DuckTales: Remastered

released on Aug 13, 2013

A remake of Disney's DuckTales

DuckTales Remastered takes the classic Disney platforming adventure to a whole new level. All of the visuals from the 8-bit game have been beautifully re-created as hand-drawn and animated sprites, across a backdrop of luscious, re-envisioned level backgrounds. Furthermore, original Disney Character Voices talent, including some from the cartoon TV series, bring in-game characters to life with charm and wit, while the classic melodies of the original soundtrack are given a modern twist. The game also features an all new tutorial level where players can get familiar with the iconic pogo jump and cane swing, while Scrooge McDuck's Museum allows players to track all their stats and compare their progress with others via global leaderboards.


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Spoiler level: low. Expect basic mechanical and design spoilers.

I was never a Disney kid. I've seen maybe two episodes of the original DuckTales TV show, but that was years ago, making this game pretty much completely fresh to me. I have also never played the original for any significant amount of time. For this review, I played the Steam version.

The gameplay is solid and direct, with laid-back platforming and clever treasure hunting summing up to a wonderful and light-hearted romp through colorful locales. This plot is likewise pleasant; a high variety of well-paced and nicely-written hijinx grants the feel of a real Saturday-morning cartoon, delivered by a fantastic performance from the surviving members of the original cartoon’s cast. Accommodations are also made for players who are unfamiliar with the source material; character backgrounds and motivations are provided by crystal-clear visual design and clever writing which avoids lengthy exposition dumps.

The levels are littered with countless secrets to find; the most common are simple gems and health, generally revealed when Scrooge navigates over a specific tile, but the levels also feature more interesting navigational challenges. Alternate paths are disguised cleverly, and the player may even occasionally move above the screen to find hidden rooms. While unintuitive at first, once the player is made aware of their existence, the telegraphy of such secrets becomes quite effective. The game also occasionally rewards patient players with treasure that can be permanently missed by overly-hasty players, encouraging thoughtful play.

I’d like to take a moment to praise the money scoring system. I find it impossible to care about score in most classic games; most such systems grant points for damn-near anything, including benign tasks that the player will repeat ad-nauseum anyway. They feel like an afterthought, which is remedied in two manners by DuckTales Remastered. Firstly, the gallery, which was not present in the NES game, allows the player to purchase various pieces of media. It provides decent extrinsic motivation for racking up money, but has some issues. Categories of art should be unlocked through other means than merely spending money, and some of the types of concept art could be consolidated; as it stands, the gallery is a bit padded, and cannot be remotely completed with a single playthrough. The other boon to the scoring system is that it is deliberate. All money is procured in the form of treasure, and treasures do not respawn, converting points from a vague motivator to a self-imposable high-score challenge. Players with little interest in searching the nooks and crannies of each level can safely ignore the score system, while those who enjoy it are granted the secondary challenge of scouring for every last bit of treasure, complementing the level design excellently. All said, I thoroughly enjoyed racking up money. This also indirectly heightens enemy design. Since most enemies provide no money, they are free to respawn when the player walks away from them, keeping areas lively even after traversal.

One element that pleasantly surprised me was the quality of the bosses. Maybe it’s because years of exposure to Mario games has rotted my brain, but the bosses of DuckTales Remastered were remarkably challenging and fresh for a 2D platforming game. I am unsure of how much they were updated from the original game, but each boss, with maybe one exception, had a varied-yet-fair attack pattern that I would not usually associate with games of similar vintage, making each a joy to fight.

I must also praise the music, since it’s all good stuff. Each stage features its own catchy tune, and some stages even sport dynamic music. The final main level theme in particular is a well-renowned classic from the NES game, and this new version holds up brilliantly.

It isn’t all sunshine and roses, however. The controls are slightly suboptimal, particularly in regards to the cane. In most areas it feels just fine, but when spikes are overhead, performing repeated low bounces can occasionally twist one’s thumbs into spaghetti noodles. Additionally, the fact that enemies respawn but health pickups do not can occasionally feel unfair, though I never personally found it to be a dire flaw. Another design error comes in the form of the minecarts. Most of the time, jumping from a minecart requires no directional input, as Scrooge retains the cart’s momentum. However, whenever a minecart falls into a pit, this is suddenly inverted, and an unprepared player will plummet straight down to his or her death; Scrooge will even unintuitively lose his momentum mid-jump, depending on the jump’s timing. This caught me off-guard numerous times due to poor telegraphing, and even resulted in a game-over.

The game also suffers from some minor technical failures, the most notable of which being the awful input lag. I wanted to play on my plasma television, but it suffers from approximately 43 milliseconds of lag; this rarely bothers me, but DuckTales Remastered adds several frames of lag on top of this, resulting in a sludgy experience. I moved to a lag-free computer monitor, which mostly remedied the issue, but this is obviously ridiculous. Additionally, control rebinding was finicky. I played with a Switch Pro controller using Steam Input, which worked well most of the time, except when I attempted to use the game’s built-in button remapping. Somehow, this resulted in the jump button and attack button merging, making Scrooge whack any adjacent walls with the cane instead of jumping. This may not be the game’s fault, but it still happened. Lastly, the game is a bit picky about which display it wants to use, but this is easily fixed with a configuration file tweak or the win+shift+arrow hotkey to move the window between monitors.

Overall, should you buy DuckTales Remastered? Sure, if you can find a copy! It's been unavailable digitally for a few years now, but it’s a standout example of a treasure-hunting platformer with loads of charm and care put into it.

the game is pretty, short, and fun. its got a lot of charm but honestly nothing too special, for what it is i liked it

A very pretty remaster which gives the original game a much needed boost in quality and exciting gameplay. The voice work is nice and the soundtrack is very well done.

They managed to stay loyal to the original game but with remade graphics and sounds. The quality is great and the soundtrack too. Some boss fights were hard but each one has its weaknesses. I have nothing negative to point out about the game!

Não imaginei que um jogo do Ducktales ia tirar tanto da minha sanidade mental

(Não joguei o original e depois da experiência com esse nem quero)

Eu comprei esse jogo esperando uma coisa completamente diferente, eu esperava um jogo de final de semana que você termina em uma jogada, esse jogo definitivamente não é isso.

Os gráficos e animações são muito boas(graficamente falando), e as músicas são boas, porém as qualidades param por aí.
Existem jogos no qual a dificuldade agrega, NÃO É O CASO AQUI, a dificuldade desse jogo é aquele tipo de dificuldade irritante que é baseada na falta de movimentos e controles lixo, esse é aquele tipo de jogo que exige certa velocidade e precisão nos controles, com controles imprecisos e personagens lentos, É RIDÍCULO. Outra coisa que me irritou muito são os levels design imbecis desse jogo, e os inimigos, com seus ataques rápidos e sem a possibilidade de você poder antecipa-los.

Eu vejo alguém gostando desse jogo, eu acho que ele tem qualidades e mesmo não sendo o que eu esperava, eu poderia gostar, mas com certeza a gameplay me decepcionou muito. Honestamente não recomendo, mas se você quiser arriscar...

Apesar de não ter jogado o original no NES, o trabalho feito nesse remastered, que eu chamaria de remake, foi maravilhoso, me pergunto porque não decidiram dar o mesmo tratamento para o segundo jogo.