TaleSpin

Time for another TaleSpin!

Another Disney Afternoon series, this time based on the Jungle book. By some seen as the pinnacle of Disney afternoon adventure shows and probably the one with most focus on the characters motivation for the plots and not just random things happening and characters that need to be changed in demand for the plot... or so at least the fans says about it. Overall 65 episodes, mostly adventure focused and some slapstick comedies. We had some episodes taped from Filmnet on VHS, the Bermuda Trepaziod one where Baloo thinks he's dying, the parrot treasure, Daring Dan, Molly Cuddled, the Hollywood episode, the flying petrol stations and Baloo back to school to be able to go to a class reunion. Those all in english and then a couple of episodes recorded from the Disney time on Fridays from Swedish Public channels. Those I recall was when Baloo lost his memory, the Vandersnoot kid, the Frankenstein episode and when Baloo starts a Pizza operation. And some doubles like the treasure, Daring Dan and Petrol station. I recall seeing more episodes on TV, but for some reason we hadn't recorded them.

A fine show, rewatching it I probably rank the amnesia episode as one of the best ones for me. Although rewatching any episode with Shere Khan is a delight, both in the ambiguity of the character and the voice acting of Tony Jay. Sadly due to the batch nature of the 65 episodes there isn't a finale that ends it on a definite end, like Gummi Bears or Ducktales. Music great and all that, still prefer Ducktales music and the animation in the first season of Ducktales also outshines this effort. Might be that I prefer the Ducktales mythos of Barks that makes me more inclined toward that show. Good then that two episodes was worked on by Don Rosa himself, the premier Scrooge writer after Barks... or maybe even before Barks. Unfortunately I don't find those episodes as interesting since he shines more in the comic format. 

On the other hand, a lot of episodes seems to copy Ducktales in several ways. We have one episode where a robot pilot is better than the standard pilot, there is the shrinking episode, there is two episodes copied directly by the same writes, jumping a day to get paid and the main character thinks he is gonna die when a doctor calls about a defunct machine (many of course probably standard tropes of series overall). Or that DuckTales and TaleSpin is pretty much the same idea for a name. Other problems is that I find the basic characters of Baloo is someone I dislike, always lazy and prone to lying. Kit is probably one of the better kid actors, but then we have an episode where he is so intent on flying he runs to Thembria and then just pesters everyone that he wants to fly and don't listen to anyone. I actually have more sympathy with the hounded Spigot in this one... then again, that might be my work as a state official shining through. I kinda find the health inspector in the Pizza episode and the inspector in the gasoline one to be very relatable as well. 

But aside from that it is an entertaining series, stories are rather fun with great voices and music. Would like a physical blu-ray release as with everything else. 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Movie)

Crack that whip!

Well, I watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in cinema back in the day, would be a waste to miss this one so I went together with my parents and sister while I was on vacation during the summer of 2023. And I enjoyed it. Starts out at the end of second world war as Indiana Jones together with a friend is looking for the Spear of Longinus, also known as the spear of destiny, that is said to have pierced Jesus Christ as he was crucified and the nazi's wanted it to rule the world. First heard about the spear when reading Phantom comics as the Phantom in the 17th-century found the hidden ruins of Lemuria and together with his brother-in-law picks it up, but the spear curses the brother-in-law to become a monster as he want's it's powers to rule the world. Then it appeared in Castlevania and other stuff as a normal occult item, Gabriel Knight 3 also mentioned it for example.

Some occult things at least goes on since they deep-faked Harrison Fords face to look like he did back in the 80's and its uncanny. Still sounds like an old man, but the looks. My sister said at times she got out of it as it wasn't seamless all the time, but I kinda enjoyed it. The spear is taken on a train and Indy's friend gets taken by the nazi's. Indy saves them, finds that the spear is just a fake, but they find one part of the dial of destiny, an item said created by Archimedes that could predict the future. It belonged to a nazi officer and played by Mads Mikkelsen. They stop the train and rescues all the artefacts and treasures in it as the allies comes in. Now we skip to 1969 and Indy is retiring from his professor job when his friends daughter shows up in search for the dial part Indy have hidden away after his friend went mad over studying it. But with it follows CIA goons that are working for Mads Mikkelsen that helped the Americans put man on the moon. 

Turns out Mads Mikkelsen is still a nazi (who would have thought that, he looked so nice?) and is looking for the dial in order to use it to travel through time back to before the war and replace Hitler and make the nazi's rule the world. Indy together with Helena (his friends daughter and his god-daughter) travels across the Mediterranean together with her child friend Teddy in search of map to the second piece that sank on a roman galley which they need the help of a Spanish diver (played by Antonio Banderas). They get it, but at the same time the nazi's catch up with them and kills the crew off their ship. They get away with the map and deduce that the second piece lies in the grave of Archimedes back in Syracuse. Teddy gets kidnapped and escapes on his own while Helena and Indy gets to the treasure with the nazi's right behind. Indy is shot while the other heroes escape. Mads drag Indy to the airfield where they fly away on an airplane while using the dial to pinpoint a wormhole through time. Helena gets on the plane while Teddy gets another plane and follows. 

Now, the portal doesn't take them to Germany circa 1939, instead they end up in Syracuse during the roman siege of the island. Apparently the dial was sent out by Archimedes to get help. The nazi plane is shot down by the romans and Helena and Indy parachutes down. The planes scares the romans away and is hinted about as a tale of dragons seen in a puppet show earlier in the film. Nice touch. They meet Archimedes and Indy is determined to stay since his relationship with Marion is failing after Mutt died while enlisting in the army. Helena knocks him out and drags him back to New York in "modern times". She also ensures that Marion comes by and Sallah (which helped Indy earlier in the film) ending the movie on a happy note and the series as well.

As said, I really liked this movie. The beginning felt like the old movies (shoddy CGI non-withstanding) and it felt like references to other Indiana Jones media. Saw one person on Twitter that shared a picture from Fate of Atlantis that also had a boat sequence looking for Plato's texts. Now, I recall another diving segment from an Indiana Jones comic when Indy looked for treasure and is attacked by an octopus that kills pretty much the whole crew (that deserved it since they where on mutiny to kill Indy and the captain and a mutual friend). Something like the Sea-Devil or whatever. The Spear of Longinus was also a sequel story to the Last Crusade where nazi's are looking for the spear in Ireland where Henry Jones Sr. gets involved. Seeing Sallah and Marion is nice (although we saw Marion last time as well). The only thing missing is a fisticuff battle with the main muscle of the nazi's, but I assume Harrison Ford can't really do those stunts anymore. It's also somewhat more gruesome with deaths (and that's coming for a series where the heads melts of, hearts are ripped out and so on). The death of Indy's coworker was abrupt, same for the diver crew and I would say the drowning of the muscle is somewhat worse than being dragged into an ant-nest. Probably the last Indy movie we will see, waiting for the blu-ray release so I can have the whole collection.

Adventures of the Gummi Bears

 

And all because Michael Eisners son had a craving for gummi bears.

Well, continued the Disney afternoon shows with the Adventure of Gummi Bears. The story of the six last gummi bears living in Gummi Glen, as they protect the land of Danwyn from the ogre forces of Duke Igthorn as they hide from humans and try to contact the ancient gummies that left 500 years ago. Mostly an episodic show where the gummies either has to stop Ightorns plan or something magically happened that need to be fixed or finding a gummi machine or something magical from the ancient gummies causes problems. There is the grumpy gummi that builds everything, grammy gummi that is designated cook as well as the one making the gummi berry juice that allows the gummibears to bounce around while humans get super strength, the magician gummi that has a short memory, Tummi the fat one (what else is there to describe him really?), and the two children. Later they added the artist gummi with the talking bird, Artie Deco (I get the pun at least). I can't recall the other names since I was only familiar with the Swedish version... and the Danish version

Yes, my parents had recorded two episodes on VHS and those where in Danish, the Gummadoon episode with the ancient city that appears every 100th year and then the griffin and prankster-fairy half-episodes. I don't think I ever understood them until I just watched them now (maybe I watched them on TV afterwards, but I can't recall that). Then we taped a couple of episodes from the Swedish Disney Afternoon. The first one where they meet Cavin that give them the gummi medallion in order to open the gummi book, the Ursalia (Ursa being latin for bear, stargazing has a bit of advantage sometimes) episode with the barbarian bears, the golden armour episode which Toady used, the sir Tuxford episode. I can't recall any other episodes and it's rather interesting that it's all over the seasons. I recall watching the spider episode with the spinnster, but watching it now I have a completely different memory of the sequence of events in the episode. Maybe just the hint of a spider made me think that it was a two-parter and too be continue.

Looking through the series again... I enjoyed it for its fantasy elements. And sometimes the animation was rather good as well as great music, but I don't think some of the dialog sits so great with me. A bit too goody like and morals ending every episode. At least the first season. A bit of contrived setups and sometimes I just don't like the characters (especially the children gummies) when they get entitled. But it at least got a decent ending in the King Igthorn two-parter, although I would say that a secret weapon that is a termite feels rather underwhelming. Of course, I have a big problem with Igthorn's voice, I don't like that smarmy sound he makes and the Swedish dub at least made him sound angry with some omph behind it.

Ducktales (2017)

 

Woo-Hoo!

Had to watch the reboot series after the original. And... it's fine. It had some really fun moments. My sisters complained about the art style since it wasn't the original one, but I didn't mind, it looked much closer to Carl Barks drawings if I'm gonna be honest. And the references to all Disney afternoon-series like Gummi Bears, Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck and Talespin made it rather fun for someone like me. Music also fine, but it's nothing compared to Ron Jones original. Best actually when they referenced the other shows.

Good things is actually have story arcs that tie everything together. Introducing Della Duck beyond the Don Rosa picture and the letter from the first Donald and nephews short. Also separating the nephews personalities so that they stand out from each other. Problem is that they are kinda unlikeable, Dewey with his self-importance and Louie with his greed. Huey probably the only likeable, but he also needs to be the center of things which the Junior Woodchuck episode showed. And all the kids have some kind of ADHD. Also, the humour can be fun, but I also feels that the meta-commentary and "hip" language makes it really dated and irritating at times. There is also that due to all that make the show feel cynical, take Gyro Gearloose who can't be a wacky inventor, instead a disgruntled employee of Scrooge that invents robots that threatens to take over the world because his mentor took his first robot and made it a destruction machine.

Yes, this is a scene where a supposed ghost strangles Scrooge McDuck, all played with suspenseful music, no equivalent scene in the new series.

Also the ending episode... works fine, but I can't say that it is as epic as the original ending. Here is just feels dumb since the main bad guy tries to stop adventuring, I think the meta-humour get a bit to strong meaning they can't make a serious threat. The original had the golden death engulfing the world, but that would be taking it seriously so instead we get something about family and clones and all with more references to the Disney Afternoon. Glomgold is another hint at that since here he is just stupid, he was threatening at times in the original, but here he is just a joke about his schemes. Actually, everyone is stupid to a higher degree than in the original. So mixed bag really. Might be nostalgia since I grew up with the original, but it felt more serious and the music really made it feel like it. This one is watchable and has great moments, but I would say nothing beats the original.

I mean, it didn't get more scary than this back in 1987 (or 1991 for this particular moment).

Ducktales (1987)

Woo-Hoo!

Well, what Disney show to continue with? Well, why not the best one of them all, the original Ducktales. Of course it's good, it came out in 1987 like every good thing ever. Basic plot is that Donald Duck has left his nephews Huey, Louie and Dewey at their great uncle Scrooge McDuck so they go out on adventures for more treasures or stoping the reacurring enemies of Flintheart Glomduck, the Beagle Boys or Magica De Spell.

The second season introduced the characters Bubba the cave duck and Fenton Crackshell and his alter-ego Gizmoduck while getting rid of supporting characters like Doofus Drake, Donald Duck and shrinking the different Beagle Boys into the 4 regulars. 100 episodes total and a movie to boot. Being an avid Donald Duck reader this was the best way of getting to see your favourite characters on TV. Of course, season one was the best one, which incidentally was the one we sporadically had a couple of episodes taped on VHS or even bought some of the official VHS. The official ones are a real rip-off I might add, 2 episodes on a VHS which you gotta pay full price for. 

The official ones we had was the Lost Crown of Genghis Khan and the Money Vanishes (which was my tape) and Hotel Strangeduck and Super-Doo (which was one of my sisters). I also recalls one time I was sick and mom or dad had rented the tape with the Phantom Blot stealing the invisible jet (and I think it was the Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that was together with it, hard to remember as I was sick but a faint memory of a Sherlock Holmes parody appeared in my head). The taped one was the viking episode, the killer whale sub and Aqua Ducks, Double-0-Duck, Scrooge First Dime, the hypnotist that get Donald to steal the navy's sub and Nothing to Fear. They also showed season 2 and onward on the Swedish public channel from 1991 so we taped all those episodes (except Scrooge Last Adventure for some reason, don't know why we didn't have that). We had one episode in english which was the Valentine episode with Aphroducky so my parents had to have taped it when they showed the valentine special back in 1990. That episode is also a bit strange since it's from season 3, but it doesn't feature either Bubba or Fenton so I always assumed it was part of the first season and it fits right in there, and I assume the intro wasn't there on the recording we had cause I think I would have been extremely confused by seeing Bubba and Gizmoduck in the opening (they were there when they showed the Swedish version, but then I was accustomed to their presence). 

Overall, rewatching it now I find it to be more fun than I remember. Could be due to watching it in english and getting a lot more of the references, and realising it actually is references. Also having gotten a taste for satirical parody and political topics. You can see the quality dropped a bit after season 1 (the colours aren't popping like the first season for instance). Another good thing is that the voices are more coherent than the Swedish version, Glomgold, Launchpad and even the ducklings changes voices from season to season, and worst is probably Bubba that changed voice from his first episode to the second (and it's the same voice actor in Swedish). The Swedish version has its moment though, for example the Hotel Strangeduck had a great moment near the end when Strangeduck explains the plot and calls his assistant a "silly boy", in Swedish he says "what an idiot" which was really fun to me as a kid. Would love a physical blu-ray release so that I can future proof it. Also a big shout-out to Ron Jones that did the music, it was amazing as every cue heightened the action scenes, made you sad at the sentimental scenes and very scared for the intense thriller scenes. 

Chip & Dale - Rescue Rangers

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip & Dale - Rescue Rangers

Haven't been playing any video game during the beginning of 2023, mostly not feeling it. But instead I got a craving for watching old Disney shows. Started with the complete collection of the Chip & Dale Rescue Ranger that they released on blu-ray to coincide with the release of the movie (which I haven't watched). 

Basically it tells the story of Chip and Dale as they solve crimes together with Gadget, Montgomery Jack and Zipper. Apparently supposed to be a sequel-series to Bernard and Bianca's The Rescuers, but they changed it to Chip and Dale since the movie wasn't that popular, which was proven when the sequel failed as well. They stop the dastardly plans of Dr Nimnul, Fat Cat and other criminals, or just solving problems caused by accidents. We watched these on Disney Time on Fridays on channel 1, recorded most of them on VHS as well. That was mostly from the later half of the show, the one where they didn't have the white plane and red balloon, but rather the brown aeroplane.

I liked the show as a kid, well most Disney adventure shows so maybe not so strange. And I gotta be honest, the Swedish dub makes the show much better. First off, Dr Nimnul? Dr Grym in Swedish (translated as Dr Cruel) and Fat Cat becomes Svinpäls (directly translated as Swine Fur, which is a Swedish insult) which makes the villains sound more evil. And I guess the dub had to use more voice actors since it isn't the same 5 voices all over.

So, the blu-ray collection. Only english voices so that is a bit sad. It's also in production order, not story (the little there is) so you have the problem that the introduction adventure of how the rescue rangers meet isn't the first episodes, but in the middle of disc 2 or something like that. No bells or whistles here, so no commentaries or documentaries, not even the music video of the theme song. So mostly bare bone, but if it's the only way to have a physical copy of the show you get what you can. The quality is mostly alright, but one episode isn't remastered since it appear it wasn't saved. I also found it strange that intro varied from episode to episode with good or bad quality.

Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse (Sega Mega Drive)

 

How gracious of them to show the furthest kids mostly will get.

Continued going through the games stored at my parents place, and the Sega Mega Drive games are all mine so at least no one else is nabbing them (like one of my sisters that gotten.... or more correctly taken our N64 games).  I guess I got Mickey Mania for being a Disney kid, and it looks fantastic and the music is really memorable, especially since it is rather long time ago since I played it and when the different stages came around I still could hum with it. Or at least as far as I got, cause as usual with these Disney games, the difficulty spikes goes through the roof and probably to cover up the fact that these are rather short games. 

So basically modern Mickey Mouse is travelling through time to rescue his past selves from their adventures. Sadly there is no overarching plot like Pete have done something that needs fixing. It just that you start at Steamboat Willy and goes through up to 1990 when the latest Mickey cartoon was released, which was The Prince and the Pauper. The game was released in 1994 and seems to be promotional material for a new Mickey cartoon that was released in 1995, and a belated attempt to release it for Mickey's 65 birthday in 1993. 

The furthest I got was Mickey and the Beanstalk from Fun and Fancy Free, which was the second to last level. Usually got killed by the spider at the segment before entering the giant Willy's castle. I think that had to be due to my arachnophobia, no problem today, but as a kid falling into a dark room, not registering the shadow and turning up the light and standing before a spider and the boss theme kicking in doesn't help me as much. So now I got past that, and kid me would probably never have handled the last level, with a lot of insta-kill moments like drowning if you  don't get that you gotta pump up a bath ring so that you can float to the top of a pit, climb a burning tower where a lot of enemies stand and shoots at you that you need to hit with marbles that are limited and you start with zero if you die. Of course, with time you could probably get past it, like how I played through the Lonesome Ghost stage (hate the damn water barrels part of it) and the Mad Doctor stage (the damn autoscroller part). Never found the hidden Band Camp stage.

I assume it's a black widow?

The game is a bit short and it would have been nice with maybe a stage from Fantasia or Mickey's Christmas Carol, making the jump from 1947 to 1990 not so empty. Plus if it was just a little longer maybe they would have toned down the difficulty. It was pretty much released for everything back in the day, Mega Drive, Mega CD, Playstation and SNES, but most seems to think SNES is a bit inferior since it's missing the bonus stage and such. You can get the Playstation version as a Playstation classic, which I also got, but I find the playstation 3 controller not being that good. Also, it comes up in Maui Mallard as well, why don't you get back your life on a new stage? It's a bit punish surviving a boss with a sliver of health and be thrown into the next dangerous stage. But, hey, kids need to toughen up I guess.

 

Donald in Maui Mallard (Sega Mega Drive)

Might Solve a Mystery!

Or Rewrite History!

Ducktales! Whoo Hoo!

Look, a game not reviewed by 16-bit gems, and reason is kinda obvious, since this isn't a gem. It's brutal, the controls are atrocious, but the graphics are really nice. Only good thing about this I got a reason to try the Retron 5:s cheat mode. Invincibility, moon jump, infinite ammo and unlimited ninja time goes a long way. Although, I got at least to level 4 before doing that. 

Story is that Donald Duck is Maui Mallard, a Magnum P.I. knock-off that is investigating a disappearance of an idol on a pacific island. He got to search through an old mansion, do some ninja training, infiltrate a pygmy village and gaining their trust in a volcano, search for a body in the ocean for a sunken ship, travel to the spirit world for a soul and then defeat a witch doctor to win the game. The story is kinda fun, would like to see an animated Donald Duck movie based on this. Graphics are amazing and its sounds very good, it even sound as Donald when Maui take damage. But as stated the game is brutal. You are constantly bombarded by pygmy's, insects and other monsters. There's instant death traps everywhere and good luck playing it legit, power to you. And I remember this game as a kid, it was a Donald Duck game and I would have loved to play it... and then promptly be disappointed since I would probably never have gotten past stage 1, and if I did, the second stage would have ended me. 

So beside the constant attacks from enemies, I get the feeling the developers extended the life of the game by making it hard and obtuse. First stage you enter a book case and the area is too dark to see. To the right instant death pits so you gotta go to the left and you can see some goodies up on a ledge, but you can't reach it. And you gotta realise there is a chain that you gotta pull to get the goodies, and pulling the chain creates platforms to cross the instant death pits. And that is stage one. On the second stage you learn about the ninja skills that turn Maui to Cold Shadow. Where you have a time limit to do crucial platforming that only Cold Shadow can do that you refill by collecting tokens, that at least shows up in the boss battles fairly often, but good luck on the stages.

Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!

And that's not the worst part of that stage. At one point you get to an area with a sign that says teleport and a red ball insta kills you if you try to continue. I tried to jump, to hide and try to run away. That didn't work so I looked in the manual (since I got both manual and box for this), says nothing about it in the controls section so I watched a youtube video and saw that you could do a speed run thing, and the first comment or description was "hold A and double tap a direction". So I thought that was bullshit that you needed outside knowledge to play the game, but I looked through the manual again and actually found it on page 15... when the controls are on page 10-11. And the description of the stage is on page 14. I still call bullshit on that. And that's the only time you use it... or you can use it in the volcano stage to run over the boiling lava so that's that.

And speaking of the volcano and underwater stages, damn insta kill and the damn tower climb in the spirit world. So I wouldn't recommend it. Too hard for very little satisfaction. But as stated, would love an animated movie in this style.  

Quackshot starring Donal Duck (Sega Mega Drive)

Race cars, Laser and Aeroplanes!

It's A Duck-Blur!

Got another game to play on the Retron 5 and decided that I probably should focus on games that hardly gonna get a rerelease or remaster, like licensed games and especially Disney-games. Quackshot stars... as mentioned in the title Donald Duck in search for a treasure of king Garuzia, the king of an ancient Duck kingdom. He found the map one day looking through Scrooges library and heads out together with his nephews. Pete has overheard this and sends his gang to stop Donald and steal the treasure for himself. So you got to traverse an Aztec-temple in Mexico, Dracula's Castle in Transylvania, a Viking ship outside the coast of Norway, the south pole, the pyramids in Egypt and a palace in India. You gotta defeat bosses in some of the areas, like Dracula in Transylvania (that the Duck family now been fighting twice, or maybe they differentiate it with "Duckula") and the tiger Shere Khan in India. After getting a viking diary that tells how to find the treasure on the map Pete kidnaps the nephew so Donald have to defeat him at his hideout and then find the last area, a hidden island in the south of the Atlantic. There he fights off some guardian dressed like a conquistador. Donald gets a statue and takes it back to Duckburg and as the nephew carries it toward Daisy that wonders where he been they drop it and a jewelled golden necklace falls out of it. Donald and Daisy fly off in the sunset, the end!

I think I saw this as a kid on TV or something, and Donald looks like Indiana Jones (which was the intent I guess so I would probably have been all over that, but probably not able to finish the game since I found the platforming a bit unforgiving at times, at least you had unlimited continues). The hit boxes are a bit sketchy as I very often took damage where I believed where I shouldn't have taken a hit and the Indian palace maze can go to hell. A bit weird in its progression as well as you gotta go to Mexico, then go back to Duckburg and traverse half of that to get a key to open the zigurat to get inside to find... Goofy? Ok? That lets you go halfway through Transylvania and back to to Duckburg for the final part to find Dracula and open up the rest of the world. I gather it's a bit like Mega Man in allowing you to choose your own path, but yo still need to do everything in a special order. 

Not much to it, a fun distraction, but not the longest game. Decent graphics and music, but I don't like the controls that much, Donald feels rather slippery. Play it once, but it's not a game I would play again and again.

Ducktales 2 (GB)

 

Life Is Like A Hurricane!

Here in Duckburg!

New Year, old games. Got myself a Retron 5 to play all those Gameboy, Color and Advance games I had on the big screen... and maybe also get an excuse to get games that I probably won't be able to get on the modern consoles, like Battle for Olympus for the NES. Also, if I'm able to snag some strange German or French version of a game... just patch it with language patch. I always like new toys. Plus, the save state function clearly helps a lot, for example in this game!

Ducktales 2, my first gameboy game that my dad bought me as I've saved up all my allowance to get the Game Boy Pocket. The last Game Boy Gumpei Yokoi worked on before leaving Nintendo. Basically the same story as the first Ducktales. Huey, Dewey and Louie finds a treasure map and Scrooge set out to gather treasures around the world. You travel to the Niagara Falls, the Bermuda Triangle, Egypt, Scotland and Mu. Although, the world map doesn't make sense... or maybe it's really packed. 

You travel to each stage, find Gyro to upgrade your abilities, find parts of a map or some extra boss before beating a boss and on to the next stage. I left Scotland as the last stage and it's the hardest of them all. Spikes kills you as they are both on the ceiling and the floor at the same time forcing you to somehow be able to use some trick move where you abort the jump before hitting the ceiling and start it before hitting the floor. And if that isn't enough you have those floating hands that push you over the insta death pits... with moving platforms. At least the boss was easy enough. 

After getting all the treasures (and maybe found all map pieces to get another area which I didn't) Webby is kidnapped by Glomgold so you take all the treasures to the pirate ship in the Bermuda triangle where you fight the D-1000, which I assume stands for Duck-1000 and is a parody of the T-1000 from the  Terminator-movies. Had some problem until I figured out his pattern that went something like, go under him as he hangs from the ceiling to avoid attack, then jump on him and then repeat five times and he's dead. That was simple.

Beat it once as a kid, but on easy... but I don't get what the differences is while playing it again. I finished it on Difficult this time and I can't say what was different from the other settings. Took maybe 30 - 45 minutes. Enhanced the game with colour so at least the platforms was easy to spot where to jump. Fun game, would have been nice to play the Disney Afternoon Collection so I could experience the NES version, but of course they never released it for the Switch and unless they rerelease them for the new consoles I can pretty much forget getting those games. 

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse

The mouse is in the house

I had a Sega Mega Drive as a kid, which my parents got for me when I learned to bike and pretty much never touched a bike after that. I ended up with five games to that console during the years and one was Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse. Only beat it at easy where you only had to go  through 3 worlds and the evil witch gets away with the crystals, but Minnie is saved. My sister and I actually got to the end in normal and fought the end boss, but neither of us could get the winning blow. And then they remade it for modern consoles in 2013 and I had to get it. And I played it... and stopped after getting stuck at the second to last world. The damn licorice dragon irritated me due to the bad 3d controls I never finished it. Until now that is.

So the story is that Mickey and Minnie is walking in a forest when the evil witch Mizrabel kidnaps Minnie to take her youth. Mickey follows her to the Castle of Illusion and search the castle for the seven rainbow crystals to create the rainbow bridge and fight of Mizrabel. Differences from the original is that they made it in 3d and I can see the resemblance of the worlds and such, but they put in situation where you have to platform in a 3d environment which used to be 2d. For example the rolling apple in the first world. Or the boss fights which are all pretty much redesigned. And here is where I really dislike the platforming. The licorice dragon you have to jump from cake to cake in a 3d spectrum. With controls that aren't that precise to my liking. Or I might just suck. But I would have prefered the original game... which you could get as a download if you pre-ordered the game, but not afterwards. Big mistake from my side.

I mean, even the cover looks scarier

The game also added voice acting with the official voices of Mickey and Minnie and it enhances the game a bit. The problem is that the end battle with Mizrabel is scripted. And you can't skip the starting scene so the voice got to grate on me for far to long. And then it's a collectathon with hidden items and gems. Never gonna 100 %  because I'm finished with this game.

Kingdom Hearts: ReCoded

Another cutscenes movie of a handheld game

Kingdom Hearts: Recoded... if Kingdom Hearts 2 made a Tron reference this is pretty much Kingdom Tron: The Movie. Premise is that it's at the end of the games timeline. Jiminy Cricket looks through his journals and the first one (clearly of the first game) has nothing in it since it was erased in Chains of Memories beyond a note thanking Namine... except that it appears another note appears. King Mickey, Donald and Goofy uses a special device to encode it as data (again with encoding things to data), but the information is corrupt so they send in an avatar of Sora to debug the whole thing. Basically yet another retelling of the first game, but they also put in Chains of Memories parts as well. Now everything would have worked smoothly if not for some reason they were all sucked into the "computer" together with Pete who contacts Maleficent so they cause havoc on their end while data-Sora tries to fix it with the real Mickey, Donald and Goofy. I don't get much else of the story other than that after much struggle rid the book of bugs and confront the one behind it... Namine? 

For such a simple premise as Disney- and Final Fantasy-characters in one game it's a really complicated plot. Maybe I just didn't care again since its like a 2.5 hour movie without the roaming around to figure things out and missing a lot of boss banter that sometimes gives a lot to character motives. At least I haven't needed to learn another control scheme or using cards to play.

Other things to mention is that mostly the same voice actors, but they changed the Genie from Dan Castellaneta to someone who actually sounds more like Robin Williams. And to be honest, even though I know it's not the same voice for Mickey I can't tell the difference. It also sets up the plot for the next game with fighting a resurrected Xehanort... which was the apprentice of Ansem... and yet only was a Nobody. Apparently by skipping Birth by Sleep I missed out on some important plot points so I should probably finish of that game next.

Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix

Original cover of the game back in 2006

So I finally finished it, took me around 50 hours and reaching level 80 before being fed up with the side-questing and just finish it. At least I finished it before AntDude, but maybe not fair since I started like, a month before he started publish his reviews on the games in the series (and by now you can guess that I write these a long time before releasing them, but hopefully he has released his review before this). So lets see, shall we begin with the story as per usual?

Wait, who's this guy again?

So the game starts with introducing us to Roxas, a normal kid enjoying the final week of summer with his friends. Now, watching the movie in the last game I already know his backstory. He is Sora's Nobody, a being that have no heart and is part of Organisation XIII, he's actually their 13th member. He was defeated by Riku and somehow ended up in Twilight Town with memories changed. Of course, if you played the game in 2006 you wouldn't know that since then he was just Roxas, our tutorial character to give an excuse to reintroduce the basic controls from the last game and some added things, like now you can skate on a skateboard. So basically Roxas and friends are trying to make the days go, but Roxas starts to notice people in black cloaks that no others see, times stop at times and beings like heartless and nobodies appear and with them the Keyblade. Exploring the town he finds the girl Namine in a mansion at the outskirts. In the end he finds a mysterious laboratory under it that leads him to what pretty much is a cryochamber. And after all stress and pressure he starts it up... and he disappear as Sora awakens from his sleep, having regained all memories he lost at Castle Oblivion, but the memories from that castle is gone. Really, this section is rather bitter since I assume everyone wanted to play Sora, but from a gaming perspective this made more sense, but you actually gets attached to Roxas even though you know he must disappear somehow and it gets really though when he himself starts to wonder if its real or not and more or less begs to exist.... and then he's gone. Not only that, but walking around town as Sora afterwards feels empty, since no one remember Roxas. No trace of what he accomplished, the street tournament, his friends don't recall him and so on. It's like he was completely erased, like he was a Nobody.... Well, at least I can play with Donald and Goofy again.

Did he change clothes?

And here the real part of the game starts. You leave Twilight Town and meet Yin Sid, the wizard from Fantasia that gives you your knew clothes and access to the Gummi Ship. And you're of. First stop Disney Castle, you are visiting the home of Donald and Goofy. Not much there beside introducing Queen Minnie and whatever Daisy is. You travel to Hollow Bastion that been resettled by the Final Fantasy characters from last game and Merlin... so basically the new Traverse Town. We even have Uncle Scrooge here trying to make some ice cream. Actually preferred Traverse Town to be honest, much more atmosphere. Then the rest of the worlds. There's worlds from Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules (old), The Little Mermaid (old), Aladdin (old), The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean and Nightmare Before Christmas (old). Most of them follow their respective movies and for the new worlds no problem, but The Little Mermaid I've already seen once so I don't need it again, but they had to so they could use some more songs from the movie in a musical. And again, the only ones that uses the movie music is Nightmare, Mermaid and Winnie the Pooh (of course the book is here again) of the old worlds and are joined by the Pirate movies. And to be honest they used a short excerpt from Beauty and the Beast at the end of that chapter. It's only the best Disney movie so of course it had to do it. The only one I don't know is the world based on Tron. Yes, another live-action movie from the 80's that I've never seen and fittingly is accessed through a computer in Hollow Bastion (where also Winnie the Pooh is as well). 

From the same creator who made Animalympics you say?

So you run around, level up, get abridged versions of the movies and I gotta hand it to them, Aladdin they based on the sequel Return of Jafar instead of repeating the same story again as they did with Mermaid. How can they even explain that since I killed Ursula in the last game and they point out that both Oogi Boggy and Maleficent are resurrected while Jafar was seen caught in the lamp in the last game, but Ursula just shows up and Ariel still believes her as if that part of the game didn't happen. Hercules is probably the only one I can't say that much about since it's basically just an arena level, but this time placed in the underworld and you can play with Auron from Final Fantasy X, neat.

The bad guys I presume

So if we go back to the story, why was Organization XIII a threat again. Well, in the span of the game they tried to get Roxas back, and if he wouldn't cooperate they were ordered to kill him, harsh, but hey I haven't read the terms of contract at the organisation. Then they tried kidnap Kairi, which is pretty much I as a player starts to see them as a threat... if I have played the first game and know who Kairi is. And the game tries to fool me in that a man named Diz is a bad guy since he has an evil laugh and plans some dark things with Ansem, the big bad of the first game. Helps that he is voiced by Christopher Lee. Turns out Diz is the real Ansem, a good guy who was usurped by the bad Ansem, not the one he planed with since that was Riku transformed by the darkness into Ansem. But Ansem bad guy is dead, so in this game we have his Nobody instead, Xemnas. And boy is that a cheating bastard. So endgame is that you figure out that Twilight Town also has another version of itself explaining why no-one knew who Roxas was. That Twilight Town has a portal to the World Between Worlds. Sora and gang fights their way through while meeting up with Riku and Kairi who escaped her prison thanks to Namine and later on King Mickey who helped Diz as he was collecting data... of Kingdom Hearts with act as a moon in the world of Darkness? The game has literally dropped me somewhere and I can't explain what happens. I don't even get the plan of the Nobodies. Are they struggling to feel? Or are they just eradicating everything so everyone will be as them? And defeating Hearless with the Keyblade creates the Kingdom Hearts? Or does it create Nobodies? I'm so confused. And I haven't even mentioned with the subplot of Maleficent and Pete going around looking for a Castle to control the heartless. I think they did a heroic sacrifice since after that they don't show, but with this game what would I know?

Pete, former captain of the guard and boss of Mickey Mouse on his Steamboat... how could it go so bad?

Anyway, the machine Diz uses blows up killing him... what he tried to accomplish I don't get. You fight your way to the top, fight Xemnas a couple of times. Everything is fine as you win, everyone but Riku and Sora are able to get in the Door of Light before Xemnas return and you jump on some sort of space ship and destroy him. And then the final battle atop the monster start which is also pretty awesome as you throw buildings at him and then the most cheapest fight start. Cheating bastard I say. I died like 6-7 times because the bastard is able to hide outside the perimeter of the fighting area and then he traps me so I have to play as Riku, before telling what the hell I'm supposed to do while the clock is ticking down. And then the damn quick-time event I just have to prey to god I get right otherwise he drain so much HP that is game over... again. But I beat him. And then we are in the world of Darkness just walking around. We end at the beach I recall from the Recoded movie? They pretty much give up, but a flask post appears from Kairi and a door of light appears. They enter and returns to Destiny Island. They meet Kairi, Donal, Goofy and Mickey, all in CGI. They don't look that good. Credits and then the post-credit sequence when they are alone on the island again (Riku, Kairi and Sora that is) and they get a new flask post from Mickey hinting on a future game. If its the other game on the CD I have to find out another time.

It looks a bit uncanny I must say

So overall a good game, I had fun playing it. Same voice actors, the music was alright and the little assets they borrowed from the movies they made good use of. The worlds felt a bit short though. A bit linear compared to the more maze like worlds from the first game. Gameplay wise... pretty much the same, but they added Drive forms in which you with one or both other characters in your party combine strength so that Sora goes into a ultimate form. And as per usual I ignored it until I noticed right up to the end that I didn't have high jump, double jump or glide which they even included in Chains of Memory... where you didn't even need them. Turns out that to get those abilities you have to grind out your drive forms. So I spent 10 hours getting most of them up the cap of level 7 so I could glide and jump to collect most of the puzzle pieces scattered across the worlds. I have a small nagging suspicion that they mentioned it when they introduced the drive forms, but I forgot about that and didn't bother using Drive since I might need it if a tough boss come by. So instead I went back and forth between a save point and some enemies to beat up so I could save the drive gauge by entering the gummi ship. Glad I did cause I stumbled upon this added area in Hollow Bastion (or Radiant Garden as it's renamed at the end point of the game) where you need to max those abilities, but I came through and then fought my way through some of the hardest heartless encounters in the game. Lucky 80 was enough. I still don't get the motivation of the villains and Sora's own motivation is finding King Mickey and Riku, just as in the first game so that's fine. All it really did was actually tempting me to get a Playstation 4 in order to play Kingdom Hearts 3 when it gets out. And at the current standing there's Nino Kuni 2, Kingdom Hearts 3, The Last Guardian. What do they say? At least 5 games before buying a console? Especially since I know neither of these would end up on a Nintendo console no matter how strong the NX is gonna be. Maybe wait for the Neo which would be an upgraded slim version I guess? I also guess I have to learn to listen to a different Mickey Mouse since the voice actor passed away around the time after the release. And Diz won't have Christopher Lee either since he's also gone. And now I made myself sad. Then again I learn that the voice of Goofy was in the original Robocop from 1987. Best movie ever!

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

or Eat the blue ice cream movie

God, the last game was a disaster for me. An obnoxious gameplay mechanic with cards is just annoying. Why was all spin-off games (and even main series games) so into card based gameplay? Thankfully I can play this game which is apparently set before, during and a bit after Chains of Memories. So I boot it up and... and it is a movie. Well, at least I don't have to play the game. Basically it's the cutscenes from the game with a small text in between explaining story event during the game. It's a couple of hours and what I got out of it is... that some guy Roxas belongs to an organization named XIII where he is friends with Axel from the last game. Roxanne is member XIII and they introduce XIV, a girl which looks a bit like Kairi, in the same way Naminé looked like Kairi.  And mostly the three of them sits and eats blue ice cream on a clock tower. Apparently some internal conflict within the organization where Axel is trying to smoke out some traitors while watching the two kids back. Roxas and XIV try to keep each other safe, but for some reason XIV is breaking down. Axel has to get her back several times and then she disappears which sets Roxas out to get her, but he is confronted by Riku who unleash some... I guess darkness to stop him. Which interestingly enough is the ending teaser from Kingdom Hearts 1. If you don't get it, sorry, I could hardly follow it. I'm glad I didn't have to play it since it saved me several hours of  gaming. Still, coming from this way I hardly care for the characters since Axel is the only one I know about (besides those doomed by canon is I killed them with Sora in the last game) and even if he was the nicest of the people in the last game I hardly find him that interesting. Although my sister disagree I would assume. 

90 % of the movie people!

I will give it credit though for feeling very nice to see the bad guys (I assume) have this interaction. I don't get what they do and I assume it's due to it being a prequel to Kingdom Hearts 2 where you get to play Roxas. I know this since my sister for some reason become completely obsessed with this series and pretty much have them all and I watched her play the second game so I get a little. But now I got Kingdom Hearts 2.5. but I wonder when I will get the time to play that. I'm getting a bad habit of ending series before finishing them off.

Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories

Cardgames in a castle

So I got to play the sequel of Kingdom Hearts. If I'm correct it was originally a Game Boy Advance-game, that was remade to a Playstation 2-game that then was ported over to the PS3. Given that origin I get why they changed the gameplay. Instead of the action-rpg that the original game gave us they instead gave us a... card-based rpg. Seriously? That's not the only time a spin-off game gets a card-based gameplay. Metal Gear had the Acid-series, Paper Mario gave us the boring Sticker Star (which obviously had stickers instead of cards, but it work pretty much the same). Sometimes it doesn't need to be a spin-off, but the whole game like Baiten Kaitos. And to be frank I hate that game mechanic. Either everything is chance based or you have to craft the perfect deck with just the right sequence of cards to really make the best attacks. But I think this game is even worse than at least Baiton Kaitos. Barton Kaitos problem was the randomness of what cards you drew from your deck, but here using combos means that the first card in the combo is taken away shifting the orders of card you get. Meaning that if you don't finish a battle before reshuffling your whole strategy is out of order. Best bet is editing together a magic deck since it really works for crowd control. Start with Aeoroga, then a magnetic attack followed up by stop time then hit the rest with firaga and blizzaga. Throw in some Thundaga and curaga to make sure you always stands on top. Really, a battle just last at most 30 seconds and in the final area I went up over 10 levels without much problem. In the end that deck was even able to defeat the final boss even though it was a hassle. 

Dude looks like a lady

Story starts right as the original game ends with our heroes following Pluto to a mysterious castle, Castle Oblivion. They are tasked to reach the top of the castle and along the way they will lose their memories and might regain some lost memories. Basically it works as the Auryn wishes in the Neverending Story 2. During the trip Sora get's memories of a girl named Naminé and he begin obsessing over her to save her. Behind the scenes a secret organisation is behind all this as they control Naminé to erase Sora's memories and replacing them with those they want. But apparently the local leader is trying to use Sora in order to take over the organisation and Axel, the red headed one, is working to stop the pink haired one. In the end Sora defeats all of the local organisation members (but I get it that Axel is the only one that lives to tell the tale) and saved Naminé and to undo all the jumbled memories Sora, Goofy and Donald is put in stasis. 

Same white walls everywhere, makes it feel like the endless staircase in Mario 64

I hate this game. The gameplay is just annoying since your action is limited with what cards have which determines combos and so on. The story has interesting parts, but most is just meeting the same characters in the first game, but changing up the story, although still pretty much be the same outcome... and pretty much the same bosses. You change the layout of the castle by using room cards you collect after winning a battle (unless you have over 99 of them, which you will get). And when you defeat the final boss (who cheats by the way by using an attack that makes you drop all your cards so you have to pick them up, bastard) you unlock another mode as you play as Riku... F*** that. The only time I would play that is if I in 10 years replay the game... you know in anticipation when they finally release Kingdom Hearts 3. But seriously, maybe a handheld console would have worked better since that was the original intent... and when I'm thinking about it, why do they give you glide and super glide abilities when you can't use it to search the environments?

Final note is the voice acting, clearly Haley Joel Osment hit puberty and makes the decision from the remaster of the first game to not add voices even better. On one hand I think the voice doesn't suit anymore, but I assume that is nostalgia talking, cause as a whole it sound alright. David Gallagher and the others sound as they did before so it sticks out a bit, but he isn't bad. And since he got that voice for the whole game it makes it acceptable for me. I would guess I would have approved even more if he hit puberty in Kingdom Hearts 2 after this game since, hey, prolonged stasis exposure.

Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix

The original cover of the game

Back in 2002 at my birthday I got the original game as a present. I guess I was 15 or so if my math checks out and this was an enjoyable game. It had Final Fantasy-characters, Disney-characters and what wasn't to love? Most voiced Disney characters were voiced by either the real voice actors or someone close (as far as I know, since most of these I've only heard the Swedish dubbing for). The main character Sora was voiced by the kid from The 6th Sense, Haley Joel Osment and the big bad is Billy Zane, you know the actor playing the Phantom? From the Phantom movie back in 1996? Alright so he was also the bad guy in Titanic. And the part of Riku went to David Gallagher from 7th Heaven... 6th sense, 7th heaven??? Nah, must be a coincidence. So basically the game is an action-platformer RPG. You swing your weapon, use magic and jump around a lot. The spells are all from the Final Fantasy-games, but here they are actually useful outside of combat to interact with the world. See a chest on a floating platform? Gravity it down. Lighting a fire? Fire of course, but if you need to extinguish it blizzard works. Of course the platforming isn't always the best, sometimes a jump doesn't register, close quarter combat on small railings are not advised (especially in Hollow Bastion) and small nitpicks.

The remake cover... or is it remaster?

So you play as Sora, young kid living on an island together with Riku and Kairi... and Wakka, Tidus and Selphie. But those three aren't important other than training exercise. The main three kids dream of leaving an island so they construct a raft, but before leaving dark shadows appear on the island and Sora is sucked of to another world, Traverse Town. There he meet Donald Duck and Goofy who are out looking for King Mickey who has disappeared. Donald is a wizard and Goofy is a knight. Sora have for some reason been given the Keyblade, a weapon that will destroy the Hearless, shadowy creatures consuming people's hearts. The only way to stop them is to the seal the keyholes on every world so Sora sets of in Donald and Goofy's Gummi Ship in search for the King and Sora's friends. You know, reading the summary... this is a really silly game. How can't it be when you mix the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney? And for some reason this was a really enjoyable game for me as a kid and replaying the remake I quickly found myself feeling very nostalgic. You travel to worlds based on Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Tarzan, Winnie The Pooh, Aladdin, Pinocchio, The Nightmare before Christmas, Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid. And you would think they would use the music from all the movies to really catch you, but if my ears hears correctly I could only find three places were they used the movies music and that was The Nightmare Before Christmas, Winnie the Pooh and The Little Mermaid. And those have the worst ear worms of them all.

HAVET ÄR DJUPT, HAVET ÄR DJUPT!

Fun fact the Swedish dub for Sebastian is the same actor who voiced Gandalf in the Swedish Lord of the Rings radio dramatisation.

So during the course of the game you face the antagonist, the Disney Villains. A shadow conspiracy led by the most dark and evil characters from the Magical Kingdom led by Malificient. There's Hades, Captain Hook, Oogie-Boogie, Ursula and Jaffar... they are the villains because they f***ing cheats. Now, stupid as I was I went for Proud mode since the easier settings sounded like an insult. Take these extra items and such thing. So stupid me choose proud meaning that they hit harder and apparently have a bigger repertoire of attacks. Doesn't help that most of them are puzzle bosses with platforming needed. I especially look at you Ursula. Magic in cauldron... f***ing cheap. Most other bosses you can beat with some grinding. That is until the end game start. You sealed most of the Keyholes and you found your way to Hollow Bastion, the place where the Final Fantasy-characters live in. At the beginning Donald and Goofy abandons you when the Keyblade switches over to Riku who has joined the dark side so you have to get help from Beast (from Beauty and the Beast) to enter the castle. Inside Beast is fooled away and Riku is about to confront you, but at that moment Donald and Goofy switches sides again since even though they were given orders to follow the wielder of the Keyblade, they can't abandon a friend. Defeat Riku and he leaves, but becomes possessed by an unknown person. You find Maleficent and defeat her, but as she tries to escape Riku joins her and plunges another Keyblade into her heart transforming her to the Dragon from Sleeping Beauty. Turns out that the person possessing Riku is Ansem, the lord of Hollow Bastion that researched the Heartless and apparently was consumed by his findings. You find his scattered reports after defeating certain bosses. This was an interesting twist when I played it the first time. He was with you from the beginning hinting about some dark mystery during the first 10 minutes of the game and you naturally assumed Maleficent or Riku would be the final boss. And so this person shows up that everyone told you would have the key to understanding the heartless. Really subtle work there.

Maybe not his design, but you can't get everything

You defeat possessed Riku and retrieves the unconscious body of Kairi... who's a Disney princess and her heart together with 6 others princesses (Snowhite, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Alice (?) and Jasmine) the villains had kidnapped in order to open the Keyhole, but Kairi has lost her heart so she is basically a lifeless doll. Turns out her heart was hidden in Soras's heart all along so to release it he uses Riku's blade and stabs himself and seemingly killing himself. Wow, and I thought this was a Disney game. Suicide? Hardcore. Well, since this is Square of course he comes back, but in the form of a heartless and have to travel down the whole castle to catch up with Donald, Goofy and Kairi who escaped Ansem when Riku's spirit stopped him. Kairi senses that it is Sora in the heartless and tries to shield him from the other heartless ready to attack and as in any Disney movie he regains his human form. It's kinda sweet. They escape back to Traverse Town to regroup and after some side questing you can return and seal the keyhole, but Ansem have disappeared. You travel to the End of Worlds and start the decent and the surrounding gets more and more twisted until you reach...  NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN

First suicide and now the literal devil, this game is hardcore

A tip, just fly behind him and whack him. A bit undignified for one of the most scary Disney characters I must say. Travel onward and you reach the end, which is the beginning, Destiny Island, Sora's home. Here a fight in what, 7-8 stages with Ansem until you bash him enough so he opens the doors to Kingdom Hearts where he is obliterated by light... ok, so he actually thought it would be darkness, but since this is a Disney spin-of of course every heart has a speck of light. The gang tries to close it and on the other side Riku and king Mikey appears, sealing the door from their side. Credits roll and our friends are now searching for Riku and Mikey again. The End!

And King Mickey saves the day

I really liked this game as a kid and playing again it felt rather nostalgic and I actually did things I didn't do before like actually trying to synthesis items. The only thing I dreaded to touch was the Gummy ship construction since I still don't get how to use it. This being a remake certain things have changed and been added. First and easiest to see is that they changed colours on several of the enemies. Why I don't know, I actually prefer the blue colours compared to the yellow ones on the soldiers and fat men. They also added some scenes that stand out like a sore thumb, not because they don't fit the narrative, they actually explain things that I didn't get in the beginning. The problem is that it's voice less and you see that this should be speaking parts due to the font they uses on the text. It's a small nitpick cause I could see how the voice acting would stick out even more since Osment was a kid when it was first released. Other thing's I find interesting thinking back is the completely useless side-characters you can add to your party, but you are limited to three people at time so one of the regulars have to go. Now why would I change? Donald and Goofy is clearly superior due more items to use, more armours to wear. The AI is still bad for all of them so it doesn't matter either. The only time picking the other characters is in Agrabah due to Aladdin being able to hit 2-3 switches to unlock treasures, Neverland where Peter Pan is needed to fight an optional boss and Hollow Bastion where Beast can break down walls (and for story reason he is your body guard during your first trip). You even have to equip them with better gear since they come with just the standard. Things that they should have changed is the information in the bestiary. Can't they please add what everyone drops so I can quickly check which enemies to grind for stones, shards or gems? And also where to find these monsters. Jiminy Cricket, you can do better you know.

Yeah, show some concern will you!

Now I never played any other game in the series since it was all over every console and since I moved away in 2006 and never bought a Playstation 2 to play the sequel and I actually think I couldn't get my hands on the GBA game or even the DS ones. Well luckily there's 2 more games on this compilation so let's get started.

Ducktales Remastered

Ducktales Woo-Hoo

My sister got the original game for the Nes and obviously it was always a struggle to get to play it. We weren't much for sharing between siblings. But who cares when I got the remastered version instead for the Wii U. Original was made by Capcom while this version was made by WayForward, the same company behind Shantea. Confession first, never finished the original, I got to the final boss, but never got the rhythm to beat him. And people say this is an easy game, I must really suck. Well, lucky for me there is an easy mode so I could finally beat it... and then I played it all the way to hard since that is the best way to unlock all side things. Guess I just have to get good.

Original game cover

Plot is that after the beagle boys tried to steal a map from Scrooge McDuck he himself goes out looking for the treasures hidden in the map. You go to the Amazon, Transylvania, some African mines, the moon and the Himalaya. Turns out it was a ploy by Magica de Spell and Glomgold Flintheart to summon a vampire Count... I wanna say Duckula, but that is another animated series. You defeat him and Duckburg and the world is saved. Apparently several people didn't like this remake. The game lost a lot of it open levels since it forced you to search the whole level often for items to go to the next part of the level, be it map pieces, relics or armour parts. Some people also complained about the voice acting which gave more story to the game compared to the original. I personally liked it since as far as they could they used the original voice actors from the TV-series and that makes it even feel more like the series. A pity they didn't make localisation for Sweden and used the Swedish voices... well, the Swedish voice of Scrooge McDuck had already been dead for several years so that is probably for the better they didn't. And now they are bringing back the series for 2017. How come that the older I get, the more things from my childhood still sees to be on the TV?

Edit 2016-05-23: Well, that was a bit sad since a couple of days ago Alan Young, the voice of Scrooge McDuck, passed away. As stated, to me the voice of Scrooge was the Swedish dub (or both of them since Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol had another voice), but we had one episode of Ducktales and that was the Valentine episode. And Remaster now of course. But to me the most distinguished role was as Haggis McMutton from Curse of Monkey Island and it took me a long time to realise that he also was the voice of Scrooge. Young become 96 years old and still probably will be greatly missed. Of course now everyone will dread who might be the new Scrooge in 2017.

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

Where's Jar Jar?

Finally watched the latest Star Wars movie and gotta say, I'm satisfied... of course I probably said that back in 1999 as well. I even watched episode IV-VI in anticipation and at this very moment VII feels faster and better paced than all the old ones. Better characterisation than I-III, maybe equal to the original trilogy and same music, but felt more present than the others. Very much better dialoge although some names still sound rather silly, like Snokes. Really intimidating... or maybe not. So now I'm gonna be a real Homer and spoil many parts of the movie so a fair warning.

Last warning: Spoilers ahead!

So Rey is the Jedi of this series? Fine enough. Beating of a trained... sith-lord (?) in the way of the force? Hey, if you possess stronger force powers than sure, quick learner and adaptable so fine by me.  Dual better? Here comes a grey zone. I accept Fin since the first enemy he meets with a lightsaber is a fellow stormtrooper wielding an electrified baton which seemed to work as a sword substitute and he could have got training so fine. Rey only wielded a staff... but then again, she might have gotten training in many weapons as fast she handled the blaster. All it comes down to is who her family is. I might not even have noticed if my twitter feed hadn't exploded about Mary Sue-tweets, and maybe I shouldn't care. 

Another big spoiler is that Kylo Ren is Han Solo and Leia's son, Ben. My sister think they should have gotten an actor that would have looked more like either parent. He also kills Han Solo in the end battle. And Chewie survived which was probably the biggest question when you realise Han is gonna die. It's also here they seemed to jumble the time and space to get characters at their position in the right time. Kylo Ren appearing before Rey and Fin in the woods after the killing of Solo. I know, speed-force and force jump might explain it, but still. And then we have the First Order commander picking up Kylo Ren after the battle and escape right as the planet is destroyed. When the Millennial Falcon barely makes it out. Also speaking of the Starkiller (which probably is an honourable mention to Luke's original surname) what planet was the Federation located at? Was it Courocont (sp?)?

Last spoiler is that the movie ends as Rey finds Luke Skywalker at  the first Jedi Temple location... without him saying a word. Nothing to say, good ending. Can't wait for episode VIII.

The Princess and the Frog

 

I finally watched the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog, the latest classic animated movie from the studio in the typical fairy tale set up that Disney likes to bring out from time to time. Critically acclaimed at the time of release, but not a smash hit by the audiences. It did decent enough, but if you look at the Disney movies of the 90's, not as well. Well, animation was nice, music worked and I really liked the voodoo themes, but that might more be due to me enjoying occult themes and games like Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Interestingly enough both takes place in New Orleans. Really, the shadow figures and the shadow man (the main villain) was interesting ideas, but I wish they would have taken it further. Some gritty Don Bluth darkness and Ralph Bakshi gore would have made it really awesome occult voodoo movie. Of course, that wouldn't have been Disney.

To be honest I can appreciate it for being a "hand drawn" animated movie, but something don't click with me. I'm probably not the target demographic, but shouldn't great movies pull you in even though you aren't the target demographic? Or is it acquired test? Really, compared to Disney's 90's movies will this movie be remembered as fondly or is it nostalgia standing in the way? Hell, even older Disney movies can still be enjoyable on different levels. Maybe not in pacing. Snow White is pretty boring at times when the story slows down (I'm thinking about when she sings about the prince for the dwarfs, it gives nothing to the story and just breaks of the story), but you can enjoy the fantastic animation, music and the story can suck you in. The Queen is scary at times and the transformation scene is terrifying for a child (again, my nostalgia might be in the way since I actually watched this in theaters... no I'm not that old, they re-released them in theaters in 1993 so mom took me and my sisters to see it). 

The story of this movie then. A poor African-American girl dreams of owning her own restaurant and works all the time making her seem to boring and stuck up for her friends. Her best friend is a daughter to some landowner that wants to marry this prince from... Maldona since he's a prince. The prince (is he African, or African-European, or African-Asian?) is a free-loathing leech who wants to marry this rich white girl to get money again. Meanwhile this shadow man voodoo priest wants to kill of the landowner and take over New Orleans using the white servant of the prince as a doppelganger to gain access to the money of the landowner. It's here my suspension of disbelief starts to malfunction. This is the 1920's. An interracial wedding with an African (?) prince who has a white servant in the southern states of America? I might not know that much about the times in this place, but through American entertainment I assume this is a pretty racist and segregated place. I know it's a fairy tale, but at least the french peasant did what french peasant do from the 16-17th century in Europe in Beauty and the Beast. This might be my misconception of the American South in the early 20th century. The voodoo plot? I buy it, seems fairly logical if accept the possible occult themes. Also, I like the small throwbacks to other Disney movies. You have Triton from the Little Mermaid showing up, a couple dressed as Aladdin and Jasmine at a costume ball, a line from Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast and a dance sequence directly taken from Sleeping Beauty. The last thing to mention, and this is a huge spoiler for the movie. The death of the firefly. Crushed by the foot of the bad guy and permanently dies (resurrected as a star... might be a Lion King reference). It doesn't happen often, bad guys die fairly often, but good guys? Bambi's mother and the Atlantean king (though he was what 3000 years old?) are the closest, we also got Cinderellas father and such, but that is back story and often attributed to sickness or old age. This... straight up murder.