Review: DuckTales Remastered

(First off, no, I haven't forgotten about the PS1 tournament, I still have plans of continuing it.)


So, DuckTales: Remastered.

I’m not even going to lie, despite how excited I was for a remake of one of my favorite games of all time, I was a little concerned. Would it be just as good as the original game? Or would it end up being a poorly designed mess of a game that would end up brutally murdering everyone’s childhood memories? It doesn’t help that this was coming right off of a very underwhelming Disney game that preyed on players' nostalgia of a certain other beloved licensed title. Well, after playing and beating it on all difficulties except Extreme Mode a few times, I think I can safely say that the latter didn’t happen. With that said, there are definitely some weird design decisions that kind of annoy me and keep this from being in the upper echelon of video game remakes (i.e. Bionic Commando ReArmed, REMake, etc.), but overall, it’s a decent enough remake that ended up being far from the disaster many (including myself) thought it could end up being.

The presentation for the game is lovely. Right off the bat, the first thing you hear is the classic 8-16 Bit Capcom logo chime, complete with a pixelated Capcom logo phasing in. It’s pretty neat. One complaint I (and many others) had with the game after it’s initial reveal is that the game was 2.5D. The character sprites are all hand drawn and animate beautifully… but they’re placed upon polygonal 3D backdrops which really doesn’t mesh all that well more often than not. Was it a cost cutting measure? Probably. Did it sour my enjoyment of the game? Surprisingly… it didn’t. In fact, the polygonal environments actually kind of work in some cases (The Amazon, African Mines and the Himalayas being the biggest examples). It helps that the backgrounds weren’t just slapped together: They were actually initially done by an animator who actually worked on the original cartoon and had kept around the assets he had worked on. And for the most part, it’s great! It’s kind of jarring in Transylvania and the game’s new opening level, the McDuck Money Vault. I would have preferred the entire game be hand drawn, but I understand that it would have probably put them over budget, and what they did do for the final product ended up being better than I expected. So decent job there, I guess.

But that leads to one of the biggest draws of this remake: the fact that the game now has a story framing, with voice actors from the original cartoon reprising their roles (with sound-alikes for those that have passed on) to voice act these new scenes. As someone who loved the original game, and doesn’t mind some context every now and again, I was excited. Even moreso, since I’m a massive fan of the cartoon, as well. The voice acting for the most part is pretty great, although you can definitely tell that Alan Young and June Foray are getting a bit up there in age, as their portrayals of Scrooge and Magica DeSpell lack the oomph they once had. That’s not to say their performances sound phoned in, mind you: They definitely sound like they should, and that their respective VAs enjoyed reprising their roles. Hearing Scrooge’s sarcastic banter with Launchpad in the Amazon level put a grin on my face that didn’t leave for a good long while. With all of this fanservice comes a pretty big question: Was this all necessary? In all honesty, it wasn’t. Am I glad it’s there? Most definitely. But I can understand the perspective of someone that maybe only wants to just have a quick runthrough of the remake without having to watch a cutscene every few minutes. Granted, there is a scene skip option available, but if you fall into the aforementioned category, you’ll likely be pausing the game every few minutes just to skip a monologue of Scrooge finding one of eight coins in the Amazon level or something. This wouldn’t have bothered me at all if WayForward had included a “Classic Mode” option of sorts that completely disable cutscenes and let you play the game uninterrupted like in the NES original. It’s only a minor quibble of mine, but it’s definitely one to the detriment of the game as a whole overall.

In addition to the plot and character related additions, Remastered also features two new levels: Scrooge’s Money Vault, which serves as the tutorial level, and Mount Vesuvius, a new final level unlocked after beating the main five levels. You face Dracula Duck here, instead of backtracking to Transylvania to do so like in the original. The Money Vault is a decent enough tutorial level. It communicates most of the game’s basic mechanics  to the player here: Pogo Jumping, Cane Swinging, all of that good stuff. It’s broken up by all of the cutscenes, but I’ve already said my piece on those. Mount Vesuvius is the game’s final level, and while it’s not a bad level… it’s a tad disappointing. One of the best things about DuckTales’ level design was that the levels weren’t structured to be linear. They were a lot more open ended than your usual platforming games at the time, and encouraged exploration and experimentation, something that also translates to the main five levels in the remake as well. Mt. Vesuvius… kind of throws away that design philosophy altogether, opting for a linear point A to point B experience with some frustrating level design thrown in the mix for the sake of having a difficult final level. It’s not bad enough to sour my experience of the game, but it definitely stands as one of the lower points of the game. And that’s not even touching on the game’s chase sequence after the final boss, which sends you back to the beginning of the level if you happen to lose all of your lives. I’m all for adhering to the “learn the game or die” design philosophy of ye olde 8-16 Bit platformers, but they couldn’t have been arsed to throw in a checkpoint after that final boss? Really? Even the NES original had a (very) small handful of checkpoints.

The controls for the game work about as well as they should. Thankfully, WF had the good sense to give you two versions of the Pogo jump: The original version featured in the NES version of the first game which required you to hold Down before activating the pogo, and the tweaked version which only required you to hold down the pogo button, which was first featured in the Game Boy version of DuckTales and retained in every other subsequent version of the game. It’s a nice option, and it goes a long way in ensuring that you can make your experience of Remastered as close to the NES version as possible in terms of difficulty. Not that the NES version was very difficult, mind you. But how good you were at the game almost entirely depended on your mastery of the Pogo Jump. You get three difficulties right off of the bat: Easy, Medium and Hard. Easy and Medium are pretty lax, as there are an abundance of Health Power Ups on both difficulties, meaning that you can be a lot less careful with how you play the game, as Scrooge will likely have enough health to tank even the mightiest of enemies. Hard Mode gives you an experience a little closer to the NES game, as the number of Health Boosts are lowered to two, with the secret treasures from the NES game replacing the remaining ones. Unfortunately, the focus on money collecting has shifted from affecting what ending you get to instead serving as currency to buy gallery items, as well as filling up Scrooge’s personal money vault. (Which can even be dived into! A nice touch, I’ve gotta admit.) I do love me some concept art, but collecting as much money as I could to get the best ending was one of the reasons I played the original so much. Hell, until recently, I didn’t even know there was an elusive bad ending for the game for anyone that managed to complete it with absolutely no money available.

The bosses have also gotten quite the upgrade, as well. They have all new patterns, and generally pose much more of a threat now, instead of being something of a joke, like in the original version. The encounter against Magica DeSpell almost seems to play out like a Castlevania boss fight in some respects. The boss fight against the King of the Terra-Firmians in the African Mines is a favorite of mine, especially since the boss itself is voice acted, and the entire level as a whole is a pretty big love letter to “EarthQuack”, one of my favorite episodes of the cartoon. Overall, the boss fights are definitely one aspect of this remake that ends up being undoubtedly handled better than it’s NES counterpart.

And then, we come to the soundtrack. The soundtrack is handled by none other that Jake “Virt” Kafuman, who has titles such as Shantae, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Contra 4, Mighty Switch Force, and Double Dragon Neon under his belt, just to name a few. I can’t even imagine how nerve wracking it must have been to work on arranging one of the most beloved VG soundtracks of all time (which includes what might be one of the most beloved gaming tracks in general in The Moon theme), and to be honest, I expected a soundtrack that would end up pretty good, with maybe a few iffy arrangements here and there. However, what I got was a soundtrack that completely blew away my expectations. Every arrangement breathes completely new life into each and every track, and it’s really something that has to be be heard to believed. Of course, The Moon theme received an arrangement fitting of it’s prestige, and the new arrangement for Transylvania is a pretty damned great piece as well. However, my favorite track has got to be the new arrangement for the African Mines. What was an enjoyable little ditty in the NES version turns into a fantastic track with some catchy guitar licks framing the melody backed up by some great percussion. The end result is a track that is funky as all hell. The more I heard the soundtrack, the more I realized no one but Virt could have done this legendary soundtrack the justice it so rightly deserved.

If you’re an 8-Bit purist and don’t have time for all of that newfangled arrangement nonsense, you can also unlock an 8-Bit version of the soundtrack, which allows you to play through the game with the original NES soundtrack. In a move reminiscent of the GB Player in Pokemon HeartGold & Soul Silver, the new tracks composed just for the remake are also done in this style, making it a pretty awesome treat all around. I really appreciate when people go the extra mile to include these kinds of things. Not only does it give the game more character, but it really shows how much the developers behind the game care.

So, what’s my final verdict on the game? It gets a lot right. More than I expected it to, even. But there are quite a few design decisions the game really could have done without (or in some cases, with) from both a level design and presentation perspective so that the remake could reach that middle ground between nostalgia for the cartoon and nostalgia for the NES game that WayForward was so obviously shooting for. It missed the mark, but not by much. At the end of the day, it’s an enjoyable remake that I still find myself replaying because of how enjoyable the core game is. I think it’s a solid 7 out of 10. Hopefully the game does well enough to warrant more Disney/Capcom/WayForward remakes, because I’d love to see Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers get similar treatment.

Hopefully Castle of Illusion HD ends up being a similar pleasant surprise.