The Disney Afternoon Collection: A Review

Nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia. Wistfulness for the entertainment of one's youth is a major driving factor in a lot of computer games, and it's been presented in a variety of different ways. You can make something that deliberately echoes a particular aesthetic or genre from the older days of games easily, be it done in pixel art or any other particular style. From there, you can go further and lovingly improve upon the good parts of history with more modern mechanics and design decisions, or poke fun at the percieved parts of those golden days that didn't really work. No matter what one does with their nostalgic remakes or reimaginings and whatnot, the originals are still out there with all the power they once held. We can still revisit them and let their merits and flaws stand as they were. 2015's Mega Man Legacy Collection, from Capcom and Digital Eclipse, offered this museum curation approach by putting six classic action-platformers into one bundle for a bargain price, adding a bunch of extra bells and whistles. This, then, is the spiritual successor. In the early 1990s Capcom partnered with Disney to make games based on the animated series which appeared on Disney's "Disney Afternoon" block of programming, and many of them are regarded as all-time classics which still inspire great nostalgia in people today. Now, the museum curation approach is applied to a group of those games. This is The Disney Afternoon Collection. Currently on display, the childhood memories of an entire generation.



What you see is what you get, for the most part. The Disney Afternoon Collection lives up to its name by collecting and curating six classic Capcom games made to tie in with Disney Afternoon cartoons. These games were released between 1989 and 1994 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and they're obviously the main attraction here. We'll get into each game in turn with brief overviews, but the shell around them is quite lovely. All six are lovingly rendered, pretty much just as they were, and you have a few options available when it comes to presentation. You can play at original aspect ratio, fullscreen, or wide stretched, with the option to turn the colorful border around the (usually) 4:3 aspect ratio of these old games on or off. In addition to that, you can fiddle about with CRT TV or monitor filters to make things look all pixelated and strange, like they "actually" would on an old display circa 199X. They don't really look all that good, but they're fun to turn on for a lark and having the option doesn't hurt. Further expanding the games is a "rewind" option to let you undo mistakes and rewind the game state backwards. These are 25 year-old NES games that were aimed for an audience of children, but they can still get difficult in places. The hardcore types who beat Battletoads for breakfast might scoff at such a feature, but it's not really there for them; for younger or more inexperienced players, they can breeze through and enjoy these games without having to start the whole thing over or whatnot. Like the CRT filters, you're not forced into using it so its inclusion doesn't hurt. Rounding out the gameplay extras are Time Attack and Boss Rush modes for every game, with online leaderboards. Here's where those hardcore types can delve deeper into the games, with an in-game timer not unlike the ones online speedrunners use keeping track of how fast you beat each stage or boss, and if you've improved upon your previous time. You can even "race" against a time on the leaderboard, and their run will play out in the upper-right corner as you play. Alternatively you can just watch a leaderboard run and see how they got the time that they did. It's a fun and competitive little addition, and it's welcome.


Those are the bells and whistles added to the games themselves for the collection, but what of the games themselves? For your money you're getting some real gems from the NES era. Let's take a brief look at each of the six, and see what makes them tick and whatnot. This collection is the first time any of them have seen re-release beyond the original NES carts, so to have them all bundled together like this is a small miracle. We begin in chronological order with...


Ducktales (1989)

We start off on one hell of a high note, with what is easily the most beloved of the Capcom/Disney NES games. It's hard to disagree with public opinion on this one, as Ducktales is quite a breezy and fun little game that's stuck in the mind of a generation of nostalgic game players ever since. Certainly, it's the only one of the six to have gotten an expanded remake (Wayforward's Ducktales Remastered, from 2013) so something about its legacy has endured. As Scrooge McDuck you bounce through five varied stages as you globetrot in search of treasure, treasure, and more treasure. Yes, bounce. The main form of attack in Ducktales involves Scrooge using his cane like a pogo stick to bounce around. This not only defeats most enemies, but it also helps you reach places a normal jump wouldn't. Each level is filled to the brim with jewels and goodies and secret hideaways for you to scour to get all of the money for the world's richest duck. Its gameplay is unique and innovative with all of the bouncing, and its soundtrack is top-notch. Special note has to be given, of course, to the Moon theme; just as the game itself is held up as one of the best on the system, this one song is held up as one of the best chiptunes ever made. It's a bit on the short side, but brevity can be a good thing and there's plenty of replay value with extra difficulty modes and variant endings and whatnot. It's by no means misremembered as a classic, and it still holds up as a classic gaming gem.


Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (1990)

Another well-regarded Capcom/Disney joint, but a very different game to Ducktales. Chip and Dale, the chipmunk duo who solve mysteries and foil crimes as Rescue Rangers, go off on a standard romp to stop their nemesis Fat Cat and save their inventor friend Gadget. Being chipmunks, they're very tiny and the level design reflects this. You run and jump around ordinary environments, but they're all gigantic since you're so small. It's a neat gimmick, as is your main form of attack. You use the environment to your advantage, picking up objects to physically throw at enemies. Most of the time these are boxes found throughout the stages, and sometimes you'll find powerups hidden underneath them. There aren't too many of these, and the main thing you'll be collecting are little symbols that act like most other collectibles in platformers; getting 100 gives you an extra life. Another notable feature is co-op play, as you and some other friend with you in the room can both run through the level together and work in tandem to clear the game. There are a lot of levels but they're fairly short and linear affairs, though you do get to choose between stages sometimes. It's a simpler game, but that by no means makes it bad. It's a welcome addition to the collection and one of the more entertaining games in it.


Talespin (1991)

The aberration of the collection, and arguably the one dud in it. While the other five are all platforming action, Talespin is a horizontal shoot-em-up in which pilot Baloo flies around in an airplane. It makes sense, given the source material, but that doesn't make it all that good of a game. It does have an interesting innovation in that the A button flips you upside down and makes the game scroll to the left. This is used to get through some tight snaking corridors, as well as allowing you to shoot at things which would normally be behind you. Much like Ducktales, you collect money and points and goodies in the stages as you progress. These can be used between levels to upgrade your plane, from normal things like extra lives or continues to rapid fire and extra health. It's a nice system, but the game it's built around just doesn't feel all that good. You're not all that manueverable and this leads to taking a bunch of hits and dying. The presentation is top-notch, as is the usual for all of the Capcom/Disney games. It's just the actual gameplay itself that suffers. It's just okay, and that makes it stand out considering how stellar a lot of the other games in this set of six are.


Darkwing Duck (1992)

Here's where I come in, whoops. All of the games in this collection were beloved childhood favorites for many, and this one is mine. Darkwing Duck was my favorite of the Disney Afternoon cartoons, and I would rent this game at every opportunity. Despite being an impressionable child, it's still evident that this is one spectacular little game on display. As Darkwing Duck, masked vigilante hero of St. Canard, you jump and shoot your way through a bunch of stages to foil a rogue's gallery of bad dudes. Yep, jump and shoot! Mechanically this is a less complex and less demanding version of a Mega Man game. You pick your choice of three stages, then from another three once those are done, and then go after the final level. There aren't any boss weapons, but you can find special gas weapons that are fueled by ammo you find in the stages or dropped from foes. With them you can shoot diagonally, along the ground, or create platforms to climb up to new places. Darkwing also can raise his cape to block certain projectiles, and there's a hanging mechanic that leads to some vertically-oriented platforming challenges. It's tougher in places than Mega Man at times, due to only having four hit points at all times, but it's still a fun and challenging little game that I remember fondly. If nothing else it gets my personal seal of approval.


Ducktales 2 (1993)

At the period in history when games like Darkwing Duck and this were coming out, the NES already had its successor out in the form of the Super Nintendo. This means that the latter half of the collection is composed of somewhat obscure games technically released for a dying system, but also technically impressive. Ducktales 2 is more of the same Ducktales action that many adored in 1989, but by this point the series had stopped airing new episodes and was a reliable syndication moneymaker. It's still a great little game which expands on the treasure hunting/secret finding aspects. Scrooge has a new move in the form of pulling certain objects with his cane, and you can find upgrades in each stage to let you move and destroy hardier objects. Each level also has a hidden piece of a treasure map in it, and you'll need to find them all for the best ending. They're really quite well-hidden, and it will take proper exploring to find them. For whatever reason it's not quite as well-loved as the original game, but it's still absolutely solid and has plenty for you to find by exploring the big levels.


Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2 (1994)

Another sequel to another beloved game that isn't as powerful in the folk nostalgic memory as its original. By 1994 the NES really had all but given up the ghost; it would turn out to be its last year of official releases. Chip 'n Dale 2, like Ducktales 2, is another "more of the same with one or two tweaks" type of experience. New to Chip 'n Dale 2 are a few things; story cutscenes, for one. You can hold B to make the text go by faster here, and the plot is a typical OH NO FAT CAT ESCAPED GO CATCH HIM thing. We won't hold simplicity against it here. Boss fights are a mixed bag now, due to a change to how they worked; in the original you always had a ball to throw at them and it made things trivial. You now have to wait things out until an item appears for you to use against the boss. Sometimes this works out but more often than not it just makes easy fights drag out as you dodge the same two attacks and wait to counter. There's a nice new mechanic where getting points and stars and whatnot increases your life bar, so that gives you a good sense of progression. In the end, it's fine. You still have the co-op aspect for extra good times with a pal, and it's a fun enough game to breeze through in an hour or so.


Those are your six main games, and it's a very good selection! Rounding out the "museum curation" aesthetic are a music player and image gallery. The music in all of these games is quite good, but an option to let the music loop indefinitely rather than fading out might have been nice. The image gallery has lots of fun things to look at; promo art, the original boxes, the Japanese release boxes, sketches, and more. It's good, but again a little lacking; for the games themselves I would have loved to be able to read the original manuals. Given that all of the Nintendo branding has been scrubbed from the box arts and whatnot, I can understand its absence. The ability to switch between varied windowed sizes for the game would also have been nice. These are the only gripes I have, though; at $20 USD you are getting six great classic Capcom/Disney games. Not all of them are bona fide classics, but the reality is that finding an original cart of any of these six games, let alone all of them, for $20 USD is just not going to happen. You're getting one hell of a bang for your buck here even if one or two of them aren't the best NES games ever made. For anyone who grew up when these games came out or played and loved them back in the day, this is without hesitation worth your time. Newer players may want to give it a think, but if you're down with the idea of playing 25 year-old video games based on children's cartoons then you're already in the right mindset to enjoy this one. The nostalgic museum curation approach works well for these six games, and this is one collection that's well worth the price of admission.

(The Disney Afternoon Collection is out for PS4, Xbox One, and right here on Steam.)