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DuckTales Remastered
Wii U
Re-Masterpiece
4.5/5 stars
Capcom has always had a reputation of driving concepts into the ground. However, for a brief period of time in the NES era, the company also had a reputation for being the one and only developer capable of creating legitimately good licensed games based on Disney intellectual properties. One of those good games, released in the Autumn of 1989, was “DuckTales,” based on the animated adventures of Scrooge McDuck and company.
Fast forward to 2013, and Capcom suddenly and out-of-nowhere decided to set one of their development teams, WayForward, to the task of remastering “DuckTales” for every current-gen platform. Why would Capcom do this? The “DuckTales” TV show, which was one of my favorite shows as a kid, has been off the air since 1990, with no current resurgence in popularity that would warrant a tie-in videogame. Perhaps Capcom has simply been picking up on the wave of 8-bit nostalgia propelling Indie games to great heights and the current trend to remaster everything instead of creating anything new.
Whatever the case, WayForward had a difficult task ahead of them in remastering one of the most beloved NES games, which frequently appears on best-of lists. Fortunately for us, they managed to do a fantastic job, and allowed “DuckTales Remastered” to shine even brighter than the original.
Presentation
“DuckTales Remastered” is an absolutely gorgeous treat for the senses. The graphics are almost entirely hand-drawn 2D sprites with a few bits of 3D thrown in for special effects. The environments are incredibly faithful to those of the NES original, while the character sprites are large, lushly colorful, and beautifully animated.
The audio is equally spectacular, featuring remastered-but-still-8-bit takes on the chiptune soundtrack that graced the NES version. The new audio quality is almost a little too good, though, as it doesn’t quite capture the whine of the NES’ audio chip perfectly. “DuckTales Remastered” is, unlike the original, fully voiced, with all of the voice work done by the original voiceactors from the show, which lends an amazing amount of authenticity to the experience.
These gorgeously animated graphics and authentic voiceacting are put to work by filling the game with numerous narrative cutscenes that place the game’s action in context (unlike the original NES game, which was – as was typical in the NES era – something of a mysterious non sequitur). These narrative-driving cutscenes do an amazing job at gluing the action scenes together into a cohesive whole. In fact this newly narrative take on the game makes “DuckTales Remastered” feel like a short season of the TV show, with each stage and its accompanying cutscenes serving as an episode.
Story
Whereas the original “DuckTales” simply dumped the player from the title screen to a stage select menu that sent Scrooge McDuck (the richest duck in the world) on a wild goose chase through exotic environments in search of treasure for no reason, “DuckTales Remastered” adds an opening stage/episode where the Beagle Boys – Duckburg’s notorious crime family – break into Scrooge’s money bin/office. Upon thwarting this robbery, Scrooge discovers that the Beagle Boys weren’t actually after his money, but instead wanted to steal an old painting that Scrooge had just purchased for next to nothing.
It turns out that this painting contained a secret treasure map leading to all of the exotic locations from the original game. Each locale now has an opening sequence as well as a few cutscene-triggering objectives before a confrontation with an area boss and an extro scene. Of course, being the greedy bastard he is, Scrooge doesn’t really need an excuse to hunt for treasure once he knows where it is, which is exactly what the game’s true villains are counting on.
Upon collecting all of the treasures, the true villains reveal themselves and the plot thickens. Where the original “DuckTales” simply re-used the Haunted Mansion stage for its final battle, “DuckTales Remastered” adds an all-new volcano stage, plus a number of great revelatory cutscenes.
Gameplay
“DuckTales Remastered,” like “DuckTales” is a 2D platformer. The player controls Scrooge in sidescrolling environments, where the elderly duck can jump and climb on vines/chains. Scrooge doesn’t really have any form of attack other than a pogo-jump he can perform by bouncing on his cane (pogo-jumping on an enemy’s head kills it). Scrooge can also use his cane to golf-swing at small, stationary objects, like rocks, bricks, and barrels (these objects will also kill enemies upon collision). In the original “DuckTales,” pogo-jumping was kind of cumbersome, as it required the player to hold down+B while jumping. In “DuckTales Remastered,” there is an option called ‘hard pogo’ which is off by default. ‘Hard pogo’ is the old style, whereas the default in “DuckTales Remastered” is simply holding the equivalent of the B button (depending on the controller) while jumping.
Plenty of cumbersome NES gameplay mechanics have been removed in “DuckTales Remastered,” such as the stage timer. The game now supports saving between stages and includes a map screen for every stage. Exploration is now an even bigger aspect of the game than it originally was, as the gemstones that appeared out of thin air in “DuckTales” have become even more numerous in the remaster. Scrooge can also seek out and collect heart containers to extend his life bar in each of the core stages (not the intro or finale) from 3 to a maximum of 8 (whereas “DuckTales” only had two hidden life motes).
Unfortunately, some annoyances of the 8-bit era are still present. Enemies still respawn incessantly the second Scrooge moves away from their spawn point, and hit detection can be a bit off when Scrooge is near a ledge. Worst of all, however, is the fact that “DuckTales Remastered” still uses a system of extra lives on all but the easiest difficulty. Nothing about either version of the game is super challenging… in fact one of the reasons “DuckTales” is remembered so fondly from the NES era is that it was actually beatable in an era of Nintendo-Hard. However, having to replay through the entire stage after dying a couple of times to the end boss isn’t hard, it’s just tedious and repetitive.
Why worry about dying to a stage boss? Well, that is the biggest change the folks at WayForward made in the remastering process. While the stage maps are about as faithful as possible, the bosses have been completely redone and are much, much more challenging. Between the exploration aspect of the game, the new mid-stage mission objectives, and the multi-pattern boss fights, a stage in “DuckTales Remastered” takes close to 30 minutes to complete (with cutscenes), which is a lot more repetition than a 4 minute stage in the original game.
I’m not saying that any of the above changes are bad – they’re FANTASTIC! It’s just that the continued use of a deprecated system for padding gameplay time via repetition just doesn’t belong in a modern game, even if it’s a remaster of an old game. It’s incredibly patronizing that Easy is the only difficulty without lives, since that difficulty also allows Scrooge to take two hits per heart in his life bar instead of one. I would have much preferred to see both Easy and Normal discard the lives system and only bring it back for Hard+ difficulties.
Overall
“DuckTales Remastered” is both a remaster done right and a licensed game done right. It brings much needed modernization and expanded narrative elements to a beloved classic from over 20 years ago while keeping – or improving – the gameplay design elements that propelled the original into the upper echelon of its time.
Presentation: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
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