Summer Game Camp, Part 5

It's summer, which means that "indoor kids" like me stay away from the hot sun and do things like play video games! Old video games. Disney video games. This summer at Passport to Dreams, I'm playing the Disney / Capcom classic games and writing about them. All of them.

Goof Troop - July 1993

I'm not sure if anybody really remembers Goof Troop fondly anymore. An attempt to do much more of a sitcom instead of the adventures Disney had been producing up to that time, it's popularity has seemingly been eclipsed by the surprisingly excellent A Goofy Movie, which treated the same basic characters with much more depth.

What about the SNES installment? One day, while fishing out on the ocean, Goofy and Max see Pete and PJ taken aboard a gigantic pirate ship! It seems that Pete has been mistaken for the pirates' long lost leader, and Max and Goofy land on the pirates' secret island lair in an effort to infiltrate it and recover their friends...

Wait, you may be saying, that doesn't sound very much like Goof Troop to me! And you would be right - but to find out why, we have to go back into Capcom history... back, basically, to the very beginning.

In 1984, Capcom released their initial wave of arcade titles. They would become famous for their overhead WWII shooter 1942, but released in the same year was a strange little game called Pirate Ship Higemaru. A top-down puzzle game, Higemaru has you playing as a sailor attempting to traverse maze-like decks of ships filled with enemies and barrels. 

Just a few years later, the game received a sequel for the Famicom in Japan, the marvelously titled Higemaru Hell Island. A much more complex creation, this has you traversing islands, collecting items, and defeating bosses. Puzzles here stretch over multiple screens, and backtracking is the rule; think The Legend of Zelda by way of Atari's Gauntlet. A planned United States release came to naught, and the Higemaru series ended there.

Until 1993, when Capcom produced a stealth Higemaru game as Goof Troop. All of the components are there: pirates, maze-like levels, backtracking, and bosses. And then, Capcom kept adding. They added two player simultaneous play; they added lives and items. These few changes alter the gameplay tremendously, to the point that I wonder if Capcom was planning on releasing it as a proper Higemaru sequel. They did not - like most of these games intended for American audiences, it received only a perfunctory Japanese release under the name "Goofy and Max: Pirate Island Adventure" and seems to be very rare today.

The gameplay is still best likened to The Legend of Zelda: a topdown maze filled with increasingly aggressive enemies. Pirates can be diapatched with barrels; stronger deckhands must be knocked off platforms into the water, or plowed through with weighted stones which Goofy and Max kick. These same stones must usually be kicked into very specific places to unlock keys to progress through levels; since they can only be stopped by a wall, this creates some tricky puzzles. One weapon that can be picked up is a grappling hook gun; this can be used by one player to keep enemies pinned down while the other deals with puzzles or makes a bee line for the exit. If either Goofy or Max touch the exit door they both jump to the next screen immediately; this means experienced teams of players can move through levels swiftly. In other areas, the grappling hook can be tied down to allow players to cross rivers and pitfalls, but this means the item must be surrendered permanently. In two-player games, each player can have one item; if they pick up a new item, the old one will be left behind. In one-player mode, two items are allowed; the increase in options helps make up for the doubled difficulty. Other items include bells to distract enemies, bridges to cross gaps, shovels, and keys.

But you know what? After working through so many uninspired action games, it's genuinely refreshing to come across Goof Troop. It may not be great, but merely succeeding at being unique puts it above the middle of the pack. For a game with such simple controls and presentation, Goof Troop can be frustrating. This is the only game so far I haven't seen through to the ending; partly this is because I was playing solo, and party because this kind of thing just isn't my kettle of fish. If you have a friend who loves puzzle platformers and the two of you can work together, this may be just the kind of overlooked game you're going to love. After about 40 minutes I had enough; looking at playthroughs online it's clear I saw less than a quarter of the game!

On a technical level, Goof Troop is fine. The graphics are SNES-colorful, although the settings are repetitive they are not the focus of the game. It's always fun to hit your co-player; they stagger around dizzy for a few frames. As the levels go on, eluding the pirates becomes tougher and tougher; never mind resetting the screen multiple times to solve traps! The music is functional at best; as aural wallpaper, you won't mind it for puzzle solving, but you won't remember any of it the moment the game is turned off.

It's a good game, and there's a lot of it; after zipping through a bunch of 30 minute long 8 bit games like Darkwing Duck, it's nice to see Goof Troop committed it giving you a lot of content for your money. But it's hard to escape the feeling that Goof Troop is the kind of game that was why Blockbuster Video existed: fun to play for a bit, but only the truly dedicated will see it through.

Disney's Aladdin - October 1993

This is nearly the end of the line for Capcom and Disney. The March 1993 issue of Nintendo Power profiled Capcom, referring to their development of Aladdin as "the really big news". Instead, it turned out to be pretty much the end of the line for their deal with Disney.

This is actually a pretty good game, it just is not the game you think it is.

 Anybody with a game system who lived through the early 90s will immediately think of Aladdin, developed by Virgin Games, and released on the Sega Genesis in 1993. This is not that game! It's an easy mistake to make - practically every other Aladdin game released in the early 90s is a port of the Virgin Games platformer, including later releases on, of all things, the NES. Capcom's Aladdin is not Virgin's Aladdin, despite sharing a name and basic concept.

"Genesis Aladdin" had a heck of a gimmick up its sleeveless vest; all of the character animations and sprites were actually drawn by Walt Disney Animation before being scanned and colorized by Virgin Games. This gives Aladdin a look like no other 16-bit platformer at the time - it really does look like you're playing the movie. There's also impish jokes through the game, from appearances by the Genie as a bottle, skeletons wearing mouse ears, and Aladdin's absurd "level clear" jog through the bottom of the screen at the end of each level, there's a lot here that's very memorable.

Wrong Game!

What isn't memorable, however, is the actual level design - every level is an expansive, frustrating succession of randomly placed platforms with no real attempt to guide you through. There's no flow to any of it; you just jump through, attack enemies, and hope to find the exit. Throughout, Aladdin is for some reason armed with a sword, because this is a video game and video game characters have swords, right? For as impressive Aladdin is as an experience, I've always thought that there was far too little happening under the hood of this game to truly be enjoyable.

Over in Japan, Capcom's sausage factory was grinding out their own take on Aladdin. There's no Disney Animation sprites here - just straight, old fashioned 16 bit sprite work. It feels less like the movie and more like a game. Aladdin has an astonishing number of abilities; he can jump, climb, swing, attack, throw apples, and float around with a sheet. Compared to the combat-oriented Genesis game, this Aladdin is unarmed and athletic; you proceed through every level by swinging and climbing. In this sense, the game appears to be heavily indebted to Jordan Melchner's Prince of Persia, which had recently been beautifully ported to the Super Nintendo by Arsys Software in 1992. Aladdin's movements aren't as restricted as those in Prince of Persia, thankfully, but the influence is obvious and unavoidable.

And let's talk about level design for a moment here. Both games start in Agrabah streets, both have you jumping on canopies and dodging guards, but instead of stranding you in a maze, Capcom offers a straightforward progression that none the less rewards the most adventurous players. If you stay low, you must contend with rabble on the street; up on the rooftops, you are rewarded with more items, but hazardous jumps and a breathtaking view of the palace.

Also, I fawned over this with TaleSpin, so you knew I'd have to bring it up here: the Capcom game can be delightfully nonsensical. Upon meeting the Genie, you're transported to a bizarre world where the Genie has become numerous platforms for you to jump across, a'la Air Man's stage in Mega Man 2. After that, for no reason and with no explanation, Abu falls off the magic carpet and you must travel into an ancient pyramid to rescue him.  At the end of that, you're confronted by a scary-looking boss who turns out to just be Abu try to scare you! From there, it's on to A Whole New World, which isn't a shooter or anything, but just an opportunity to peacefully collect some items before heading off to fight Jafar.

This game is short, perhaps six levels, but it's tough. There's dozens of tricky jumps, which can be improved with the help of a sheet you can use as a parachute. The trouble is, it's an optional item at the start of the game, and there's only one other in the game, in the final level...

In 1993, compared to the vibrant graphics and impressive pedigree of the Genesis game, this didn't stand a chance. Disney's next blockbuster game, The Lion King, would be developed by Virgin for the Genesis and the Super Nintendo, and Capcom was out of luck. It's a shame; this is a good game with a lot of challenge.

The Genesis game feels like a piece of merchandise; part of the promotional effort: like the film it's bold, brassy, and tough to ignore. The SNES Aladdin is a legit game, balanced, with tight controls and, if you appreciate vintage sprite work, a terrific look. It ought to be better remembered than it is.

Bonkers - October 1994

We're here; we finally made it to the end, and I wish like hell I could say it was anything but Bonkers. It's true, if I were grouping these chronologically we would still have The Great Circus Mystery and Magical Quest 3 to cover; good games, to be sure. But it made more sense to group all three of those Quest games together, so here we are at the end of nearly five exhilarating years of Capcom-Disney video games, with.... Bonkers.

Does anybody really like Bonkers? I said earlier in this piece that Goof Troop has fallen by the wayside in favor of the superior A Goofy Movie, but Bonkers seems to have no adherents; it's not even on DVD. As a kid, once Bonkers was on the Disney Afternoon rotation, I began tuning my TV elsewhere; to Kid's WB, which had Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Road Rovers, and Earthworm Jim. I can't even say I have any real memories of Bonkers; just a vague, unpleasant distaste.

So how does Bonkers on SNES stack up? Well, it's okay. Typical for Capcom, the graphics are gorgeous - Bonkers actually looks cute bouncing around on the screen, something I can't say ever happened in the show. The settings are full of clever touches and Bonkers is full of amusing slapstick animation - he can be flattened, fall over, trip over his own feet, and more.

The first level takes you into Donald Duck's Hollywood mansion (!), where you can sink into jello molds left on the dining room table, destroy gold statues on Donald lining the halls, and slide down an elephant shaped slide in the toy room. In a later level, a powerup is found in a room where Mickey and Donald are taking a break from filming a western movie. Bonkers bounces his way through a cruise ship, where kitchen freezers are filled with marauding penguins and swordfish frozen into blocks of ice. There's also a pretty tough LA Freeway traffic jam, where toon busses are trying to mow you down.

He does look adorable in this game

Besides the forgettable license, this game isn't better known because it's really just average. Obviously built on the Magical Quest game engine, Bonkers simply can't move fast enough for the game he's in. Mickey controls fine in the Quest games because speed is not a priority, and once you reach tougher areas you have a projectile. Bonkers's jumps are just too sluggish to safely clear even minor enemies, creating an impression that the game is running at half speed. Combined with an over-generous hit box, and this is a game that feels like it shouldn't be nearly as frustrating as it is.

Intended to offset the sluggishness, Bonkers also has a dash with a recharging meter at the bottom that can stun or destroy enemies. It controls strangely - you have you keep pushing down on the dash button and the forward button or the dash runs out immediately. This feature seems to have inspired by the terrific, tight dash mechanics in Konami's Buster Busts Loose for the SNES in 1992. It never makes the game unplayable, but like Scrooge's bizarre pogo-cane mechanic in the original DuckTales, it's the kind of thing that should have been improved before release.

To what extent does charming details make up for a middle-of-the-road game? You can do far worse for platformers on the SNES, but you can also do much better. Players willing to overlook the wonky jumping and dashing and excessive hit box will find a decent little game here, but in an overstuffed genre, why bother with decent? Bonkers was released near the end of the total dominance of platform games; Street Fighter 2 had ignited the fighting game craze a year before, and a little game called Doom was just around the corner. Given how totally average Bonkers is, it's hard not to think that maybe this is a job better left to Mario and Sonic after all.

As for the animated show, playing this game and my general desire to be better informed prompted me to watch a handful of episodes, which ranged from decent to tedious. The internet informs us it was a troubled show, and the results speak for themselves - it's pretty weak sauce compared to even a middle of the road episode of something like Darkwing Duck. The whole point of Roger Rabbit always was that he was not a Disney character; he's more like a Tex Avery creation than Disney's babyish creations. Neither fish nor fowl, the Bonkers show is significantly worse than either of it's models - Roger Rabbit or Tiny Toon Adventures. Disney Television would rebound, but Bonkers remained as a road not traveled.

--

I had suspected that Bonkers was going to end this series on a down note, so I withheld a game from the coverage for the end. Appropriate for a theme park blog, this is the very first Disneyland video game on a home console - Capcom's legendary, baffling Adventures in the Magic Kingdom. Come back next week for the final game, and a retrospective on Summer Game Camp!

Game Rankings So Far
01) DuckTales 2
02) Chip ' Dale Rescue Rangers
03) The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse
04) DuckTales
05) Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey & Donald
06) Aladdin
07) TaleSpin
08) Goof Troop
09) The Great Circus Mystery
10) Darkwing Duck
11) The Little Mermaid
12) Bonkers
13) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
14) Mickey Mousecapade

Summer Game Camp, Part 3

It's summer, which means that "indoor kids" like me stay away from the hot sun and do things like play video games! Old video games. Disney video games. This summer at Passport to Dreams, I'm playing the Disney / Capcom classic games and writing about them. All of them.

We've been playing and talking about games on the 8-bit NES, but now the story needs to take a detour as we jump over to Nintendo's rival... Sega. In mid-1990, the Sega Genesis had been on the market for a year and had a reputation for impressive graphics and a vast library of shooting games, but really summer of 1990 belonged to Nintendo in a way that few summer ever would again.

It was the summer of Super Mario Brothers 3, which sold more units that season than any game in history ever had. Super Mario Brothers 3 is the apotheosis of the NES, but it was also the end of Nintendo's solitary market domination. Sega finally got wise and had hired an American, Al Nilsen, to helm their North American marketing department. Since Sega had no name recognition in the US market, Nilsen bought the likenesses of those who did: Tommy Lasorda, Pat Riley, and Michael Jackson. Then in 1990, Sega landed somebody every American knew: Mickey Mouse.

The most Sega image I could find.

Released in the United States as Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion in November 1990, the resulting game is a kid-friendly standout on a system that was still looking for its mainstream hit. As everyone knows, that would prove to be Sonic the Hedgehog just a few months later, but I'd argue that Castle of Illusion is a better game. Illusion is a fun, fairly predictable bounce-and-stomp. The levels are fairly uninteresting - it's wave after wave of the same enemies, over and over - but they do start to improve at about the halfway point. More importantly, it's light years ahead of Mickey Mousecapade on the NES.

The Disney / Sega games could be their own series of blog posts, and they're unfairly obscure today. Europe's preference for Donald Duck resulted in two games for Sega's 8-bit console, the Master System, released in that market: The Lucky Dime Caper and Deep Duck Trouble - these games are even better and cuter than Castle of Illusion. Next, North America got its own unique Donald game, QuackShot, and finally Mickey and Donald were brought together in World of Illusion, a graphical powerhouse for the Genesis that few games would match. It's a fairly impressive run for Sega, and the quality drop in Disney games once Disney abandoned Sega and Capcom would be noticeable.

Which brings us to our subject for today, a series of games that will span nearly the whole history of the Super Nintendo. I don't know if Nintendo or Disney requested a Mickey game of their own to compete against the successful Castle of Illusion, or if Capcom came up with this one all on their own, but this week we're taking a huge bite out of 16 bit Super Nintendo trilogy: The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse - October 1992

Sometimes you reach for perfect by disregarding convention, swinging for the fences, and beating your own path. But sometimes you get to perfect by simply doing the same thing others have done better, sharper, nicer. The Magical Quest isn't some genre bending masterpiece - it's a really good platform game. Awash in a sea of the same, it rises above the rest like an island.

By the early 90s, the entire game industry was deep, deep into platform games. They've never really gone away, to be sure, but the initial rush of Super Mario Brothers imitators gradually began to produce such a vast glut of similar product that the mutations set in early. There were games that went in an even twitchier direction, like Mega Man, and ones that relied on memorization and strategy, like Ghouls N Ghosts. Sonic the Hedgehog provided multiple paths through levels, rewarding players who replayed levels until they could clear them in seconds. Faced with an opportunity to create a Mickey Mouse game for the new Super Nintendo, Capcom did not reinvent the wheel; they just made it spin smoother.

Magical Quest begins on a domestic scene of Mickey, Donald and Goofy playing catch with Pluto. Pluto runs off, and Mickey chases him until he abruptly falls off a cliff. This short setup establishes an air of fantasy that intrudes into the benign afternoon in the park, as Mickey suddenly falls, bounces off a branch, and lands on a cloud - high in the sky. There's a house sitting on the cloud inhabited by an old man, and Mickey is told of an evil Emperor Pete who rules over this kingdom...

Here's a great example of a video game that's aimed squarely at the Japanese audience, and the Americans are simply invited to show up too. The game requires no special knowledge of Mickey Mouse as a character or cultural institution - Mickey just is in this game, and it creates a powerful atmosphere of Disney-ness without actually ever directly referencing anything Disney. Titles like Mickey Mousecapade and Castle of Illusion brought in references to Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, but Magical Quest deals exclusively with Mickey, Goofy, Pete, Pluto and Donald and creates a totally new adventure for them.

As players progress through the game, they pick up various costumes that give Mickey new skills. There's a magic outfit that can fire projectiles, a firefighter's uniform, and a mountain climber's outfit. By starting Mickey out dressed in nothing but his skivvies and allowing him to accumulate abilities along the way, Magical Quest creates a powerful sense of a dream unfolding, logical and linear on its own terms but strangely skewed.

There's a direct sequence of action to the first four levels, as the difficulty gradually increases. Starting on a cloud, Mickey rides rolling tomatoes along a huge vine down to earth. Traveling alongside a lake, he crosses a dark forest, enters an elevator, and rides it into a blazing inferno underground. Exiting the underground cavern, he begins to scale a mountain, working his way towards Emperor Pete's castle....

In the early 90s, Capcom produced some of the handsomest video games around. There's a lot of detail in Magical Quest - pay close attention to just how often the backgrounds change as you travel from one area of each stage to the next, creating a real sense of progression and atmosphere. The forest grows denser and darker as you head towards the area's boss, a giant spider - the background trees transitioning from awash in golden light to grasping claws with evil Pete faces. The soundtrack seems to be scored by a medieval chamber music quartet, instantly creating a mood of high fantasy.

In terms of gameplay, Capcom seems to have reached into their back catalogue of hits. The weapon-switching brings back memories of Mega Man, although Magical Quest demands far less of players than even the easiest Mega Man game. Certain enemies and situations and the entire high fantasy conceit seems to be descended from the Ghouls N' Ghosts series, and the first boss of Magical Quest - a winged bat creature - is essentially a reference to the famous infamous enemy in Ghouls 'N Ghosts, the Red Arremer. The mini level between the forest and fire cavern - a fairly tricky elevator ride down - recalls a similar ride in Ghouls 'N Ghosts. Even the appearance of Emperor Pete in the final room seems to suggest Astoroth, a recurring boss in that series. Elsewhere from the Capcom canon, the Mountain Climber Mickey outfit functions basically identically to the climbing and swinging mechanic in Bionic Commando.

The game puts up a reasonable challenge to new players, but it's not nearly as demanding as, say, DuckTales on the NES. The oeneric atmosphere, high quality presentation, and sharp gameplay makes this one of my most-often played titles in the SNES library. I beat it in about 30 minutes while preparing this review, and died maybe twice. It's so much fun that it doesn't really matter that only on "Hard" mode does it put up much of a fight.

Generally, the levels in this game are amazingly well planned. The first level allows you to get used to controlling Mickey and throwing blocks before throwing up the first real challenge: the race to the ground atop the giant tomato. The game deposits you by a lake, dodging starfish and beavers, establishing that Mickey can neither breathe nor swim well underwater. In Level 2, the Magic Turban places an air bubble around his head when underwater. Any other game would then send you across the great barrier reef or something, but not Magical Quest - you swim through the inside of a tree filled with sap! Touches like this add a lot of character to the game.

Level 3 introduces a firefighter outfit, cleverly released from a "break glass in case of fire" emergency panel. The Five Cavern is very well done, coming up with what feels like every possible use for the water weapon - from pushing blocks to forcing you to extinguish burning platforms before you can cross them. The final boss of the area is pretty tough, demanding total confidence in both water spraying and fast platforming. The same can be said of the Level 4 boss, easily the toughest in the game - the fight against the giant eagle really requires you to be very good with the Mountain Climber hook.

Then it's off to the ice world, and here's where the wheels come off. The level cues you to use your fire hose, and it allows you to spray water that freezes into platforms - but then never uses this in any meaningful way. The boss of this level can be beaten with either magic or water, but he freezes to death no matter how you beat him - a waste of a cool concept. Then it's off to Pete's Castle, where you'd expect to have to use all four abilities to succeed, much like the Wily Fortresses in Mega Man. Again, there is no such requirement, and in fact if you know where to go you don't even have to deal with about half of the level.  The drop in quality after Level 4 is huge, and hard not to notice.

But there is a conceptual completeness to this game that is tough to top. It's one of those games like Castlevania where every little piece seems to have its place and is deployed at exactly the right time. The magic, water, and hook weapons feel right - inevitable - and easy to control. The atmosphere is top-notch. The whole thing feels like an especially interesting Disney featurette, and coming out in 1992, that's not a bad thing. Seemingly only in video games is Mickey allowed anymore to be a hero.

This one is worth seeking out, and don't be surprised if you find yourself playing it again and again. I began playing it in 1992 and I've more or less never stopped. It's a key action title for the Super Nintendo.

The Great Circus Mystery - November 1994

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse seems to have been successful - it's a well liked and not too uncommon game, and in Japan it was even featured on an episode of GameCenter CX, where host Arino Shinya plays it to commemorate the opening of Wreck-It Ralph. Naturally, a sequel was produced - this being Capcom, after all. But what's baffling is the way this sequel was released in the United States - instead of being embraced and promoted as "The Magical Quest 2", its title in Japan, it was given the baffling name "The Great Circus Mystery".

This is a two player simultaneous game. In it, Mickey and Minnie head to the edge of town on a bus to see the Circus - but when they arrive, the circus is in shambles and the performers have vanished! They meet two of the three Lonesome Ghosts, who invite them to their haunted house on the far side of a nearby jungle - but when they arrive, the house has been overrun by the minions of Baron Pete. In the end, Mickey and Minnie travel through a cavern, an ice world (of course), and Baron Pete's castle to put an end to his evil plans.

Okay, so, just from that summary alone, we can begin to see problems. "Rescuing Pluto" isn't an amazing story for The Magical Quest, but it works fine and adds to the dreamlike atmosphere - which is fine because - spoilers - it turns out that Magical Quest actually is a dream! The story in Great Circus Mystery is weirdly unfocused, which is fine because the game is still fun, but for a game called The Great Circus Mystery, the mystery of what's going on at the circus turns out to be pretty unimportant.

Then there's the abilities selections in this game, which honestly are kind of terrible - Mickey and Minnie get a vacuum cleaner, a jungle explorer outfit, and a cowboy outfit with pop gun and hobby horse. The vacuum cleaner can convert enemies into coins so you can buy upgrades in shops, which is nice if you really need the upgrades to progress. The jungle explorer outfit works exactly like the mountain climber outfit, and the cowboy outfit allows you to fire pellets. Unfortunately, your hobby horse never stops bouncing underneath you while you're in cowboy form, and the bullets don't seem to be able to hit enemies at close range, so the most useful form in this game is also the most annoying to use.

Compared to Magical Quest, Circus Mystery starts off in the drab confines of a tattered circus - it's not spooky enough to actually be cool, but not colorful enough to create any atmosphere of adventure and fantasy. At least the "Haunted Circus", as its called in the game, has two cool boss enemies - a fire juggling weasel and a lion that tries to run you down in his circus wagon and whose mane you vacuum off to reveal that he's actually a disguised wolf. The Jungle level that follows is the single dullest and most uninspired level in the series - you fight an evil turtle and gorilla while trying not to fall asleep.

The game improves considerably at the Lonesome Ghosts' Haunted House. There's a repeat of a gag used in the Haunted Mansion level of Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, where a specter of Pete replaces your reflection as you pass a series of mirrors. Later, you fight Pete in the best boss of the game - Baron Pete leans out of his framed portrait to attack you! A series of rooms where you must hang onto a lantern on the wall as the room spins around you is a direct reference to Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts. There's even more Ghouls 'N Ghosts references in this game than in the original Magical Quest - a dinosaur boss and cloud boss hail directly from that series, and Baron Pete's outfit again strongly recalls Astroroth's double faces. All three games were extensively designed by programmers who were veterans of that series, so all of this is highly intentional.

Unlike Magical Quest, the last 60% of this game is better than the first third, even if the level progression feels stilted and sporadic. Pete is a two-phase boss this time, and transforms himself into a huge Elliot-style dragon. The boss of World 5, a cloud of cold air, is a legitimate challenge, as you must nearly constantly vacuum him up while avoiding being touched and frozen. The challenge of this game definitely matches and exceeds that of Magical Quest. The two-player option is nice, if not really important, and the opportunity to play as Minnie is great for those of us who prefer to play as female characters when possible.

But there's just no getting past the fact that this is an inferior replay of a game that still feels fresh. And the marketing here merits a stoning - it's amazing how off-base they were, calling this game The Great Circus Mystery. I know for sure there are kids who avoided this one based on the name, never knowing it really was the sequel to Magical Quest. To their credit, Disney and Capcom recognized the error and released this under its proper name on the Game Boy Advance.

Even the box art was a total botch. The original Magical Quest art is still terrific - Mickey, in his yellow and red Magic outfit, pops off the deep blue of the haunted forest, and Emperor Pete holding Pluto captive immediately establishes the story and fantastic world of the game. The Great Circus Mystery uses pastel colors, Mickey scowling, and the circus setting that really isn't central to the game. I don't mean to keep harping on this, but it's amazing how much they botched what could have been a sure thing.

The Great Circus Mystery isn't a terrible game, but it's a huge drop coming off Magical Quest. It was released on both the SNES and Genesis - perhaps the dual release is what prevented it from being identified as the sequel to a series that began on a Nintendo system? The SNES version is the one to get here - the Genesis has a unique section of Level 3 to replace the rotating rooms that the Genesis couldn't do, but overall the graphics are compromised. Anybody who missed out on this in the 90s due to its lousy marketing didn't miss much, but fans of the original Magical Quest should seek it out.

The Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey & Donald - December 1995

And one reason I harped so much about the lousy marketing of Magical Quest 2 / Great Circus Mystery is that it likely prevented the West from getting this game, the superior Magical Quest 3. This time Huey, Dewey and Louie are pulled into an enchanted book they find in Donald's attic and Mickey and Donald go in to rescue them. The European flair of the original is back, as they travel through "Storyland" en route to King Pete's castle. They're dropped off in a medieval village overrun with ambulatory crows, ears of corn, and a turkey wearing a helmet. After defeating a pig flying around in a giant pepper - a boss who uses the SNES' scaling and rotation effects and is the most 'Super Nintendo' thing I've ever seen - they proceed through a thicket of vines filled with drifting spores and a menacing desert before boarding one of Pete's flying fortress ships.

The costumes here are great, and actually different for Mickey and Donald. After defeating the rampaging turkey, a blacksmith gives Mickey a suit of armor equipped with a boxing glove, which he cause use to bounce off walls. The blacksmith's wife tries to do the same for Donald - but Donald's butt is too huge to fit in the armor, and he ends up wearing a barrel with a pot on his head. This turns out to be an advantage, as the town is crisscrossed with Venetian canals, and Mickey plummets like a rock in the water, whereas Donald can float along easily in his barrel. In the spore forest, they get Woodcutter's outfits and can climb the tall vines using long leather belts, swinging from side to side to destroy enemies. In the desert, the pick up magic show gear from a traveling mystic - Mickey is dressed in a snappy red suit and can shoot cards from his hat, while Donald is dressed as Aladdin and rubs his magic lamp to summon a giant genie hand which flicks enemies away.

Better still, this game is tough, and atmospheric. Pete's battle ship contains two really frustrating bosses, and the series has its one and only water level when the ship crashes into the ocean and our heroes swim to shore. Instead of the typical glacier ice level, here Mickey and Donald climb up a snowy mountain filled with evil, dead trees. If you keep walking, snow collects on your shoes, making it easier to jump up to higher platforms! Pete's castle is terrific, filled with elaborate stonework and convincingly dark, richly decorated rooms.

After all of your trouble, you're rewarded with a really great fight against Pete. He looks better, more smoother and dimensional than any boss in the series, and when you've weakened him, he puts on his own suit of armor, complete with a huge version of the same giant red curtain Mickey and Donald use when they switch forms! After three games of seeing the same gag, it's pretty satisfying to see a boss turn the tables like that.

After he's defeated, it's revealed that Pete wants to be a hero, but has always been forced to play the villain in the story! Mickey and Donald forgive him, and King Pete repents his evil ways and becomes a good king. It's a sweet ending to the series, and a nice personality touch for a character who almost never gets them.

The Super Nintendo version of this game was only ever released in Japan. The game was finally released, alongside Magical Quest 1 and 2, on the Game Boy Advance and has a new English translation - although the zoomed in new of the GBA reduces the game's visual splendor. There's also an English fan translation that predates the official release by a few years. It's a bit rougher than the official translation, but still perfectly enjoyable.

There is considerable debate among retro game fans about the merits of Sega's Disney games vs. Capcom's Disney games. Sega's Castle of Illusion is a solid title - World of Illusion is beautiful but perhaps a bit too obviously almost too much for the poor Genesis to handle (claims of blast processing aside, remember that the Genesis is an older piece of hardware).

The gameplay of Magical Quest is a bit loosey-goosey, but in terms of presentation and imagination, the series is leagues ahead.  Magical Quest epitomizes, for me, why the Super Nintendo may just be the best video game machine ever released - gorgeous visuals and music and a very high level of polish just on the brink of when the video game industry was hit with polygonal 3D gaming and almost everything was reset to zero. This trilogy doesn't have the legendary reputation of Capcom's 8-bit Disney games, but taken as a whole, the Magical Quest series is the capstone of the entire Disney / Capcom venture, and that's saying a lot.

Next Week: two surprising 8-bit sequels shake up expectations

Game Rankings So Far

1) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers

2) The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

3) DuckTales

4) Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey & Donald

5) TaleSpin

6) The Great Circus Mystery

7) Darkwing Duck

8) Little Mermaid

9) Mickey Mousecapade

Summer Game Camp, Part 2

It's summer, which means that "indoor kids" like me stay away from the hot sun and do things like play video games! Old video games. Disney video games. This summer at Passport to Dreams, I'm playing the Disney / Capcom classic games and writing about them. All of them.

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - June 1990

In Capcom's take on the Rescue Rangers, Chip and Dale spend all of their time running, lifting boxes, hiding inside boxes, and throwing boxes. Again, anybody's who's sat through an episode of Disney's big animated follow-up to DuckTales could be forgiven for wondering if anybody working on the game had seen even one hot minute of the source material.

If you've played ahead in this series - I have, have you??? - then you know that as far as clever, inventive platformers go, DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale are about as unique as the Disney / Capcom games got. Both of these titles stash a truly clever play mechanic inside a Disney-wrapped box. It would have been easy to make yet another Mario clone, but Capcom gave Scrooge that pogo jump, a nest of tricky levels, and a lot of secrets. They could have delivered a two-player chase game with Chip 'n Dale, but they delivered one of most accessible and fun games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. If you want to see what a Disney game made by a company that truly doesn't care looks like, check out Hi-Tech Expressions' The Chase on Tom Sawyer Island for MS-DOS. DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale are remembered because they're uncommonly good and carefully planned.

The basic play mechanics in both games are so clever, that I would not be surprised if they used an engine intended for a use other than Disney game purgatory. Perhaps the pogo-jumping game and the box-throwing game were prototypes created inside Capcom that never went anywhere, much how Nintendo dusted off a vertical scrolling game that became Yume Kojo Doki Doki Panic / Super Mario Brothers 2. Or perhaps Capcom bought some unfinished games outright and totally reworked them into DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale.

I've always thought that DuckTales in particular played like it was developed by a team that was working from at best a packet of information and character designs - why the Himilayas? Why is Gizmoduck on the Moon? - that strongly hinted that whatever form the game previously took has still left traces of itself in the final product. Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers feels much more in tune with its source material - many enemy characters in the game appear in the television show, and the charming oversize settings evoke the series without being slavishly faithful. Chip 'n Dale's cuteness has always endeared them to audiences in Japan, so perhaps Rescue Rangers was more widely available over there than DuckTales was.

To this reviewer, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is the true treasure in the Disney / Capcom catalgue. The gameplay can be addictive, especially with two playing simultaneously. Most of the 2 player co-op games on the NES are shooters or frenetic beat-em-ups like Double Dragon and TMNT: The Arcade Game - Rescue Rangers is one of the few titles in the system library to be approachable to those who don't like button mashing and can work together. The control scheme is, honestly, brilliant. Boxes can be picked up and thrown at enemies, or dropped down and hidden under. Both methods will do damage, allowing players to take the offense or defense. Some enemies will simply be stunned, and if you're quick, you can pick them up and throw them. You can also stun your Player 2's chipmunk, pick them up, and throw them too. Crates will be destroyed immediately upon taking out an enemy, while tin cans can be re-used and also stacked into platforms. Defeated enemies fly backwards off the screen instead of simply vanishing or falling away, which never stops being funny for the duration of Rescue Rangers' fairly short gameplay.

Both DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale have a reputation for being easy, but this is only true in the context of all NES games; they're not as tough as Castlevania III or Bionic Commando. I think, depending on how quick and twitchy an action game player you are, Rescue Rangers puts up a fight that isn't too tough to overcome. By the end of the game, enemies swarm our heroes constantly and there's some tricky jumps to make. What doesn't really ever change are the boss battles, which are either disappointingly simple or a relaxing diversion after surviving another gauntlet of crate throwing - depending on your point of view. The levels are selected from a map screen, allowing players to either conquer every level or bypass trickier ones. Once the first map is cleared, the Rescue Ranger blimp moves to a second screen of tougher levels. 

This game is terrific and, with the correct Player 2 in tow, it can be one of the best experiences on the system. It may lack the treasure-hunting depth of DuckTales, but for straightforward pleasure, very little else on the NES is nearly as fun. Bring a friend.

The Little Mermaid - July 1991

If there's a video game genre that's more maligned than the licensed game, it's probably the "girl" game. There aren't too many of these on the NES - the genre really began to take off in the 16 bit era, leading to piles of disposable, poorly designed Barbie games. Even modern games targeting a feminine audience are rarely shown any respect: Nintendogs and Cooking Mama are lucky if they get off with "bemused tolerance" while the internet is awash in regret for the lost era when Sonic was in games that were halfway fun.

The good news is that The Little Mermaid is both appropriate for everyone and well made. The game is actually a sequel to the film, where Ursula is somehow not dead from being impaled by a boat and now resides in a castle and has mind-controlled all of the fish in the ocean into being evil. This provides enough justification for Ariel to explain to Eric that she is a mermaid (which I guess he forgot), then turn back into a mermaid at will and set off to destroy Ursula again. See, this is already better than that direct-to-video sequel!

The gameplay is honestly like something between a platform game and a shooter. Ariel floats in the ocean and can use her tail to trap aggressive fish in bubbles and throw them at enemies. Those of us who unconsciously default to Mario-style controls in any underwater setting can relax: Ariel controls like a spaceship in a shooter game, and can easily be guided through the level using only the direction pad. She picks up seashells and trapped enemies automatically, and can plow directly into oncoming foes with those items without taking damage. I kept dying in the first level until I realized for no reason I was treating the game like Super Mario World and was holding down the action button to pick up and hold onto the weapons. There's no need for this; The Little Mermaid is generously uncluttered and pleasingly sharp in its controls.

There's only six levels here, and they aren't long at all. Ariel must open sunken treasure chests which contain pearls that will boost the strength and distance of her attack. This must be done by throwing seashells at them, or knocking barrels over that will roll through the level and collide, opening the chest. As her attack increases in strength, Ariel can stun and bubble larger and larger enemies. As I said, once I started thinking of this game as a shooter with an exploration element, I did much better.

The boss battles here are quite good, and unlike when you face Fat Cat in Rescue Rangers, Ursula has two forms and unleashes enough enemies onto the screen to make the fight against her feel like the real end-of-the-game battle. Befitting a mermaid, Ariel only controls poorly when she's on dry land, where she flops around like a seal. One of the boss battles forces you to deal with this handicap to do damage to a walrus, and it's a very welcome change of pace.

Capcom's creativity and sense of fun occasionally pokes through the simple levels: fish wear sheets in the Sunken Ship to pretend to be ghosts of drowned sailors, and Ursula's castle, with its doors that lead to multiple places, compares favorably to the more complex 16-bit games they would soon be making.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of younger sisters ended up getting this game as a consolation prize for then their brothers weren't hogging the NES with Contra. And I'm going to guess that when nobody was looking, those brothers took this game off the shelf and played it too. Like the film it's based on, The Little Mermaid is good enough to have a wider appeal than its title suggests.

TaleSpin - December 1991

(It's fun to see all of these purple box Capcom games together, isn't it? Back in the NES days that purple and red was nearly a guarantee of a quality product inside)

I was fully prepared to start my review of this one with something like "here's where the wheels begin to come off in the classic Capcom games". I even had the start of a review written up with something to that effect in it. TaleSpin is one of those NES games that you can still find sitting around, ready to buy for a few bucks. I've owned it for a few years, and never done much of anything with it. The controls struck me as clunky and the game as kind of uninspired. I'd never even bothered to get past the first level, when the necessity of writing this review caused me to sit down for once and actually try. I'm glad I did, because I was wrong. This game is fun, and awesomely weird.

It starts off innocently enough. After an objectively wonderful 8-bit rendition of the TaleSpin title theme, you're looking at pleasingly earth toned bricks and well-drawn character sprites to set up the story of the game. Then, it's off to the first level presumably set in the sheltered bay of Cape Suzette - about as routine a side-scrolling shooting level as I can think of. There's sky, and rocks. Baloo can flip his ship upside down and fly backwards through the stage, and TaleSpin is one of the few shooters that can do this. You pick up cargo along the way, and if you run into the scenery, you don't take any damage. At first this struck me as baffling, but after a while I began to turn off my Gradius-shooter instincts and began to use it to my advantage. It's nice to know you can go all the way up to the roof of the level to avoid enemy fire without destroying your ship.

So far none of this is interesting. But keep playing - it gets better.

Between levels, a shop run by Wildcat appears where you can buy upgrades to your plane. Immediately, my engagement with the levels increased as I realized my performance in picking up cargo and shooting down enemies could improve the speed and rapid fire of my ship. I don't like shooter games very much, but ones that allow you to buy things always give me better incentive to play. But then the game launched into Level 2 and began to win me over.

Rebecca Cunningham appears and says "Your next destination is the baseball stadium!". Before I could fully process this, there was Baloo - improbably flying his plane through the middle of a baseball stadium. What look like clones on Don Karnage lob baseballs at you from behind automatic pitcher machines. A giant baseball appears and blows a hole in the earth. I even found a bonus round where Kit Cloudkicker collects balloons on his airwing - I've never heard anybody mention this and previously I thought the only benefit to the Sega Genesis version of TaleSpin was the ability to play as Kit (I know I'm not the only TaleSpin fan enthused about this bear).

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!??

By level 3 I was really enjoying TaleSpin but still didn't like the control scheme - I didn't like that Button B fired bullets and Button A flips Baloo's plane. It then occurred to me that really I ought to be playing this with a joystick, like a real shooter - and five minutes later I had plugged in my NES Advantage and found the controls much better, almost natural.

In the end, TaleSpin won me over with its colorful graphics and endearing sense of wackiness. Like the other Capcom games, it can be completed in less than an hour and isn't too severe of a challenge, especially with an NES Advantage. Give this one a try - for an NES cart with nearly no built in demand, and a lousy first level, it's a lot more fun than it should be.

Oh, and why is Baloo's character sprite directly based on the Happy Meal toy???

Darkwing Duck - June 1992

By Summer 1992, the Nintendo Entertainment System was functionally obsolete. Although the Sega Genesis had been on the market since 1989, it had not been able to capture a significant market share until Summer 1991, when Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog and finally put its competitior, the TurboGraphix-16, in third place. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was available in North America for Christmas 1991. Nintendo would continue to officially support the NES until early 1994, but the writing was on the wall and the fabled 16-bit console wars of the 90s had begun.

Many of the most aesthetically impressive NES titles were released between 1991 and 1994 - although the abilities of the system were limited, tactful developers like Nintendo, Capcom, Konami and Sunsoft could squeeze beautiful things out of that tiny grey box. Darkwing Duck is a gorgeous game - the handsomest of Capcom's 8-bit Disney run, to be sure. There's even an impressive introduction sequence which works as something of a title sequence. Gone are the blocky, blurry sprites of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - by this time Capcom were masters of gigantic, detailed, screen-filling sprites (see: Street Fighter II). In every area of presentation, Darkwing Duck is a terrific game.

But I'm simply not very enthusiastic about it. The game is built on the back of the Mega Man game engine Capcom had been using since 1987. This isn't a bad thing, because the Mega Man games are rightly hailed as classics of their era - or at least the first three are. Darkwing Duck came out roughly simultaneously with Mega Man 5, easily the weakest of the original 8 games, and it shares that game's same sense of exhaustion. Even with that low bar to clear, it's awfully hard to play Darkwing Duck and not constantly be reminded that you're playing a less inventive Mega Man 4.

So maybe it's most fair to judge DW by what else it brings to the table. Unlike Mega Man, Darkwing can crouch, which will please those who always hated that in Mega Man games. Also, he can jump up and latch onto the underside of platforms, then climb up onto them. The best areas of the game force you to master this, dropping down and hanging off the underside of moving platforms to avoid obstacles. DW can also jump and attach himself to hanging hooks, streetlights, portholes, and other features of the background. Playing through these areas is the only time when the game truly seems engaging.

It seems obvious that the Capcom staff was using these Disney games to blow off steam between A-list assignments - this game is nearly as wacky as TaleSpin. If you're one of those who enjoyed the rabbits in Rescue Rangers who attack by wriggling runner carpets, then Darkwing Duck is for you. The enemies in this game are hilariously goofy, including boxing kangaroos, turtles who sneeze their shells off, and Arnold clones who burn away to reveal robotic skeletons. Every so often, DW has to jump to avoid banana peels which can knock him out for a few seconds. It doesn't exactly capture the tone of the show, but this silliness is appreciated.

Did I mention it's hard? This game is hard. Those who pine for a halcyon days of "Nintendo Hard" will appreciate this one. The platforming is not unreasonable, but the boss battles are remarkably difficult, requiring players to very, very quickly drop between platforms - which isn't easy in this game - while chasing a quick moving enemy and dodging multiple projectiles. The final boss fight is done while avoiding two relentless drones and is especially infuriating.

At the end of the game, the city is saved, and Darkwing rides his motorcycle away while contemplative music plays. Many NES fans will recognize this immediately as the hallmark ending of Mega Man games, where Mega Man solemly heads home after defeating the nefarious Mr. Wily. "Will the world ever be safe??", Mega Man wonders.

If there were any doubt that Capcom programmers were expressing frustration over their obligation to pump out game after game in either the Disney or Mega Man series, the ending of Darkwing Duck is it. As he moodily rides of into the night, DW hits a pothole.

Darkwing Duck is a respectable game with a number of charming touches, and strictly as a game, it's the nearest to Capcom's come to making a fully fleshed out game for the Disney series since Rescue Rangers. It's fun, it's tough, it's full of whimsical touches, but it just didn't do it for this girl. It's a better Mega Man-alike than The Krion Conquest, but just as in theme parks, the details make the difference.

Game Rankings So Far

1) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers

2) DuckTales

3) TaleSpin

4) Darkwing Duck

5) Little Mermaid

6) Mickey Mousecapade

Next Time: We make the jump to 16-bits for a magical quest