Published at: 10:04 pm - Friday April 26 2013
i didn’t realize until just now that duck tales was stylized as ducktales (one word). anyways, i used to own ducktales on the NES. the first issue of nintendo power i ever owned was the issue with ducktales on the front cover. that was the september/october 1989 issue. i either had a subscription to nintendo power at that point or got one soon after because i had every nintendo power issue after that one for quite a few years.
i did enjoy the ducktales cartoon a lot, but i wasn’t some kind of ducktales super fan. i’m pretty sure i got the NES game because my parents picked it out. i remember the game fondly and recall finishing it like a 100 times or so. every time i finished the game i would try to outdo my score (amount of money) in previous games. i used to have all the maps memorized and was basically a professional at the game.
i just played and finished the game in the first time in easily over 15 years. it’s still a pretty good game, i wouldn’t say it’s a classic like i would for super mario 2 or super mario world, etc. however, it’s still a solid and very enjoyable platformer. i didn’t recall the game having difficulty settings…it has easy, normal, and hard difficulties. so, i’m not sure what difficulty level i used to play the game on or if i ever beat the game on hard difficulty. i finished it on normal today.
one thing that detracts from the gameplay is the somewhat tricky button pressing needed to use the cane. you can’t simply just press the B button for the cane you kind of have to press B and down while jumping. so without a lot of practice there will be moments where you’re planning to use the cane but don’t press the buttons correctly. this easily results in you losing health or dying. you can also get kind of stuck on enemies after being injured and you’ll lose multiple health points on one enemy.
the game is pretty short. i’d say once you know where to go you could easily beat the game in under an hour.
