DuckTales (Game Boy Review)

DuckTales
Platform: Game Boy
Developed by Capcom
First Released September 21, 1990
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

It’s DuckTales from the NES, only with reworked levels, no color, arthritis, and jank. So much jank.

In researching this Disney marathon I’m on, I became somewhat confused as to whether or not the Game Boy builds of Capcom’s legendary Disney-based games are straight NES ports or not. They’re not. Even if they attempt to retain the core mechanics and basic structure, they’ll still feel different and the levels won’t be designed the same as their NES counterparts. It makes more sense to drop the term “port” and call DuckTales on the Game Boy an interpretation of the NES game I just reviewed. And hey, I enjoyed the level design of one of the stages better, so it has that going for it. It’s also an unwieldy nightmare with major control issues and some spotty collision detection. And it’s slow, too. I’d never play this again without having a gun held to my head. I know DuckTales on the Game Boy is the source of warm memories for many of my older readers, but folks, this is neither a good port nor a good game.

The big moments feel less big. There’s nothing guarding Gizmo Duck’s remote control. Well, except two spikes. Hey, in this version of DuckTales, that’s a lot scarier than enemies because you have to use the pogo stick, and it gets pissy when you need it to work.

I’d never played the Game Boy version of DuckTales before. I decided to play it straight. No cheating. No maps. Come what may. Had my emulator not crashed on the fourth stage, there is a good chance I would have Game Overed at some point in either the fourth or fifth stages. So, technically I’ve played this 1.5 times. This is trying to be the NES game to a certain extent. Everything you can do on the NES you can do on the Game Boy. The iconic pogo sticking? It’s there.. or trying to be. It’s really badly done on the Game Boy and incredibly unresponsive. I brought two controllers with me on my trip. Tested both of them on this. Tested it on different emulators. Every time, the act of pogoing was much less responsive than on the NES. Unlike that version, I never was able to adapt to the Game Boy’s pogo issues. Plus, because the playfield is more cramped, you often don’t have the clearance to use it on baddies without taking damage. That would be fine if the whole point was to avoid the enemy entirely, but based on the level layout and enemy behavior, it often seems like it’s just not possible.

You will come to hate the ropes.

It’s not just the pogo stick. Movement in general is sluggish as hell. The ropes are noticeably harder to grab, as if the collision box with them is smaller. This chest here? I tried for quite a while to figure out how to fall off the rope and get to it, even trying to fall from the previous screen. I never got it. DuckTales GB is FULL of moments like that. It’s so bizarre, because they specifically altered the level layouts to accommodate the limitations of the Game Boy, so moments like this shouldn’t happen. But even with brand spanking new levels, it feels like the levels are laid out for the NES physics and responsiveness that isn’t present anymore. And by the way, they kept all the baffling quirks from the NES game. The two hidden treasures and the two extra hit-points are in the same levels they were before. Having to play the Transylvania level three times? The weak bosses? The race after being Dracula Duck? They’re all here, only they’re (mostly) worse. Bubba Duck was improved. They added a tiny little challenge to activating him and it took me a couple of attempts to get it right. So, hey, that’s not nothing.

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I don’t want to exactly say that the level layouts are “stripped down.” They’re just different, really. In fact, I think the level layout for Transylvania is superior on the Game Boy. It’s a better maze, period. Everything IN that maze is worse, but the structure of it feels much more labyrinthine. And.. yea, that’s the only real positive thing I have to say about DuckTales on the Game Boy, because everything else is like a ruined version of the original game. Name an aspect of DuckTales on the NES and it’s here and worse and really only serves to make you long for the TV version. The mine carts are back, and they killed me twice because trying to jump out of them onto the next platform just plain didn’t happen. The controls were like “we’ve received your request to hop out of the cart, and we’re taking it under advisement.”

Remember the “go to Transylvania to get the mine key?” bit from the NES game? Remember how it takes maybe 20 seconds to reach it, rendering the whole thing pointless? Yea, it takes under 10 seconds on the Game Boy. It’s in literally the first mirror one screen over from where you start on the Game Boy.

The bosses were even easier than before. They blink longer and you don’t take damage while they blink, UNTIL Dracula Duck, where I was stunned by how sloppy the whole battle was. I won, but I had to take a lot of damage myself just to score normal hits on him. It was baffling. Curiosity got the better of me and decided to rematch with him after I beat the game, and even after fifteen minutes of trying, I couldn’t damage him without taking damage myself most of the time. It’s the same boss, where you have to pogo off the bats to hit him, only you have A LOT less time because he teleports away so fast. You also have A LOT less space between you, the ceiling, and his head to hit him Also, he starts blinking to teleport away, but you can still hit him while he’s blinking, which is kind of confusing. Then, the final race between me and Glomgold wasn’t even close. He goes so slow they might as well not have bothered.

The “spring off the bad guy to not pay the toll” trick on the Amazon stage no longer works. However, there’s a hidden passage leading to a shortcut where you drop down into the boss’s chamber.

I could go on and on about little annoyances.. and I think I will. The man-eating plants at times seem like they’re impossible to leap over. There’s also too many instances of playing a treasure chest with only a single character length of clearance between it and a platform, only the golf club move can’t be activated, either. The Moon level is completely ruined, with a layout that isn’t fun to explore at all. Hell, even the base logic of hidden areas and what’s inside them are often just plain dumb. For example, the mines have an invisible passage that leads to a hidden room that contains a gem and a cake. The cake restores your full health. Oh, and where is this hidden wall at? Right behind Mrs. Beakley, the character who drops food that restores your health. Why have that cake in the hidden room instead of a second gem? It was at that point where I wondered if the words “does any of this make sense?” were even once uttered during the development of DuckTales on the Game Boy.

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I get that the Game Boy had limitations to it, so some jank should always be expected. Like, I enjoyed Link’s Awakening and Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins just fine, but they’re pretty rough games. But, they also don’t try to be copies of console games. I’ve now played probably in the ballpark of two hundred Game Boy games, and I’ve never really enjoyed any that attempt to be “the Game Boy version.” They’re never as good. I’ll never understand why developers stubbornly kept trying to do it, either. It makes more sense to do an entirely new game that plays to the strengths of the Game Boy hardware instead of trying (and usually failing) to make the same game while working around its weaknesses. This was an early Game Boy release, so I’d normally chalk this up to the development learning curve. Except this kept happening again and again for the entire record-breaking lifecycle of the handheld. And do you know who I blame? YOU, the children of the 1980s! For buying them despite them being awful. Were you THAT desperate to play a terrible version of a great game at school? Couldn’t you just go into the bathroom and smoke like any self-respecting delinquent?
Verdict: NO!