NES gaming review: Duck Tales

Duck tales is probably one of the easiest games on the NES.

The game is from Capcom and was released in Europe on December 1990, in Japan on January 1990 and in North America on September 1989.

When you start up the game, you hear the lovely music from the Duck Tales animated series where this game is based on.

And you also get to choose your game difficulty from the options: Easy, Medium and Hard.

The player controls the character, Uncle Scrooge from Duck Tales throughout the entire game, searching for high worthy treasures to become the wealthiest duck on the planet.

As for attacking the enemies, you can use your cane to pogo them into oblivion, the pogo cane can also be used to open treasure boxes and passages. You can pogo even higher on a treasure that is in the air (which would be most unlikely in real life, because I have never seen a floating treasure box in the air, have you?).

The five stages are basically known areas on the planet. The Amazon, African mines, Transylvania, and the Himalayas., but also the Moon.

Of course every stage has its own kind of enemies. Like the mummies in the Transylvania stage, spiders and other tropical animals in the Amazon and African mine stages, some yeti like creatures in the Himalayas, and some science-fiction like robot ducks at the Moon stage.

Every stage has their own boss you have kill, after they die they drop the stage treasure. After getting your hand on the treasure that drops from the boss of that stage, the stage is no longer playable.

After the stages are all completed, the game is done.

But there are 2 hidden treasures in the game, when you have found them and completed the game with at least 10.000.000 Dollars, you will get an alternate ending screen.

When crossing a certain spot (that is invisible) in the screen in a stage or kill an enemy, they will drop either food to regain health, or a small or big diamond to get more money.

There are some characters in the game you can just talk to that give hints throughout the stages, like non-player characters. Heuy, Dewey and Louie –Your nephews, who pop up in various places in the game, mostly to give hints or to restrict areas. Webby – Does about the same as the nephews, provides hints and restricts areas. Gizmo Duck – Comes for a brief moment to blast a wall open for you in The Moon stage. Launchpad McQuack – Helps you to get across a pitfall in the Amazon stage and is found in every stage except for Transylvania, where you have the option of returning to Duckburg. When you meet to certain of his conditions, you will enter a bonus round. Launchpad can only be used once per stage. Gyro Gearloose – (got to love his name, Gearloose ha-ha) can only be met in the bonus stage, where he launches diamonds at Scrooge. Mrs. Beakley – Turns up in certain stages and drops food for you to regain health. Bubba – He’s a caveman that provides you with an extra heart, if you free him in the Himalaya stage. Magica De Spell – You will get to fight here in the Transylvania stage, you can say she is like a boss. Flintheart Glomgold – You have to stop him and reach the treasure box before he does. The Beagle Boys – They show up occasionally in the game to either guard a passage or to take your nephews captive.

As I was growing up I used to love to game and I still do today, we didn’t own this game ourselves, so I had to borrow it from a friend. But it was totally worth it. If you like retro gaming, you should really try this game. The stages are nice, the music is good, over-all it’s just an excellent game.

Capcom has proven itself worthy of making games back then and today they still do with games like Resident evil, Devil may cry, Lost Planet and Monster hunter.