Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (NES Review)

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developed by Capcom
First Released June 8, 1990
Included in The Disney Afternoon Collection

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Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is one of the four best platformers on the NES. Yep, I went there. I rank it up there with Super Mario 2 & 3 and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse as the holy quadrilogy of NES platforming. It’s astonishing to me that DuckTales is held in this incredible prestige when Chip & Dale is the superior game. Not a perfect game, mind you, but it’s so close that I think a ROM hacker could make the necessary changes to create what would be a genuinely flawless 2D platformer. So, what does Rescue Rangers do that puts it so far above the insanely crowded mascot platforming field on the NES?

One major thing the game gets wrong is allowing you to circumvent as many as three levels. Rescue Rangers has one of the most nonsensical maps in video game history. Hell, look at where Level E is situated. It’s so weird. Really, the reason to play it is to bank more extra lives. That would be fine if Rescue Rangers were a hard game, but it’s actually pretty easy. I could get it if Capcom had a meeting and were like “man, some of these levels suck.” But, folks, all eleven stages in Rescue Rangers are fantastic. Don’t skip any of them. All-in, you’re looking at a little over an hour to beat the whole shebang even if you play every stage, and it’s worth it.

First off, that object-throwing combat is just delightful. Like a hyperactive version of Mario 2’s vegetable-yanking-carrying-throwing mechanic, and it’s so fun. Most of the enemies take only one shot to kill with normal-sized boxes. The act of picking them up and throwing them never gets boring. Then, there’s the non-throwing boxes that never get used up, and the gigantic fruits that weigh-down your jumping but fly through every enemy. When you defeat an enemy, it makes one of the most satisfying death noises on the NES. It sounds almost like a sloppy-wet death fart. And yet, the turd in Rescue Rangers’ punch bowl is tied to these boxes. It’s this:

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Yea, this is a head-scratching game design decision. I can’t justify it. I’ve tried to figure out the logic, and the best I could come up with was they had other plans for how this whole “ducking in the boxes” thing would work and what’s left in Rescue Rangers is a game-wrecking relic of those initial plans. So, in case you didn’t know, in Rescue Rangers, Chip & Dale can duck inside every box they pick up, including the multi-use steel boxes. Your eyes poke out comically, and it’s adorable. So, it’s a stealth thing, right? Actually, no. If an enemy walks into you while you’re hiding in a box like this, it dies. Instantly. Well, assuming it’s a one-hit-point enemy, which most of the baddies are. If you’re holding a wooden box, all you lose is the box. If it’s a steel box, you can reuse it again and again as a no-effort-needed shield of death. It nerfs Rescue Rangers to such an absurd degree that I ended up having an extended discussion with my friends trying to justify it. It’s “wacky” and “cartoonish” but it also absolutely murders the tension in the game. It makes you wonder if Rescue Rangers originally had a stealth element that was removed early in development. Why would you ever have something like this in a combat-focused side scroller?

Most of the set pieces are fun. The hammer, found in one of the optional levels, is a bit janky. It feeds into my theory that Capcom wasn’t proud of ALL the levels, and thus was born the map. For the record, the rest of this level slaps.

That’s literally my only major complaint about Rescue Rangers. Oh, plenty of little ones. Ones so nit-picky that I feel bad for even bringing them up, but screw it, here we go. Enemies flying off the screen when you kill them is nice, but I wish they had “damage sprites” so that I knew they suffered. Also I might be unhinged. The bosses are even worse about this. The bosses that utilize NES trickery to look massive just vanish from the screen, and not in a satisfying “Thanos snapped them into ash” type of way but rather in a “poof, existence ended” type of way. Since the bosses only blink when you damage them, it leaves what should be historically amazing combat a little lacking in impact. And yea, the co-op isn’t all that, but since both myself and my sister’s first instinct was to murder each-other, we might not be the best judges of it.

I appreciate how out of f*cks to give Capcom was about symmetry with some of the levels. In the first battle with Fat Cat, they said “screw it: TWO spikes on the ground in a spot that’s designed to create maximum annoyance. Does it look pretty? Does it look sophisticated? No? WHO CARES because it adds challenge.”

Admittedly, all of my annoyances with Rescue Rangers are exceptionally petty. Hell, I’m expecting a lot of push-back on my “hiding in the crates could have ruined the game” argument. But, I’m also calling Rescue Rangers a top four platform game on a console defined by platforming games. Clearly I love it, so those complaints are out of a desire to see it rise above Mario and claim the throne. The roughly one hour of gameplay Rescue Rangers gives you is breathtaking. Each of the eleven levels feels completely different from each-other. They each throw in at least one novel set piece as well, so as to not simply feel like it’s the same gameplay over and over and it’s just the background facade changing. That’s harder to pull off than you think, especially with the limitations of the NES.

It goes without saying that the sprite work is gorgeous. While I think Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is the best looking overall NES game, Capcom wins the “consistently great looking” contest, hands-down.

Modern games have it a lot easier making levels feel different. File sizes are basically unlimited, so you can easily create a new setting. Retro games? They struggle with making stages feel distinguishable from one-another. Not only are you limited by fewer buttons and actions, but there’s only so much you can do with an engine that takes up less memory than any title screen from a game today. Rescue Rangers is the rare NES game that has over ten levels that all feel completely different while retaining the core gameplay. Part of the reason for this is there’s gags unique to each stage. Exposed live wires. Faucets you turn off. Machines dropping steel balls on you. A hammer that only appears once in the entire game. Rabbits who whip a carpet at you. It’s not enough they changed the backgrounds or the enemies. They gave each stage’s design logic its own personality. That’s what sets this apart from so many other quality games.

Huge variety of enemies too. I hated these ones. There’s a spot at the end of Fat Cat’s factory (the final stage) where you’re on a conveyor and I’m absolutely convinced it’s impossible to squeeze past one of these guys without taking damage.

There’s eight bosses, because three of the stages end without one. That’s disappointing, because the bosses feel like events. They have a unique combat mechanic: there’s a red rubber ball in the boss chamber that, when thrown, ricochets back and forth in a straight line off the wall, damaging the boss if it passes through it. Sometimes, you can even score two hits in a single throw. Just think: if Fat Cat hadn’t left a ball in the room with them, he would have taken over the world. Admittedly, the bosses all feel samey. This is the one area of the game where you sort of see the sausage get made and realize that it’s just the same boss with the same collision boxes, only with tiny changes to how their projectiles behave or how the collision box moves around. However, the settings and sprites do a pretty dang good job of hiding the fact that you’re fighting slight variations of the same thing over and over. The rubber ball being unique to their chambers helps with this too. If you want an example of how many alterations you can do to one style of 8-bit platformer boss, Rescue Rangers ranks right up there with Mega Man games.

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I get why DuckTales is more revered. It’s based on a more popular, more endearing cartoon (with a much catchier theme song) and the pogo stick mechanic is probably slightly more satisfying than throwing the boxes. But, in terms of gameplay, Rescue Rangers slays DuckTales. It’s got a lot more content and never makes you replay one level three times. It’s a bigger game. It’s got better boss fights. It’s got more gags and gimmicks than DuckTales. It’s even got co-op, if you’re into that sort of thing. I wish WayForward had also remade this one. Given how they took the six ultra bland bosses of DuckTales and made them delightfully wonderful, I can’t imagine what they could do with the eight boss fights in Rescue Rangers. The fact that Rescue Rangers sits in DuckTales’ shadow leaves it feeling a bit underrated. THIS is Capcom’s one true NES masterpiece. Not Mega Man 2. Not Bionic Commando. Certainly not DuckTales. Rescue Rangers, flawed as it is, is the best 8-Bit Capcom release I’ve played. Even if they kinda hosed Monterey Jack.
Verdict: YES!

OH! OH! I have another valid complaint! The bonus round that ends every stage SUCKS! There’s eight boxes on the screen, and you have roughly enough time to pick up four or five of them. One of them has an extra life. That sounds great! Exciting! Except, the order of the items is the same all ten times you can play it. The 1up is always in the top center box. Would it REALLY have been that hard to create a randomized pattern? Oh well. YES! Next!