first stage duckberg with the awesome music like I love it. That stays with you. You make your way through that stage, and when you reach the end,

you find another explorer and a sheer wall you're not able to climb. You can't progress, so you have to go elsewhere until you get the item that lets you progress, which is incidentally a different color plunger because your weapon in this game, for some reason,

is like a gun that shoots plungers, as in toilet plungers. Or popcorn or, you know, like bubbles, I think. And that's, stay with a problem. plunger for a moment now because I think that's the thing we should know because it's such a great innovative idea. Yes, it's really versatile because once you get this... It's your multifunctional

tool. Once you get the green plunger because I think you start with red or yellow. You start with yellow, then you go to red, then you go to green. Right, yeah. I think it's the red one that you can stand on, isn't it? The next one you get. So once you get that, you can shoot the plungers into walls and they'd stick there as you'd expect.

But then you can stand on them and climb, which is like, shockingly forward-thinking whoever came up with that is a genius honestly whoever came up with that is an absolute genius it's the kind of thing that you just didn't get and yeah it's

it's very uncommon for the era even but in general speaking of uncommon it's a game we don't jump on enemies that's a big change because pretty much every other game you jump on enemy Sonic sort of jumps on enemies Mickey does so of course Mario does but Donald only has his shooting weapons

so that's one important point When you shoot enemies with plungers in this game, they don't, like, die. You have to hit them with the popcorn or with a balloon to actually destroy them, I think. So you can freeze enemies, get items from them and sort of keep moving on. So they might as well be dead, because you're not going to go past them again, are you? It's kind of interesting how they managed to essentially squeeze a gun into this game with that mechanic. It's like, well, okay, we want to use this sort of shot mechanic, but it's Donald. So they found a Disney-friendly way to pull it off, which is that.

this sort of plunger slash popcorn slash bubblegum gun that you have. And it works extremely well. There are also, for example, like, you can, there are later in the game, you'll be able to shoot a plunger into like a flying enemy and then hang on to the plunger and get a ride and stuff like that. There are sections and out. Now, the thing I want to sort of bring up about this game, which maybe won't resonate as much, it's more of me remembering it from when I was younger, because I didn't play this very much

because I didn't have a megadrive. But one thing I do recall from it is looking at the screenshots from it because I would get as many access to as much screenshots as I wanted all magazines as I could possibly get my hands on so I can keep an eye on the 16-bit era. And I remember seeing the screenshots for Quackshot and just thinking like, this looks amazing. This looks insanely good, like visually.

It looks like this. Nowadays it doesn't come off this way. It doesn't give that impression. because of how things have moved on. But the sprites in this game are big. Like, the enemies are big. You are big. It doesn't mean that you're restricted in your view.

They've made it work by designing levels around it. But you've got, like, the level in Mexico where, like, huge bodies of rocks are, like, just, like, moving around the screen. And it looks wild. It looks like Disney. It looks like a movie. Multi-layers of parallax scrolling on top of that. It's absolutely incredible looking. It's crazy that this is only a four-megibit game.

Yeah. Well, that is wild, yeah. So it's a small cartridge, yet somehow they were able to cram all these art assets in here. And I suspect this ties into some of the compression work that the team had been doing for the prior game, which we discussed last time. Yeah, cast a illusion with which it shares quite a lot of sound effects and things. So, yeah, I think you mentioned it. The flow of this game is what really sets it apart, and that it's this nonlinear approach where you basically, you're given a set of levels, you go into levels, you run across challenges, is that you cannot bypass, which then pushes you to go explore other levels.

And because it's all very simple, straightforward kind of tools and abilities that you're gaining, it's very easy to put it together to be like, oh, now I can get past this wall, or now I can open this door. And that is like very satisfying just from a basic gameplay perspective. Yeah. It scratches an itch in your brain. It makes the game, it makes the game longer, but also when you know what you're doing, obviously it is quite breezy still.

But there would be... But back in the day, I know there was quite a lot in magazines and such of like how do I get past this, how do I do this? What's the password for the temp, like the pyramid, you know, even though the game tells you to your face

and now you missed that. But I just... The variety of this game as well, like going to all these different locations, all of which have totally different feel. Like when you go to Transylvania, it's like legit, spooky in places, I think. And you've got some...

And stuff. Yeah, you've got some quality memorable things like that aristocratic-looking ghost that troubles you. His sprite is gigantic, too. And there's expressions on his face. It's so good. Yeah. It's really impressive. Yeah.

But then you've got levels like India, which are like a maze, and you have to find your way through the correct doors. Oh, they liked the mazes at Sega back then. Yeah, they certainly did. Just like in Shinobi and stuff. Yeah, yep. For me, that makes India the only stage that I find kind of problematic. I can never remember the right doors to go through. But of course, if you know, it's easy, you know.

And you would figure it out, and then you'd remember because that's how it was when you were younger, you know. And of course, also, there's no time limit, which is nice. Yes, that's true, that too, yeah. I mean, I'm going to put this out there, and I mean, this may be controversial. It may be a hot take, one of my classic stewardship of hot takes, but I think this is better than the Mega Drive Castle of Lusion, personally. I'm not saying that that's bad, obviously.

But to me, this PIP sits at a post just a little bit. It's just that much more interesting. It shares so much more in terms of sound effects, and it's the same director, right? Yeah, same director, same musician as well. Yeah. Yeah. But to me, this is just a slightly better game. I mean, it's more refined, obviously, than Castellusion, which is quite a simple game,

and this is more complex, and they're both excellent, but to me this is the better game for me. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can't tell you wrong. It's just, for me, they are so different, both of them. I think it's just great to have both of them, and they don't really, I would measure them up against each other, even if they are platformers, but I think they're so different kinds of platformers. Yeah, I agree.

Something we didn't mention is the whole thing where you collect chilies and then become furiously angry in this game. They managed to make angry quacking with the Megadryph sound chips. Very good with no samples. It's very recognizably. That's kind of a, you know, that's very much a Donald staple, and it's also kind of a thread that we'll see in some of the other games,

the Donald is angry thing. And so, but it does feel like it wasn't utilized as much as could have been. Yeah, you very rarely get it. I think it's maybe in three stages and that's it. Yeah, one of them is right at the beginning of the first one. Yeah, I suspect it's just, it's so fast that it doesn't really fit in with the level design most of the time. Especially with the way that the progression works. So, you know, it's just a fun bonus.

It's like the big Mario and new Super Mario brothers, right? which is like, oh yeah, this is fun, this is cool, but it's barely in there. That's a really good comparison, actually. Yeah, that is exactly what it's like. But honestly, I can't, like, this holds up. This is still fun to play. I really can't praise it enough. I was a little bit disappointed when they got World and Castle on the Mega Drive Mini,

but not this, because I was like, this is just as good as those. Like, this really needs to be on there. And unless there is at some point a Sega, a Sega Donald Duck Collection, crossing fingers let's have it digital eclipse come on please oh my god it would be so good wouldn't it if that did happen then I would be delighted but I think at the moment it's stuck in the

Mega Drive having said that not that expensive of a game you can also get it with Cart of Lusion on one cart for quite a low price as well which is nice if you were to receive that cartridge as a kid you would be laughing you would just be like absolutely yes mate

one of the best double carts on the system, not quite as good as Fantastic Disney and Cosmic Spacehead, but you can't win them all. Also, for those that are interested in collecting Japanese Megadrive games, this was one of the Universal Carts, which means the language of the game changes

depending on the region of your console. So if you put it into an American system, you're going to get the English version. I mentioned this before. Which is what I did back in the day. I got the import, one of our first import games and nice English text. That's really awesome. Because this game would be quite hard without it.

if you didn't know Japanese. I think so, yeah. Now, I will mention it, even though we talked about it on the Castle, on the Illusion episode, this game is also on the Saturn as part of the I Love Mickey Mouse

and Donald Duck, I love Mickey and Donald Disc. I don't think there are any improvements or anything, but it's there, it's an option. Just in case you really want CD boot time to be added to this game, you know.

And spend a lot more money. And spend a huge amount more money, yes. I'm devastated that this hasn't been re-released in any fashion that I can think of since then, because it deserves to, but get out there and get a copy. It's real cheap. It's not like the cheapest, but it's real cheap.

It's very affordable, yeah. Yeah, and you will have a blast. It's a great, great game. It holds up really well. It still plays quite unique, so I don't recall another game that has the same kind of mechanic as, you know, your weapon is also a traversal thing to that extent. I think it's also just a very nice game back then to get kids into more adventure games.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's just a middle ground between platformer and stuff like Wonderball Monster World, for example, which is, again, a bit more complex. But quackshot, if you just want to get your feet wet, if you want to get a taste of adventure, this is where you should start. You want to get your little duck feet wet. I think, I mean, regardless of whether you care about the Donald character or not, it's just a good action-adventure game that looks awesome, sounds great.

You know, it still plays well today. I mean, it really is a game that works just as well now as it. ever did. I mean, I'm just thinking about the atmosphere of that pyramid stage, and it's just like so good. It's awesome. Let me just gush some more about the stages because they are just so wonderfully adventuary international. We have stuff like

that Viking ship, you have India. You have that island with the treasure. So, really, all these places have character and have their charms and are interesting to explore. Is it okay for me to say that I actually do prefer this to Castle Volusion? So there's two of us now.

All right. Yeah. I mean, I do. too. I know it's based on nostalgia. I still prefer 8-bit cast of illusion to everything else, but this is yeah, I mean, this is just a great game. It's, okay, let's make the terms slightly more intense, okay? Best Disney game on the Mega Drive, I think so. Um, that's, oh. It's a tall order, I know, because Aladdin is there,

but I would rather play this than Aladdin. This is better than Aladdin for sure. I think it's, I think, I think it's a reasonable statement. I think it's a reasonable statement. Man, it's time to remember. Unless we've got some big fans of Goofy's hysterical history tour in the house. The Super NES Goofy game, though, now, that's a good one. I didn't even know there was one and now I'm fascinated.

Goof Troop. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Maybe not better than this, though. I don't know.

This is, this is real. Yeah, yeah. If this isn't the best and it might be, then it's easily like top two. Yeah, for sure. for sure. I mean, if nothing else, I'm prepared to have it level pegging with Castle, but... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think these two sure take the crown. I think this is either the top ones. Now, unless we've got anything else to say about Quackshot, we can move on from taking the crown to taking the dime, the Lucky Dime. And that's my segue work there. I'm not doing very good work. Sorry. Lucky Dime Caper, starring Donald Duck,

released for the Master System and the Game Gear in 1991, is sort of the 8-bit counterpart to Quackshot, which isn't something that really occurred to me. until I came to do this. I don't know why, because they're both jet-setting games in which you go around the world at different places, yet one of them is a much more straightforward platformer,

aka Lucky Dime Kaper, and one of them is a much more adventurous game, aka Quackshot. Now, Lucky Dime Kaper was a game that I kind of coveted as a kid because it was reviewed so well. I was reading like Sega Power magazine, and they were like, yeah, this is five stars, this is great, and I was like, I must have it.

And I did eventually get it, and they were not wrong. It is a very, very good game. However, compared to Quackshot, it is more straightforward. It's probably in some ways harder in terms of level design. There's some very difficult... I mean, it's definitely harder. There's some very difficult stuff, but it's more limited in its sort of scope in a sense. But what you do in this game is you start with the choice of three stages. I can't remember what they are. There's like, they're all different countries, but the photos like America and there's like a sort of a as techy kind of stage.

North and South America, basically, I believe, with Huey and Louis there. Yeah, but you make your way from left to right or up down, depending on the level, or all over the place, depending on the level. You beat a boss at the end, and you rescue one of the nephews. Then once you've got all three of the nephews,

you have to go after Magica Dispel, who is the villain in this game, who comes from the Carbock's comics and from Duck Tales, obviously. And what she does is you have to go after she has like these crow henchmen who you have to go and beat up so the final three bosses are all crows which is a bit boring maybe uh but still not unfun to fight them uh the levels get complex towards the end like the final three stages in the castle have like lots of

different routes to them the castle is one of your iconic Sega maze stages where you can get into a loop if you're not careful uh but overall it's very it's hard to talk about because it's just a good platformer. Yeah, I would put this in the same category as something like Tiny Tune Adventures on the NES. Yeah. Where it's just sort of a very straightforward, simple platformer, but everything's very well executed. It looks beautiful, and it just feels good to play. It has some nice colors.

The colors are outstanding, yeah. Even for a relatively, well, not, I'm about saying relatively early Mastersome game, but it's kind of not. It's not. It's about mid. It's about mid, yeah. Mid in the old school sense of the word mid, not the modern sense of the word mid, okay? Now, in this game, you can jump on enemies, as alluded to, but you can also hit them with a big cartoon hammer, which is very funny. Or you can throw a frisbee at them, which is a blue frisbee.

Now, interestingly enough, when you defeat enemies or when you just find them in the world, you can upgrade your weapon by collecting a star. And when you have four stars, when you have two stars, you swing your hammer a bit faster when you have like three or swim it a bit faster still, et cetera, until it's a different. Blur. Once you get five stars, though, you become invincible temporarily and it erases all your stars. So it's kind of bad to become, to do that. Let's do that. So it's, it's, it's, I wouldn't call that like a risk reward thing. I'd call it just maybe undercooked. Is that fair to say? Just don't do it. Just don't take the fifth star. Just don't collect the fifth star. But sometimes that's quite difficult because you might, I don't know, it feels a little bit undercooked, but it doesn't kill the game for me or anything. It's just a little bit odd and probably worth noting. Once you

have four stars, then you leave the power-ups alone. You do not collect any more. I always thought it's the type of thing that turns into, like, say you're playing a shooter, and it's got a power-up system, and you fully power up, but then you want to hold on to a very specific weapon, so you spend the rest of the time just avoiding the power-ups, which will ultimately end up getting you killed. A little bit like Gradius, you know, strait in a sense, maybe. It's got a bit of that.

Or like, if you're playing like an Alesta game and it's like, you want a specific power-up, and you're like, oh, I don't want to get that. Yeah, that's what the infant is for. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this game does, the second half of the game in particular, the level design, in my opinion, is very, very strong. Like, the ice, the South Pole stage is kind of multi-route, kind of tricky, like, well-designed thing. And then the volcano stage is one of my favorite, probably one of my favorite 8-bit, like, or mass system get levels. Like, there's an area where you make your way over a huge lava pit with lava drips coming from the ceiling, destroying the platforms that you're standing.

on. And it becomes almost like the Mega Man style you know those blocks that go like that. Oh yeah. It's a little bit like that except it's more it's less frustrating so they don't appear out of nowhere. They're just kind of already there and you have to be very careful

where you jump. It's hard, again it's hard to sell without being able to show you. Look at this level design but trust me it is a good game. It's worth your time. There's an area where you have to make your way down to the bottom of the screen by avoiding the lava drips they destroy

the floor in the right sort of places. It's quite clever like that. But, yeah, it's tricky. It's harder than Quackshot is. Maybe not always in the most reasonable way. I think one thing that makes it pretty hard is that you lose your weapon when you get hit.

Yes. Because then you have to rely on your jumping on enemies. Yeah, and I think if you get hit again, you just straight up die, so yeah. I feel like this has a challenge that's consistent with the other Sega developed 8-bit platform games, like Asterix, for instance, where it's not actually hard,

but it's just fiddly enough at points, and the way the hit system works can put you in some tough situations. Yeah. I remember, I mean, this isn't the game's fault, but I fervidly remember getting quite near the end of this and then pressing pause on the mask system, only to find that it just would not unpause

because the mast system too would often crash when you hit the pause button. Because it would jiggle the cartridge, I think, when you did it. Yeah, exactly. If you jiggle the cartridge, it's over. Sega, why didn't you just put the pause button on the controller? Why did you do this?

Anyway. Okay, why you mentioned hardware, though, I do want to talk about the visuals a little bit more. Yes. Because I feel like if you show this game to somebody back then, this is one of those games that really showcases the strengths of the master system over the NES because the color usage is like exceptionally good. It actually reminds me, it feels like it's bordering on 16-bit territory in a way. Yeah, I'd say in places.

There are some areas where it's maybe a little bit slack, but a lot of it looks amazing. You know, the NES has some very weird colors, and I think artists did an amazing job utilizing those colors in those games, but this just has more of a arcade look to it of that era with the brighter primaries and, you know, Donald's colors, his sprite work. Like, the number of animation frames and the colors used on him, I think, look better than pretty much. much any typical NES game in terms of sprite quality. Just the background colors are great. There's so much more animation on him. Yeah, they have so many animations, including like ledge animations, if I recall. It has the idle animation.

I call to mind the section in the Aztec stage where you're running down a hill and it's kind of a scrolling, beautifully parallax kind of, well, Donald's running full tilt down this slope where you've got to jump over these rocks as they come at you, basically. That was a cool section. Yeah. There's so much of good stuff in there. It's just, I love the color powder in this game. It's just beautiful.

I mean, and the thing about it is, as good as it looks, the sequel looks even better. It does, yeah. And I think we should maybe talk about that if we've not got any more to say about Lucky Dime Kaper. That's a great game. And again, it's affordable. I do want to comment very briefly on the fact that this is Master System and Game Gear. Yeah. And as usual, well, unlike, I guess, the illusion, the first illusion game,

this does run in a proper game gear mode so it just basically zooms and crops so your playfield is reduced you can see less of the level at a single time which can make it slightly more annoying at points yeah i still think it's perfectly playable on the game gear and honestly seeing this running on a game gear back in the day i did not get to experience that at the time but i can imagine it being like extremely impressive i i mean it was i paid it on the game game back then. I played it on Game Gear when I borrowed a game gear from a friend and that was the first version I finished. So the cropped screen didn't make that much of a problem for me. I think they did actually do some small adjustments to the game gear version. In fact, they didn't

have the power-up system of memory serves. I think that you just had better weapons. I remember switching weapons a lot more often in that version. That's true. Because I never used the Frisbee in the Mast system one because it sucks. But in the game gear, I managed to finish the game with the Frisbee. So I think they did make that change. I'm not. 100% sure on that, and I probably should have checked. My apologies. But I do recall it being a little bit tweaked, a little bit improved. Yeah, also one thing is on GameGare had a proper ending, because on much system, you just get this sprite-based ending with a bit of dialogue, and we have big illustrations on Game Gear. Oh, right, Donald and Scrooge and everything,

like full-screen and all that. And we loved that back in the day. This was always a big thing when we had these big full-screen images. Well, also, Thomas, I guess, I'd actually be curious to know if this is the reason, but on Game Gear, because of the lower resolution, you require fewer pixels to do that type of artwork. So doing it on the master system, if it would have had to have been shrunk down to like a small box, which they still could have done for sure. But, you know, because of the low resolution of Game Gear, they're able to do these nice full-screen graphics, which is awesome.

Also, maybe somehow they had a bit more memory left in Game Gear to put these images in... Also possible, yeah. I guess my only issue with this game is that if I was Donald Duck once I'd rescue the nephews I would just tell Scrooge to go to hell but that's you know that's just me well he's just like you need to get my lucky dime back no no I'm not doing that forget it I'm not going to go inside a volcano to try and get your 10 dot the 10 cents back it's not happening well it's very much in character for all of them yeah I mean you know it's it's a joke obviously they're not gonna oh oh no no I just mean like um obviously it's it's

very in character and it's cute and it's nice and I do like the fact that they did include Scrooge at all, you know, it's the only time you ever got off a Nintendo system so, you know, at least back things. I guess, okay, so we were talking about the ending and I figured

that's as good a point to talk about how this game has no credit sequence and I've also struggled to actually figure out like who the heck actually made this within Sega. Like, you know, scouring the internet, I have not found a good resource on the specific people involved in its creation, which is a shame. I would like to know more about

them. I suspect the guiding hand of Yoshio Yoshida, but I don't know that for a fact, obviously. I just get that vibe. Very possible. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not. ..in'a... ...toe... ...and...

...on... ...and... ...the... Following this up in 1993. Now, this is a later master system and game gear release. Well, not so much game gear. Not so much game gear. That had legs, but deep duck trouble, starring Donald Duck.

Sorry, I keep trying to think of offensive names for this game, and I can't think of any. that are just horrible. Now, it's been noted here that this was also made by aspect. Now, that brings me to another question. What didn't they make for the master system? That's what I'd like to know. The first one? Yeah, fair.

They did, I don't know. I mean, I've been doing the Game Gear Directory lately, and I think the last century I did, I think I came across three aspect games. In it, they meant a lot of Game Gear games. Holy crap. So you mean that's a pretty high aspect ratio here? Nice, nice.

Very, very nice. He took my joke, Thomas. that's all right they come for the info they stay for the gags that's all I can say now I think that this game

is not nearly as good as Lucky Dime Caper but I do like it I'd say it's like three out of five quality level in terms of actual playability

I would go up to 3.5 out of 5 to be honest okay well I'm gonna fight you over that point five no obviously you know what no you know what I'm gonna go

I agree with you I think it is 3.5 If that's fair. That's fair. I'll go with you on that. It's a decent game. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. And again, it looks just great. It looks astonishing. Like, it is astonishing-looking game. I mean, like, Lucky Dime Kappa looked good, but this looks like crazily good.

Like, they really knew what the hell they were doing at this point. So I think some of that actually stems from just knowledge of working on games in the 16-bit era, or at least what their peers were doing, because there's a lot of very smart shading in the backgrounds. like when in the very first level when you have all the rocks and everything they kind of do that thing where it's like this orangeish hue along the top of the surface and it fades out to like a deeper color until it's like a blue within the interior section which was yeah something we saw a lot and like say capcom's disney games they did that same kind of shading all over the place and it looks really good here and showcases the master systems palette at its best then on top of that donald sprite is just yeah it's it's honestly one to probably one of one of the best 8-bit game sprites out there. It's super expressive, yeah. And what they even do is, if you have the underwater stage, he changes his clothes.

Yeah, so that's more memory on the cartridge used up. Yeah, and I mean, memories on the prime at this time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it can't have been a big game on the master system because... And when he gets the chili pepper, even have this really awesome-looking running animation form and all that, like there's just so many sprites in here. And I'm kind of amazed that they were going to pull it off.

I'm not sure what the megabit size is on this. cartridge, but it's got to be one of the larger ones. There's also aside for the chili pepper now, just while we're mentioning this stuff, the chase sequences have him like looking back and freaking out and like constantly, and it's like really

insanely cartoony and impressive. Yeah, I mean, did you guys play the scene with a shark under water? Yeah, I finished a little while back, yeah. That is very cool. You have this big shark sprite chasing you from the bottom. It's coming up to you and you're swimming and you're in a hurry and it's just beautiful. It's just

It's a nice setterpiece. Even in the first stage, you've got the stampeding, like, ostrich section, which is a bit like Sunset Raiders, where you're jumping on the back of the birds. But then later you get chased by, like, a gorilla that starts throwing fruit at you, and you have a chase sequence, and that's all in the same level. Now, the cost to pay at the trade-off here is that this game is quite short. Like, I remember it being shorter than the first one. Maybe the same number of levels, but the levels aren't as long or as involved.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially on game gear. The game here takes a few cues, in my opinion, from the Duck Tales games, from Capcom, because Donald's kick, where he kicks the blocks and things, it acts the same way as the McDuck golf swing. Yeah, I know what you mean. And might be mistaken this, but you collect ice cream again in this, don't you, as health? Yes, ice cream is your health, and cakes, I think. Yeah, that's straight out of, um, that's straight out of Dutthales, the ice cream and the cakes are from Cars of Lusion. also this game has more in the way of multi-directional scrolling if you notice

whereas the older ones including on the illusion side they were mostly just like left to right or flick screen yeah or flick screen you know very very basic kind of layouts that was common during the earlier eight-bit stuff but this one is like multidirectional all over the place gigantic like level sections yeah again that's impressive I would say technically by the way I just checked it is an actual for ambit cartridge. It is four

megabit? Yep. Wow, that's pretty big for a master system that's really big. Yeah, wow. Well, that's fantasy star. And this is,

it's pretty good. Like, it's not amazing in terms of gameplay, but that doesn't matter. It's worth playing just to see it, I think.

What is amazing, though? And you will still have fun. What is amazing, though? So, to quote myself because I wrote with John of it in the morning

and we complained basically about you, but also I wrote, I quite like Deep Duck Tubble, that's one I want to look out for, in the next retro place we go to. Oops, never mind, it's 100 plus. Yeah, that excited me because I remembered that I've got a complete copy of this in my cupboards.

So I was just like, oh, wow. I got that, not even that long ago. Not even that long ago, and I must have paid about 10, 15 quid for that. Oh, that's awesome. So maybe, Thomas, that's just the eBay scalping prices. Let's hope so. But, of course, since all these traders

just checks the scalping price, nowadays, that's no the price. I mean, yeah, we've talked about it lots of times in retronauts, but the market really is insane. Like, I don't know how distinct it is between the UK and the US.

In the UK, I see games on eBay, for example. I'm going to give an example, but I feel like I'm repeating myself, so I apologize for this, Nauties. One of the game that I really want to buy is Arrow, the Acrobat, on the Mega Drive. Now, that

game is like not rare it's quite a lot of copies out there it's not particularly well regarded in terms of playability it's not particularly a good game i like it but i wouldn't call it a masterpiece or anything and that's like 80 quid loose it's the sunsoft effect isn't it but why for christ's it's not the u s version then i mean i guess i'd have to yeah i don't get it honestly in the case of arrow if you really wanted to play it and i do have a soft spot for it i really have to recommend the Super NES version over Megadrive? Because the music is so much better. The Megadryph soundtrack is not good.

But I have to recommend the Game Boy Advance version over the Super NES version, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. It's got new game plus. It's got completely rebalanced difficulty. It's got the Aero2 sprites, so he looks way better. It's got the bonus stages from the SNES version as well. Oh, it's good. The only problem with it is there is a game-breaking bug that means you can clip into the wall at any point and get stuck. But that doesn't matter. It does matter. Anyway Try to try that.

No, Arrow on the G... A little mini episode about Arrow right in the middle of this one. Arrow on the GBA, man. It's got Save Point. You can save, or battery save. And you can do New Game Plus with higher difficulty. Oh, it's awesome. Oh, it's so good.

Yeah. Anyway, enough about Arrow. Deep Duck Trouble. You know what? 3.5 might stretch a two of four just for the visuals. Very, very good game to look at. I would say it's a three out of five against all consoles, but maybe a four out of five if we're just looking at the master system.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. It's definitely upper tier. It's probably the best looking 8-bit Disney game. Might be wrong, because there's a lot of competition. Aladdin on the 8-bit looks very good, to be honest. But it runs... Well, okay, wait, the Sega Master System game the version of Aladdin does look good.

It does, yeah. It's even got quasi-3-D buildings. I was just thinking of that awful NES version, which is... Yeah, that's not good. Wasn't that like a terrible port of the Megadra? game. Yes, it is. Yeah, it was stinking. It's really bad. Yeah. So you're getting all this bonus

Disney game trivia. That's what, that's the value you get out of a Retronaut's episode. Speaking of trivia, by the way, the composer is Saudi Kobayashi. Oh, wow. I also wrote later on Penter de Gonzaga and Orta. Wow. Yeah, that's right. That's an interesting And I think this should be

her first work ever, from what I could find. That's wild. Now, the next one's a little bit obscure, because it's another Japan-only game. Oh, I have a lot to say about this one. Yeah, for the Super Famicom, it's Donald Duck, no Maho no Boshi, which I believe means Don Duck and the Magical Hat. Correct. No relation to magical hat flying turbo adventure, not in any way. But this is a Super Famicom platform game starring Donald that bites the style of Capcom's magical quest pretty damn hard.

I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. No. In terms of visuals, it's very similar, similar cuts scenes, similar everything. And now it's a little bit interesting Because the opening stages You have these four jobs to do To raise money to buy this hat So it's almost like a prolog

That takes the form of like three stages Now you don't need to do all four of these You're going to have to do three of them I think And then the other one gets left by the waist like You don't need the money anymore I think you can just do two Oh really if you chose the higher paying ones Yeah yeah

You just need to get to the total amount That's all Because I played the scale a bit this morning as research again, because I played it before, but you know, I found out there was an English translation out there, so I decided to have to look at that. And one of them is delivering papers, which is really fun, because you're cycling around the neighbourhood, throwing papers into, into letterboxes, and occasion you'll go flying into the air, bouncing on, like, hot air balloons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just kind of carnage. It's really

hard to fail, but that's not the point. It's just fun. just to go belting around town, there's a window cleaning stage where you climb up a building and you gradually have to get all the dirt off the windows. That was fun, I think. That was a nice stage. Actually, so I want to describe this game,

see if I'm crazy when I say this, but to me, this is a game that has the spirit of a treasure game. A game where the developers felt like they wanted to do something unique and interesting in every single stage. Because that's the case. Every stage is unique.

So you mentioned that it starts with these initial tasks, right? Donald wants to buy this hat. He needs this amount of money to get it. So you have to play the stages to get that amount of money, right? And each of those first stages, they're not really the typical platform game. It's all kind of like doing strange little jobs that are platform-esque. But then once you get that money, the hat is gone. And then you have to climb up this clock tower with what seems like an old man who talks to you.

Only it's revealed that he's actually like a hat. that's been, like, I guess, King Pete or however he's referred to in this, has banished him from the Magic Kingdom to this place, and now he needs Donald's help. So you go from doing kind of mini-game stuff to this clock tower platforming, and then it reveals the main part of the game, which is going to this kingdom. And to me, it always kind of struck me as a little bit of this Donkey Kong 94 kind of surprise, where it's like, oh, this is what the game is. But then you finish that part, and it's like, oh, no, wait, it's something completely.

else. And that's where then presents you with a world map where you get to choose the next four levels in any order that you please. But even once you've done that, each level there is also quite different, right? Yeah. Like there's the one where you're climbing, it's like you're moving upward and you're jumping on all these like corks and have to launch yourself up through the air to reach the top. Yeah. I can't remember what that one, what that one, what that one's actually, it's like what the theme is, but you're actually like, it's a completely vertical level, basically. Yeah.

And then there's another level that's just set in like the forest where you're just kind of going through. And that one is probably the most straightforward and traditional platform level. Although with the way that just random stuff happens, like holes opening up, I kept thinking of, uh, the Simpsons Camp Deadly game on game way, which is not a good comparison. It's not a good comparison because that game sucks, but it's that same like, I used to love that game though. No judgment.

I never got any way in that game. Although, when you get to the end of that stage, the boss popping out with the blonde hair and everything, I was actually thinking like, hmm, that kind of looks like a young version of Stuart Gibb. Oh. You know, so if you play it again, maybe you'll see it. I'll have to keep an eye up for me in this game, yeah.

But also... I don't remember appearing in it, but I can't roll out. There's also that forest level that uses Mode 7, effects all over the place where basically whatever floor Donald is resting on will always be horizontal so if you walk up a

slope the game will then rotate the whole screen to transition so that's now on the bottom right so it's like a fully 360 degree kind of stage Mohawk and headphone jackass Donald Dockler game I'm not ready for this

it's kind of like that and it's a cool idea although the game pauses every time you run into the next, like, section. So, like, you'll hit the slope. What? I've got to say something before I forget. It's very important.

Go ahead. It's Mohawk and headphone quack. There it is, folks. The best joke of the show. It's all downhill from here. It was second best. Okay, fair enough. I thought that Thomas's aspect ratio joke was better, to be honest.

That was, well, thank you very much. But, you know, I don't need to go through every single stage here. But the point is, is that each one is different than the last. They all try out different gimmicks. Most of them work pretty well. And on top of that, the game just looks amazing with gigantic, beautifully animated sprites. And it has a super great soundtrack on top of that. The soundtrack, oh, God, it's so funny.

There's like so many quacking samples on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And they're really cute. And like, every time you get a part of it, it's like, wha-wha-whi-whi-whi-whi-whi-whi-whi-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-hkknot-h, yeah. And, of course, Donald also utters, like, y'-ta-ta, in, but with the Donald voice when you beat the level, which is... I can't do it's close.

But it's not going to happen. I can make Donald noises, but I can't make the actual voice. It's a shame. Oh, man. I mean, now, this didn't hit the States. This didn't hit the West, presumably because they felt the market was on the way and it wasn't worth localizing it. I could imagine it was maybe also a licensing show back then.

Maybe. But then we did get Mario Mallet, so... Wait, but... This was not Disney Interactive, and this was not Capcom. So I feel like between the two, it may have been a difficult one to pull off in terms of licensing. And also, given that it was like, what, 1995 that this came out, it would have been so late in the life

that it wouldn't necessarily been worth it. This thing was actually published by Epoch, which was not exactly a household name at the time. No, no. So between all those factors, it's a bit of a shame because it's so playable even without any English. It's an incredibly easy to play a game. Yeah. And that's this later level I'm not familiar with where it turns into like a text adventure or something. I think the problem is that because every stage relies and I kind of,

kind of a gimmick, and those gimmicks are explained by the characters beforehand, not all the time, but especially early on, right? I can see why they would be like, well, you know, this obviously needs to be translated for mass market. And there's a surprising amount of text in the game, too. There is this quote of the story, yeah. When you combine all that, I can see why they would have skipped it, but it's a darn shame because I think it could have been quite a hit, just maybe a few tweaks and adjustments

to the overall collision detection, because it can be a little sloppy at times. But overall, it's amazing. And also the rendition of Pete at the end, the size of his character, it's quite impressive. I think that the, I would personally say it deserved to be at least as known as the Magical Quest games. Sure. It's not quite Capcom Polish, but it's just as playable, in my opinion. Just as playable. I agree.

Yeah, it's just a pity we didn't get it officially over here. Yeah, it's a huge shame. Of course, we also didn't get Magical West 3. On Super NES. They're the Game Boy version, I guess. But the Super NES version with the co-op and everything, that's so good as well. And that's, again, a late game.

Digital clips, come on. Let's get those games out again. People want them, okay? Even though you can beat them in like 20 minutes. People want them. People want the Great Circus Mystery. I happily own a copy of all these games, so I'm good. But I would like more people to experience them.

I used to have the Game Boy Advance versions when they were super, super cheap, and I've sold them, and now they've gone really experienced. expensive, so that's good. But no, good game. Anything else to say about Magical Hat? Just go play it. I suspect this is one of the games on this list that most people listening have probably not sampled due to its somewhat obscure release.

And I didn't realize that there was an English translation out. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah. I had a check this morning. Go grab that. Put this ROM on your cartridge, beat it, and then delete the ROM. Yeah, absolutely. what I must seriously say

I played for the first time for this podcast now and I was really happy how well it felt and how good it all felt I I mean I watched some videos before and yeah okay it's a bit gimmicky it's a bit of stealth and slow and then I played it and no this is a really really good game it feels it doesn't look

it plays much better than it looks in my opinion it looks great but I mean in terms of actual watching someone play it you might think kind of as you say oh this is a bit all over the place but then you actually play it and it hold together really well It's a perfect example, I think, of why you can't just rely on long plays. Exactly. A lot of people look at long plays and they judge games that way, and this is definitely a case where you can't.

You've got to play it. Back when I was a kid and I got as a Christmas gift once a bunch of SNSROMs on a CDs, I did play this because it was one of them. And I was, I'm being like, that's weird. I've never heard of this. And I couldn't get past the game show stage because I didn't know there was a run button. So I was just like, this is impossible. This is literally impossible to do.

But no, it turns out But no, holding Y just makes it possible Actually, yeah, I mean the whole The game also has that Mario-style run, right? Where you just hold the run button while moving And he kind of moves a bit faster And that's, I kind of use that all over the place Just like Mario.

I never let go of the run button When there's a run button Exactly, exactly. Maybe for a little bit in the stealth stage at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. That's also maybe my one criticism, by the way, because I just don't like the stage As long stealth stage if you make one mistake

back to the beginning but that's just personal thing and you considered maybe not being caught would that would that have helped if you got good

that might that might be an idea actually I try that when we're done here or don't do the stealth stage yeah

that's also an option I didn't know there was a stealth stage so I never did it I always did the other ones I always did the other ones I don't know. The next game up, though, sort of a spread across between 1995 and 98,

because the handheld version didn't come up to 98 for some unknown bizarre reason. Maui Mallard, Mallard, Marry Mallard in Cold Shadow on Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, PC, and Game Boy. I kind of love this game, but I like it in the way where you are aware of its shortcomings. You know, it's like, it's close to pitfall the Mayan adventure in terms of its feel. It's got that same philosophy where anywhere can hide secrets. There's loads of, like, false walls and weird hidden things in the game. Yeah, it's mine adventure style. It's like the Lion King, Jungle Book, all those late-era Disney games.

Yeah. Is that what Americans call a Euro-style platformer, or is that not really, right? It's kind of a Euro-style platform Not quite as much I mean I don't know why I'd call it I mean that you could describe I mean on the Retronauts Discord They tend to call them

Airplane Hanger games Which I don't really like What they mean is open plan stages Which is really not that unusual And also that was not uncommon In the Western space It wasn't just European It wasn't no

But I think that Maui Mallard is a flawed game that has maybe too many ideas at times it's like trying to stand out and that's a good thing but it could use a bit of down like sort of down to earth gameplay at times you... A bit of editing, right?

Yeah, you're playing as Maui Mallard who is a Donald Duck alter ego who's like a detective or something but bizarrely enough he can also... Yeah, it's yeah he's got the Magnum PI like um it's a Hawaiian shirt right

like that Hawaiian setting right? this saw kind of Hawaiian setting. Okay, so I do want to talk a little bit about where this comes from and all that. I wasn't actually aware of this. I mean, I was aware of it, but I hadn't really paid much attention to it until my friend Audie, who was a friend of the show, he introduced me to this game in full, and I finally sat down and played through it and understood what's interesting about it. And one of the things that is interesting, those are where it comes from, because this was

a game that was developed. While they did use third-party partners, this was a true Disney interactive game because up until this point, most Disney games being created for consoles were made by other publishers, right? Like Capcom or Sega. This was going to be an in-house project and I guess this would give them access to sort of that extra Disney level of quality for building the sprites and the artwork and all that. But the actual work was done by a company called Creative Capers Entertainment for Disney under the Disney Interactive banner.

Yeah. And it was actually, specifically, this was a Mega Drive game first and foremost. And that's actually the version I ended up buying some years ago and playing. And I think that's the best, well, one of the best versions. I would say of the console versions is the best one. Exactly. Not even close.

I'm not saying this one is horrible, but it definitely feels complex. So this is the problem. What happened then is that Nintendo had access. I guess Nintendo had struck some kind of deal in the U.S., which meant that they couldn't release the Genesis version in America. And as a result, well, in North America. And as a result, we only got the Eurocom developed port of the Mega Drive game in North America. And that version is not as good. And it suffers from that same issue with translating a 320 pixel-wide game to a 256 pixel-wide game.

So you lose part of the screen. everything looks like kind of fatter and just less nice. I would argue it feels a little crappy as well. Like it feels floaty and like you're not quite. Like you move a bit too quickly, I think. They've, they kind of botched a bit of the movement. I don't know.

I mean, I played it Omega Drive. And Omega Drive, to me, it feels very, very polished. Like everything feels like it put a lot of thought into it, the weight of the character.

and the way that the visuals and the kind of ally with the gun. So one thing I do want to point out about this game is it does seem to have been developed weirdly 450 hertz, which is unusual. That's what I was getting to yet. So I discovered this because I use a region-free megadrive. I've got the region mod on it. Yes. And I typically prefer to play in 60 hertz. And this game does run in 60 hertz.

but the caveat here is that it breaks the game. I have found out that there's certain parts of the game. I think if you use an actual cartridge, you get corrupted graphics in 60 hertz, but if you use a ROM, it actually does look fine and seems to play fine, just a bit faster. But then there are certain jumps that occur in the game

with these swinging platforms that you can't execute properly when you're in 60 hertz mode, or at least you technically can, but it's way harder and extremely annoying. And my first feeling on that was like, oh, this game is broken. Like, this is just horrible. I can't play this.

And it turns out it was actually just trying to run it in 60 hertz that makes the game much less fun. And it also means that in 50 hertz, the character movement is a little bit slower, which in this case actually feels better. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because the game is a bit too fast.

Otherwise, it's 60 hertz. So it's definitely one of the weird ones. that I do think just plays better in 50 hertz. That's a very rare thing in 16thibate. It's impossibly rare. This might be the only thing I can think of that does that has that. What I want to do is I want to mention the gameplay a little bit more, because other than the Maui Mallard running around shooting things with your bug gun,

which is also kind of weird when you think about it, you collect different types of bugs and you can actually combine them to create, like, you have like electric bugs and you have like a stink bug or like a homing bug and you can combine them to make different types of ammo, which is actually kind of cool. It's a bit otwurly, isn't it? A bit... Oddworldy?

Strangest rough. Sorry, I thought that you just said Otterfence again. I was about to somehow reach through the screen and just strangle it. Why would I ever do that? But, yeah, it is. It is a bit oddworldy, and that's true. I hadn't made that connection, but you're absolutely right. Also, the cold shadow in the title comes from...

for some reason Maui Mallard can transform with the cold shadow which is like a ninja and there are time well a ninja isn't right but kind of ninja-ish and there's a time limit on it

which you upgrade by collecting these kind of yin-yang symbols and what it means is you can use your staff to not only hit enemies but also to traverse like it'll stick it

into the wall to sway on it you can use it what's like parallel walls to climb up yeah where he puts one staff on each side of the wall

and kind of hands from it that's extremely cool. And also I got stuck for ages, so I did not know you could do that. I eventually did it at random. But there's quite a lot in this game that I think is very creative, considering this is the

tail end of the 2D platform a kind of like, I guess, golden years. Yeah. You've got levels like, for example, there's a stage where you climb up trees. Bungi jump down and when you're at the full extent of the bungee, you cling to like these poles and then you have to go hand

overhand on them while ups and down to traverse the level and it's definitely it's hard to explain but I remember when I did that in the game and I remember thinking I've never seen this ever again or before like this is only this game has this that I've ever seen like it's wildly creative in places it doesn't necessarily always work uh for example the underwater stages you have to use the recall from your gun to propel yourself around and that's not a great feeling because you go a bit too fast, then you'll come up on an enemy straightway, so you turn around to shoot the enemy, and I'll just send you flying back in other direction.

There are these bonus stages where you're on a unicycle, and if you get hit once you're just sort of knocked out of it, and it almost feels like they just thought of the idea, but they didn't maybe have quite enough time to polish it up, you know? You know what? Actually, thinking about it, with some of the weird imagery in the game and things like the bungee jumping, it actually kind of reminds me of Earthworm Jim. Yeah, definitely Earthworm Jim.

It's a variety platformer where there's just a lot of weird mechanics and level concepts throughout. And, of course, brilliant animation goes along with that. Yeah, it looks absolutely stunning. It's one of the best-looking mega-drive games. It's so beautiful. Yeah. The volcano stage is incredible looking. Yeah, they really take that sort of cell animation look for the sprites to, like, the absolute next level.

I mean, these games are the final stage in 16-bit platform evolution. Yeah, yeah. Not one you have to like, maybe, but it's the final stage, I think. One One thing I noticed about this game is that it's really hard. It gets hard real quick and it stays hard. And we're talking like, I mean, I think this is also smack in the middle if they make this harder.

So people don't beat it on a rental mode. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. This is nails. Like, the Volcano stage I already noted. Like, you've got to be perfect. Not only do you have to be perfect. You're also being chased by lava the entire time.

So you have no time. Yeah. And it's fast, too, the lava. It's rough. It's really difficult. I remember playing this with save states for the first time I played it because it was on emulator. and even with save states, it was really hard because it was just that demanding.

It was almost like, I mean, it wasn't like Kaiser, but it wasn't that far off. Like, the level of memorization that you needed to pull some of it off was wild. And that's a shame, really, because it's a fun game and with a little bit more difficulty, like, polish, it would have been a really, really high recommendation, I think.

Yeah. You can still buy this game on Gog, I think. It's out there right now, the PC version. So that's actually an interesting point to make because this game did get a PC version, which that was actually something that happened with some of the Disney games as well, like the Mega Drive Aladdin that has a PC port. And they're usually, it was very hit or miss. They weren't always great, I would say.

But in this case, the PC version is actually genuinely really good. It might actually be the best version. I know I haven't actually progressed far enough into it to judge the later levels, but based on the levels that I have done of the PC version, I would say, yeah, it's the best one. Basically, it was the same developer that did the Mega Drive original, did this PC version. So you get the same sort of like design as the Mega Drive version, the same visuals, but with slightly more colors. And they added a CD audio soundtrack, which is what I would imagine you got if they had released this on Sega CD. I don't know how this is pronounced, but the soundtrack for the PC version was, well, actually for all of the versions, I think, was done by Michael Giacino.

Oh, yeah. The composer that would go on to do, he did like Medal of Honor and stuff, but then he's into films now. Yeah, he did the Incredibles, the amazing soundtrack for the Incredibles. This wasn't his first Disney game score. He also did the Gargoyles game for Mega Drive, which I'm not that familiar with. But if I ever do a Disney afternoon episode, which I do plan to, then, you know, we'll come to that. But then, yeah, of course he went on to do the Incredibles, but the score here is very memorable, I think. There's some really fun tunes in there and some fun samples, especially in the PC version.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. It's very cool, very atmospheric. There also exists, by the way, an MSU1 patch for the Super NES that puts the CD audio from the PC version into the Super NES game. Wow, why would you want to do that when you could just play the PC version? I know, but it might also be possible with the Mega Drive version. I don't know if somebody's made a patch for that yet, but... I think that there's a 60 Hertz patch for it. that fixes it up.

Oh, yeah, there's at least that. But there is the MSU-1 equivalent on the, on the Mega Drive with the flashcards. So they could have done the same thing there. And I wouldn't be surprised if it exists. But it's a fun idea, adding the CD audio in. Yeah. So it's not the strongest recommendation, because it is very, it gets very hard. But I do think this is worth trying.

Like, it's also an interesting, like, sort of point for Disney and games, because this was an attempt at, it is technically Donald, right? But this is like Donald, the actor. Like, Donald is playing Mally Millard. He's not like, this isn't a Donald Duck game. And so it does have a completely different vibe than anything else on this list, I would say, because it's really, it's an original universe with, like, cool ideas and a unique visual style that just happens to have Donald starring in the lead.

It's, they also released a. Game Boy version, as mentioned, three years later, God knows why. I guess there was that final little push of pre-Gain Boy Color, Game Boy games, but the Game Boy version is like, well, it's like the Game Boy version of Earthworm Jim. It's what you'd think it was like, you know, it's, yeah. Yeah, basically, these, this sort of generation of Game Boy was pretty bad because they were trying to port games that had no business been on the Game Boy, unless they had made drastic changes.

And I do think it's a little better than Earthworm Jim. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. this has a surprisingly small sprite for Donald. So, like, you can still kind of platform around, but the whole thing just has this. I've always felt that this and those other types of ports, like Aladdin, was Aladdin on there? No, that was just an ES, maybe on Game Boy.

But these games feel like cheap Chinese hacks. Yeah. Aladdin did hit Game Boy, right? Like, it was another one of going to drive port, because they did another port for the Game Boy Color, which is much better. Yeah, that's right. They did. That's what it is. So just like, I think it was like the NES version, the Game Boy version is similar.

But either way, Aladdin, Earthroom, Jim, Maui Millard, all these games belong to that category of trying to take this digitized cell animation into a Gameboy game. And it doesn't work at all. And the games play bad. They're choppy. They don't really retain any qualities of the original. They just try to push it too far versus, like, another example would be of this done right is the second Contra game for Game Boy, where they basically, He tried to pull the Super NES game, Factor 5 did it, over to the Game Boy, and they made choices to ensure that while it did follow that model, it was still a unique game in many other ways, and they didn't try to go beyond what the system could do, and so it's still playable, where these games, they're just, it's just garbage. It should not have been released like this.

So if you want to play this game, the PC version is on Gog. I think it's on Steam as well, and it's only about five quits or whatever that is in dollars. like maybe like six, seven dollars. The only thing I need to check on and double check is the refresh rate. I actually have the PC CD-ROM version of this game. So I've played it on a real PC, but most PC games back then ran in a 70-hertz mode. Right. Which, you know, with the way monitors are set up today, that doesn't divide easily or evenly into the refresh rate.

So there's a good chance you could end up with a slightly choppy-looking game compared to the Mega Drive because you're not running it on a 70-hertz screen. It's possible. I'll note that I played this on PC quite recently. I have 144 Hertz, I think, minus. But I didn't notice choppiness. It might be okay. Some games did use 60 hertz. I think they've done some work. I think they've done some work on it because it also automatically recognizes like a Xbox controller and it just works. And that's nice. You know, I'll check it out. It's worth noting as well, maybe. You're the expert on this, so I don't mean to say this like with any authority. But I think most of the Disney game, back then, but around this time were still DOS versions like Lion King is still Doss, I think, but Maui Mallard is a Windows app, like a full-flosed Windows app.

Okay, so that would be 60 Hertz and most likely, although the pitfall and Earth from Jimports from Activision were 70 hertz, so. Oh, really? I believe they are when you run them in full... You know what else they were? John, they were also fucking awesome. They were. Hell yeah.

You don't have to tell me twice. No, no. I, yeah, I don't even want to get into those because I'll just be here forever. And we've got Mauden all games to talk about. So let's... I mention one more thing about Morrow Mallet. Because marketing-wise, it's interesting

because we all at the time talked about called Tadder and stuff like that. Of course, I have the Pell version in my hands on Megadry, which says, big and bright Donald in Mory Mallet. So they're still making sure everybody knows in Europe, at least, it's Donald, just so you know. Right. Which they avoided for the US.

Yeah, yeah. The whole Western release in this is just a weird thing, between the Nintendo exclusivity and just, like, becoming so late in the life of the system, it just felt like some kind of weird game thing that they almost didn't want you to have. I don't know, it's bizarre. It's nice that we got it.

Yeah, it's a weird little thing, and it's worth a go. You might like it. I like it a lot, probably more than it deserves, but it's definitely worth a go if you're a fan of this kind of era of platformers. At least for graphics. Yes. It's beautiful. Thank you.

Now, next game, quite a while later in 2000 through 2002. And what a switchup. Yeah, this is quite the switchup. We are now firmly into the world of 3D. And this is Donald Duck, going quackers, or in Powell Territory's quack attack. But it's not called going quackers. It's called going qu'in' quat-signkas. I'm trying to make that clear.

It was, you know, the internet, new and cool. Now, as you mentioned earlier, John, this is in fact five different games, isn't it? Kind of, yeah. It's technically it's like four, but I really say it's five different versions. Yeah, because the advanced one is clearly a version of this. So should I go through that first, sort of separate what these are? So this is a Ubisoft developed game, and if you didn't know better, you'd think they made one game and just ported it around because it's titled the same, has the same cover art all over the place. But in reality, between multiple studios, different engines and different platforms,

you're going to find completely different games, depending on which version you choose. So from what I can tell, the kind of the primary version or the best version, at least in my book, was developed in Ubisoft, Montreal. And a very specific designer worked on that, right, Thomas? Yeah, that's a guy called Patrice Desilé, who was going on to make games like Printer Partizant of time and, of course, the Fast Assessons Crete. Exactly. So there is some pretty serious development behind this game.

Yeah. Some cool names. But anyway, they produced a version of this for PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. And I think it's an excellent, unique platforming game that plays very well. But it's also on N64, Sega Dreamcast, and the PC. And it's a completely different game. Compared to that original one, and we'll get into more details about the games in a moment, of course. But compared to that version, the Dreamcast 64 PC version has completely different levels, has completely different controls and feel.

Like, the art is completely different. It runs using modified Rayman 2 technology, which you can instantly tell because it has that same. So, like, Rayman 2, the animations have no interpolation. So, like, the games, even when running at, like, say, 60 frames per second, the animation is going to be like 15. I think it's just designed to give it this cartoony look, and you get exactly that in this version of the game. So it has a specific look to it. It also has a much lower polygun count for everything. The characters are less detailed and just, and of course, completely different levels.

Like, it's just, it's a similar game, but completely different in terms of level design, the hub's different. The way the characters are introduced and talk to you is different. Like, just everything about it, it's a completely unique game all to its own. But then there's also. the PlayStation 1 version, this version has, oh, and I didn't mention it, the soundtrack. The soundtrack between PlayStation 2 and GameCube is different compared to N64 Dreamcast and PC, and the PlayStation version has the soundtrack of the PS2 version, right? Which is basically digital CD audio.

But it's also more closely resembles the N64 Dreamcast game, yet it's not exactly the same. And that one is developed in Shanghai and seems to use its own technology possibly derived from Rayman 2, PS1. I don't actually know for sure. I just know that- That's my assumption based on playing it earlier. The Dreamcast N64 Windows version was done by Ubisoft Casablanca. So you've got three different studios here doing these different versions. And they're all, so that's basically three games. I'd say 2.5 because PS1 is like a weird mix.

But then you also have, and these are separate, Donald Duck Advance. and a Game Boy Color version of Donald Duck Going Quackers, which, as you'd expect, both of them are also their own unique games that don't have anything in common with the 3D game. The Game Boy Color game is quite plainly the Rayman engine as well, for the Game by Color Rain Man. If you can call it an engine, but yes. I don't know if it's an engine, but it's the same. It's the same goddamn game, basically. So we got to talk about each of these games separately in a way because they are decided. different. And Stu, you decide. Where are we

starting? I feel like the PS1 can almost be brushed over in a sense. So let's start with the Dreamcast and the PC versions. And it's for, excuse me. Yeah. Sure. I mean, well, it's kind of a Crash Bandicoot clone in a way, isn't it? Kind of? In a sense. It's exactly a Crash Bandicoot clone. Yeah. I mean, there's no, like, box breaking, but there is. There is. There is. Yeah. And I mean, just the same, I don't know, premise,

You walk into this linear stages, you have freedom to walk around, but it's always clear where you have to go. It's not an open level or anything like that. And like Crash, you're either moving into the scene in 3D or there's stages that are viewed from the side perspective, and you can only move left and right. There aren't any chase stages where you're running into the screen like Crash has. No, it doesn't quite have that kind of stuff. I guess Super Magnetic Neo was another Dreamcast game that kind of had a similar play style. Yeah, yeah. That had the magnetism system to sort of separate it.

This is just a bog standard platform game, and honestly, I feel like this, this Dreamcast and 64 PC version feels somewhat more generic than the other version. Like, yes, you have Donald as the character and some of the characters in there, but something about the sound and the lack of, or minimal voice stuff, it just feels like this could be, this feels like a game where you could slap in, I don't know, Roger Rabbit or. money or whoever the heck you wanted and it would be exactly the same game. The thing I noted playing, because I played earlier this week all of these versions and my main takeaway, and maybe this is unfair, the PS2 and GameCube versions, especially the GameCube version, it's leagues better. Yeah. Like, not just in terms of visuals, but the level design is more fun.

Yeah. The controls are so much better that it almost, I'm about to say it feels like a different game. It is a different game. It is. Because the level designs in the Dreamcast PC and ICT4 and also the PS1, because they're very similar, yeah, yeah. Are very empty-feeling stages with very little in the way of, like, of challenge, even in the late levels.

Because I remember I had the PS1 version when I was younger, and I remember beating it very, very quickly. Yeah, it's slow. It's a very slow game. You kind of move along. There's very few obstacles to deal with, and every obstacle there is to deal with. is very easily avoided or kill it, if you will. It's weird that it's slow, considering you're pretty much encouraged to just keep moving in this game. Yeah, you kind of keep moving.

You occasionally get the special, like, Donald is angry. Wait, so there's the one that makes you get really fast and invincible, but I think also if you take a hit, you get like the angry Donald mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he gets into like a cloud of like feathers and feet as you see in the cartoon. And if you take another hit after that without getting life, then you die. and have to re-try. Just want to shout out on the PS1 version for all its problems. When you go into Angry Donald mode, the mixture of 2D and 3D is really well done.

Like, it really looks good. I have to shout that out. It's a really minor detail, but I thought they did a great job with that. Yeah, I agree. Actually, in some ways, I think the PS1 version looks better than, like, N64. Like, the backgrounds tend to be a little bit more richly detailed. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely cleaner than the N64 version, because A and 64 games never look clean.

Well, in 64 games look clean. They just look blurry. Yeah, very clean. That's kind of the issue. You have to work and getting them clean nowadays. Yeah, and then also, and I guess this applies to them all, but this one has, again, a crash bandicoots, well, crash two and three style hub world where each stage you go into the, like a zone, and then you have like five stages spread out there. And you jump on the pad and warp to the level. you complete the level and continue.

And that's kind of where it varies. Like you have the ones where you run into the screen, you have the side-scrolling ones. And I do think there actually are some chase scenes. Like I remember there'd be in one with like a bear possibly. So I think they do have the crash style chase sequences. That's why I asked, because I could swear I remember playing this game and running away from something.

I think there is something like that in there. The thing is we call this Crash Bandicoot rip-off, and it is, but the extent to which it's a crushed Bandicoot rip-off is quite intense because even the music sounds a bit like crash music, in my opinion, from the first stage. It's got that kind of same kind of percussion. I think the PS1 and PS2 GameCube version actually has a really good soundtrack. It's an awesome soundtrack, but it's a frigging Crash Bandicoot soundtrack. No, it's not. It's much more, uh, there's a lot more like there's vocals in it and it just kind of has this like stronger identity where Crash Bandicoot is

kind of this generic. You know, I, I challenge the list. of the veterans now listen to the forest stage music initially and tell me that that is not trying to sound like crash music i'm just trying it out there but uh it's so good it is great but i'm telling you it's i'm telling you there's a similarity there i'm telling you Also, we didn't. mention it, but the game has, of course, boss fights at the end of each section. And those are done in the style where,

and Klanoa does this as well, where it's like you run around in like a 3D circle, enemies in the middle, and then he kind of comes out and tries to stomp you in the playfield, and you're just waiting for him to make a mistake, then you stomp on his head and continue from there. It's all, so that's the thing. It's a very safe playing

game, isn't it? Yeah, right? Like, it's not bad. It actually plays fine. It's just kind of boring. I have this. I have this. idea about the versions for Dreamcast and 64 and so on, that this is maybe still from the time when Ubisoft was very much targeting younger players and kids with their games. Yeah, could be, yeah, they were still making Asterix games around this time as well, I believe. There's also this horrible, horrible Flintstones bowling game.

Oh, God, Bedrock Bowling. Oh, Flintstones, ball. Oh, is that the one that's like kind of a racing game as well? Yeah, exactly. Oh, my Christ. Dude. I mean, I don't want to say they're anywhere close in terms of politics. but again, this is Ubisoft trying to cater to children directly. So just the reason why it might be so easy

and also to empty sometime might be this idea, okay, let's make a game for kids, let's not put in too much for them because it might overwhelm them. I do want to shout out, though, like, while it is quite generic, yes, generic doesn't mean bad, as we know. No, no, no, no, no.

I know we're not, I know. I'm just confirming that we all agree with that. But the GameCube version, I would say, honestly, the fact that it is mostly 60 frames per second it's a very smooth feeling game and the level design in that version is quite a bit harder I think like I remember playing this I played this today in fact

and I did the first few levels to remind myself what it was like and even on level one I was kind of like this is surprisingly demanding from the get-go like there's much more bottomless pits and it's fun like it's fun playing it's so much better than that the other one I think

all I can say back in these days I played through the whole PS2 game and in contrast to John John was on board with the PS2 from the beginning I think right? You liked the system from day one and I was very much in the Dreamcast camp back in the day and still this game is better on PlayStation

it feels better, it looks better, it's fun I want to play through this version Now this must have been a reasonably early PS2 game I think very early yeah it was very early It wasn't a launch game though was it No, on window game It didn't push any boundaries on PS2 either

or anything like that. But it was a... I also remember that difference because I actually played this on Dreamcast first and didn't play the PS2 version or GameCube version until somewhat later because I had assumed it was the same. Yeah, yeah, you would do it.

And I was shocked when I actually did play it and like, wait a minute. This is way better. The PS2 version as well, it has the extra moves you can unlock by collecting the stars, right? You get the special moves by collecting five stars in one second.

The whole game feels more fleshed out from the hub system to the way you have like you know, I guess they have a little bit too much tutorializing going on there. At the beginning, yes, it goes away quite quickly. It does go away quickly. But it really, it's all about the level design, as you mentions do. Like, they're just, it's the same basic concept where it's like, you know,

Crash Bandicoot either running in 3D or side scrolling, but they throw so many challenges at you comparatively at once and you're constantly like dodging things. There's multiple paths through each kind of stage. There's even like in the first level alone. to get the final thread neat thing that you need to call the golden thread or whatever they're called

the item. You need to backtrack. You get the item that makes you angry and then you have to backtrack to smash down a wall to find it. And there's nothing like that

in the PS1 or Dreamcast or any other version. Exactly. So it's just, it's a much more playable 3D platformer and genuinely quite good, I would say.

It feels more fleshed out. This feels to me like the original version that they had had in mind. Yeah. It's definitely the most complete, and I'm a little bit confused by, I mean, I guess, you know, if you're targeting these machines, the polygun counts a lot higher. It's maybe just easier to build something

from the ground up back then. But yeah, it's weird. If you have your PS3 hooked up, you can go and buy it right now on the PSN, I believe, as well. That's right. So it's still playable in theory while they still keep it up. The Advance and Game Boy Color versions, I want to shout out in the Game Boy Color version is an extremely enjoyable 2D platformer that looks great on the Game Boy Color. It looks absolutely amazing. Yeah, it does. It also feels a lot in part like the Sega versions, I think. Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Yeah. The Spritework reminds me of the last Master System game that we just talked about. Deep-Dept-up trouble, yeah. The only downer with it is that there really aren't really that many enemies. It's more entirely about traversal. But that's also true of the Rayman games on the Game Boy Color, especially the second one. also it's a much longer game than the game than the Sega games and I don't think that's an advantage

in that case no it's too long but it is interesting because it showcases how much more capable the game boy color really was compared to the original game boy because you look at like Maui Millard on the game boy versus this and it's like yeah a generation apart yeah especially playing it in the pocket nowadays that's yeah that must be great yeah agreed

the Donald Duck Advance is really just a bit of an outlier because it feels like more of a direct translation of the game to the advance, it's got the same music as the, the PS2 version, like, sampled. Same premise as well, same intro as the color version, just more colors. The thing that I found with this game is it does have,

this is quite niche, so not many people are going to care about this, but it's quite, getting 100% is really unreasonably demanding in this game because you need to collect every single star, and enemies drop three when you hit them. And when they drop, they fly away from you and then start going up, like they start rising. And if they rise past too far, they disappear. And if you'd miss them, you can't get them.

There's no way to make that up. You've got to restart the level. So not only do you have to find everything in the level, you also have to kill the enemies in a position where you're able to collect those stars. Miss a single one, you're not getting 100%. Doesn't matter if you don't 100%. Doesn't matter. But the fact that after every level it's going to be telling you,

like you missed one star it's not a good feeling that's that's a pet peeve of you're often steward if you really get hung up on this on that stuff and I get it I understand I'm completely with you it's just something I want to shout out in case anyone felt like giving it a go it's really fun it's a bit annoying that there's no battery save but yeah you know whatever it's gonna play it with safe days anyway aren't you so I kind of always wondered if so to me it always visually reminded me a little bit of the first Rayman, not nearly as nice looking as Rayman

one, I would say, but they also ported Rayman to the Game Boy Advance, and I always was like, hmm, I wonder if they just used whatever programming work they did for that game to create this one, and if those two games are connected? Would only make sense? Yeah. I mean, in a way, yes, but part of

me wonders if they used the old Game Boy Color, a Donald Duck engine, because it feels the same as that. I don't know. Do you think so, no. I don't think that. It feels much slower, much... Do you think? I mean, it's a much slower game. Isn't it the same kind of...

Rayman is fairly slow as well. Fair play. I remember, maybe it's just a misremembering, because it's been a long time since I've played through it. One thing I'd say about Donald Duck and Vance as well is it's long. Like the Game Boy Color game, in fact, it's very long. You get bored of it way before you're done with it. Did you catch the Sega reference in it?

I didn't. What was the Sega reference? There's a hedgehog enemy. Oh, no. And he's... It looks like a real photo... like a real hedgehog, except for he's blue. Oh, cute.

I like that. I love that. He's like Ugly Sonic from the movie. I love it. Exactly. Now, we've come through quite a lot of Donald Duck games, and unfortunately we've come to the last one. And it's a, I want to say kind of an inauspicious end to his sort of solo career in a sense,

which is P.K. Out of the Shadows, also known, I believe, in Europe as Donald Duck P.K. Now, what's P.K? Does anyone know this better than me? Because I just did the research this morning. I'm just going to be up front here. This is the one game in the list that I know not that much about. Yeah. I mean, P.K. is, I knew the character from the Disney magazine that they used to be in the UK because they ran comics, and one of them was definitely this.

I think they just called him Super Duck, though. Right. And what it is is, I'm going to pronounce it wrong, Paper Inick, or Papyrinik, which is a parody of Diabolic, which is an Italian anti-eastern. hero comic book character who if you're familiar with um x-men character uh phantomas that's the x-man that's a movie from france phantom x no no i know but it's it's a similar um phantom x is kind of a phantomas slash diabolic that's like the closest thing i can think of to the character if you're not familiar with him although diabolic is just all dressed in black kind of like

a ninja kind of character but uh look the point is he's not a duck um Donald Duck, however, is a duck. And when he becomes called PK, it's short for paparic paper in it, which I think is meant to be a joke about like paper ink or something. But that's probably nonsense. I don't know.

We're not amused. The point, yes, it's not very funny. The point is, that doesn't matter because in this game, they actually ditched all of that anyway, and they made him almost a new character with the same visuals, also called PK. But the reason is called that is...

A bit more perspective here is... Yes, yes. So because I read when I was young, many of the Disney comics coming out of Italy which were big in Germany I don't know about the UK but in Germany they came out every couple of weeks in nice paperbacks I know

Europe's got these beautiful yeah paperbacked Disney comics we only got like the tiniest little bit of them that was in this and it's a huge shame to be honest so in Germany there's hundreds of thousands of pages you can get for very little money in news stores but anyway he was in there as well and called in Germany

Phantomias which is of course based on Phantomas. Phantomas yeah And this is also what the game was called in Germany, by the way. German titles, Fantomius, Platyrincus kineticus. Yes, it's called... Yeah, Platerincus kineticus, meaning energized duck, basically. Yeah. They mention that, they tell you that in the game.

It's like a pointed cutscene where they explain it to you. And the weirdest thing about this game, to me, is that one of Donald's powers that he gets is to have a voice that's coherent. but the weirdest thing is the new voice that he has just sounds like Daffy Duck so it's kind of like really super weird I mean I know in the

2017 Duck Tales series at one point he gains Don Chiegel's voice like which is quite funny but that's not what this is in terms of gameplay it's a really quite typical third person platform and Yeah with shooting

PK's got like this kind of gun arm that shoots laser balls but the thing is when I was playing it and I was locking onto enemies, I was thinking this is quite like Mega Man Legends, but then I realized, hang on a minute, this is Rayman 2. Like, this is exactly Rayman 2 with no differences.

Like, everything about it feels like Rayman 2. And I bet it's the same engine. Again, I bet they reused the Rayman 2 engine yet again. I'm not complaining because, I'm not complaining because the Ramant 2 engine is fine, but the way that you lock on, the way you move when you're locked on, and the way the enemies attack you

is almost exactly like the Space Pirates. So I'm kind of thinking, thinking, yeah, it's Rain Man 2. But, you know, I put a bit of time into this, and I think it's fine. Like, it's not as fun as the PlayStation 2 version of, what's it called? Again, go quack yourself, or whatever it's called. The last one we just did. Quack, duck, ducking hell, quack, going quackers, that's it.

I can't believe I went for go quack yourself as the go duck yourself. That would be much funnier. Oh, dear. So, based on the fact that this was done in Ubisoft, Montreal, I'm going to say that it maybe was not the Rayman 2 engine? I, if it wasn't, then they made a very impressive facsimile of it. I mean, even the fact

that you collect six captured things in each stage, you collect, the way that you, the first power up you get is to slowly descend like the hover hair. I mean, but also, you know, it has a lot more, I mean, they clearly evolves aspects of it

then with the, the anime. So I downloaded the ISO this morning and burnt a disc, so And after 24 hours, I'll snap the disc in half, just to be sure, you know. And the thing that actually stuck out to me first was, like, the animation is quite good. And he has this cape. It's like a glossy looking cape that has like cape physics. And I'm like, okay, that's actually, that actually got me initially interested in it because it does play quite well in terms of, well, sorry, it moves quite well.

But it plays okay. It's kind of. I think it's, I personally think it's fun. fine the play. I don't think it stands out in any way. It's just kind of slow and not. But I've only, like I said, I only played for the first time like today and only played through some of the first level. And what I played was like, okay, this is, if I saw a copy for cheap, I might pick it up and try to give it more of a shot. I would argue if you kept playing it, you would maybe get more into it because it does get more involved quite quickly. In terms of throwing much more enemies at you throwing more actual platforming. at you obstacles and things. Do the levels open up at all? Because the first level was like a bunch of, it almost felt like being in some kind of

a weird, like, lab or warehouse kind of area with like a lot of like narrow passages. It's all very narrow and linear like that in my experience. I didn't get to the end. It's so narrow. It's super narrow. Well, that's what makes me think of, you know, quack attack. It's almost like a weird reframing of that. It's more free form than quack attack. Yeah.

But it's still pretty limited. So, I mean, I guess all I can say about it is if you had it, you don't have a bad game. You have an OK platformer. Like, there's nothing ostensibly horribly wrong with it. The level design, I thought, was fine. But it is quite restrictive. And it's a shame that this is where the story ends and Donald was sadly put to death by hanging after this. Yeah, what's up with that?

Like, they just stopped making Donald games, basically. I mean, after this, you've got God. Kingdom Hearts. I guess came along and fucked everything That's what happened Yeah, that's true That's a good point I mean you still got the weird

Old Mickey games like Magic Mirror But I think that actually came before this So yeah The old game shop yeah The Disney Sports stuff as well But there Kingdom Hearts came along after this And locked them down

I guess Kind of locked them down Aside from cast of illusion I don't think there were really Solo Mickey games Even after this were there Not really Of course it epic Mickey games were there

Of course it was Epic Mickey Sorry what non-sadical thing to say, yeah, there was epic Mickey. Epic Mickey. I wish it it only was. Yeah. But that brings us to a sort of sad depressing end to our Donald Ducks.

I mean, but you know what? We've covered a lot of games here and I would say... Most of them were good. Most of them pretty good. I was only one that kind of sucked and even that was okay, so... Actually, I mean... Yeah. Another good thing, of course, if you want to play these games, the Ubisoft games,

they are all very cheap apart from the N64 game, but are the other ones or the better ones. Yeah, don't get that version. 10 euros or so. Really cheap. Yeah, you're right. Most of these games are cheap.

Get yourself a nice crack attack. Ended for Game Boy Color. Get it for PS2. You'll have a great time. Get it for GameCube. Great time. Yeah. But overall, I think that

he's actually had a reasonably consistent career in games. I would say probably more consistent than Mickey ever had. And that's with a lot of good Mickey games out there, obviously. I'm not going to pretend they're not. but I would like to see Donald Duck make a comeback, to be honest, you know?

So are any of these games worse than Mickey Mouse 5 on the Game Boy? I'm not actually that familiar with Mickey Mouse 5 on the Game Boy, so I don't know. Isn't that just the fifth of the... Oh, you mean Crazy Castle? Yeah, Crazy Castle. God, I don't... I mean, I hate Crazy Castle. So...

Crazy Castle sucks. May I share theory? Crazy Castle is sort of the very... games of the 80s, early 90s. You're right. Because you can't put any IP and it still somehow works, but still no fun. You're going to put any IP and it's still

going to suck no matter what. Like, there's no, yeah. I mean, Crazy Castle to me almost feels like a microcomputer game, the way it's played, like with, you know, just going indoors, going upstairs and stuff, or like mostly one kind of level.

That's why we haven't done a crazy castle episode because nobody cares about Crazy Castle. It's a shame. No. I certainly don't. And now someone's going to come on those comments and be like, how dare you? I love Crazy Castle. It's my favorite game ever. It's changed my life. It made me who I am today. I live in a crazy castle nowadays. And I would then call him and turn, or her, a crazy asshole. Thank you. That's how these things end. Yep, that's how this episode is going to wrap up the best imaginable way. Me insulting an imaginary listener.

Thanks very much for listening. John, where can our listeners still find you on the internet? You can still locate me at Dark1X on Twitter or Eurogamer.net slash digital foundry and YouTube.com slash digital foundry where we produce all kinds of modern and retro content over there. So come check it out. D.F. Retro episode about Quack Attack at any point coming, do you think? Not anytime soon, but you never know. And Thomas, where can we find you on? the internet? Well, you can find me

on the internet at Twitter at Bimbo Fortuna. You could read my stuff in M-Games, maniac.de well, it's in German, but it's there. Or, of course, listen to me drone on about stuff at university in Deburg, which is also nice. That sounds, yeah,

everyone should sign up for that right now, I think. I can't see any reason why not to. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode and I super hope you have, if you're interested in supporting Retronaut, you can do so via Patreon at patreon.com. com forward slash retronauts where for a mere $5 a month which I think we will have to agree is really not that much money it's not a huge amount is it you will be able to get two exclusive

brand new episodes per month full episodes you also get weekly you get early access to the weekly episodes and you'll get access to diamond fight's extremely good mini podcast this week in retro which is also done as a blog so you can either read it or listen to it or both if you're completely just obsessed you know you can do all that you can do all that. those things, and you'll be able to join the Retronauts Discord, and you can come on there and call me as many swear words you like, and I won't be able to do a damn thing about it. Thanks very much once again for listening, and I shall see thee again, and I'm sure I shall see John and Thomas again, for more Disney tie-in licensed games at some point, because we really haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

Yes, so, so much. Yeah, thanks very much, and have a wonderful evening. You know,