Silver Dollars: Ducktales at 25 Part 4

Time to play a game...or watch someone else play it HERE . I got a chance to promote Chris's blog and show both of the Ducktales NES video games at the same time. Yay me. That Australian commercial for McDonald's Happy Meal toys smacks of the 1980s! I assume it must have aired with an epsiode of "Mr. Belvedere" or "Growing Pains", followed by "The Facts of Life".

I'm happy to report that my NES still works. My Game Boy is a different story altogether. It's the strangest thing - you do your best to keep things in good shape...and entrophy makes sure that it still falls apart. Anyway, I was knee-deep in the Sega Genesis (and playing Quackshot, which is a kind-of sequel to Ducktales, really - there's no other way to explain it) to get Ducktales 2. Besides, I don't remember the first game being easy to find, anyway. I recall my mom brought it from one of those small toy shops that had backpacks hanging outside the entrance from the awnings. I remember smacking my head against the wheel of a low-hanging stroller once...

I also remember the issue of Nintendo Power that had Scrooge on the cover. And that I don't have it anymore. :(

The Ducktales game was a big improvement by Capcom after the hideous Mickey Mousecapade game...the less said about that, the better. Ducktales was actually an add-on to the pre-existing board for Mega Man, (not unlike how Ms. Pac Man was an add-on created by students at MIT and submitted to Namco) so there is a
fair amount of deja vu in the gameplay. If you've played the game before, or seen the footage provided, you can see the appeal of it. I think the highest compliment paid was an epsiode of Icons on G4 devoted to the NES - a few seconds of the Ducktales Game and title card appeared in a montage of the Nintendo Entertainment System's "Greatest Hits"/highlights. Nice.

Mickey Mousecapade - this made me run and hide behind the sofa...after my mom saw how this $50.00 game that her "intelligent" son made her buy looked on the tv.

Donald Duck in QuackShot  - I recall seeing a guy selling his Sega Genesis at a yard sale and this was the only game he offered with the system. Not Sonic, not Altered Beast. Quackshot. That makes a lot of sense to me.

To the surprise of many... Scrooge made an appearance in Kindom Hearts 2, but it was in pantomime. Squareenix made up for this egregious error by bringing back Alan Young (!) for this special appearance...

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep ... I wonder what that series would have been like if it began with Sora teaming up with a certain tycoon from a town where life is like a hurricane, full of racecars, lasers and airplanes.