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.

Illusion of Time (SNES)

Finally, a PAL-version!

Released as Illusion of Gaia in the US I first heard of it by watching the Clan of the Gray Wolf as it was the first game in the 16-bit Gems-series. So watching that back in 2009 one would hope it would be released on the Virtual Console or something, but that never happened so I had to buy it for the original console now when I can play it. Got box and manual, but decided to not get the version with the map in it, saved me over 400 SEK (something like 40 € or $). 

So you play as Will, a boy that one year earlier travelled with his father to the tower of Babel, but the expedition disappeared but Will made it back somehow. Now he has some psychic powers that allow him to move things and I gather giving him some second sight. One day he finds a door to inter-dimensional pocket where Gaia exist, a spirit that warns Will that a comet is approaching earth and it will cause immense destruction as it does every 800 years. It has caused several civilisations through earths history being destroyed and in the beginning it was created by humans, but backfired on its creator. So now Will is a descendent of the knights of Darkness and with his power of Darkness have to travel the earth and search the ruins for the mystic statues.

Now the fun thing is that the ruins and world is based on real locations, like the Incan empire, Nazca, Angkor Wat, the Pyramids and so on. Something bothered me though, the world map doesn't correspond with our map so somehow Nazca and the Inca are two different continents, you walk from the great wall of China to the city of Euro (with the company Roleks, which I gather is a rewrite of Rolex) and from there you get to Angkor Wat and then you get to the pyramids. But the story actually explain it. The end shows how the world forms the continents we know of. Apparently the light of the comet caused the world to change away from what it was supposed to evolve into so that is part of why Will have to clear this mess.

On this journey Will will travel with Kara, the princess of the kingdom where Will lived, Lance, Erik and Seth, childhood friends of Will, Lilly, a new friend that can turn into a dandelion and hails from a hidden village near the lost Incan Empire. Also Will's cousin Neil that are an inventor and the son of the President of the Roleks company. They travel the world for the ruins and sees how the comet's light have destroyed the past and is doing the same now. The people around Angkor Wat is starving as the food have disappeared and some even turns to demons (I wonder if the food is referencing some kind of real world food shortages in South East Asia, like Cambodia?), the ancient Mu palace was overtaken by vampires, the Roleks company is partaking in a world spanning slave trade originating from the desert town of Dao and Kara's father sends the hunter Jackal after them in order to obtain the powers Will possess for himself. In the floating city we see people partaking in a Russian Roulette game of poisoned drinks where the loser even though he has a child on the way still drinks the poisoned glass and everyone around begs him to stop. Will himself isn't always that good either since a side-quest that span the whole game is finding these 50 red jewels and give them to the jeweller for power ups and a secret area and boss. One of the gems is snitching on an escaped slave to the slavers, and the slave and the ones hiding him disappears. And the Jackal? You burn him to death by activating a trap in the pyramids. The scene is rather gruesome!

FIRE! I take you to burn!

Gameplay wise, you go around towns until you get to go to a ruin where you traverse it solving puzzles and fighting monsters. Clearing all monsters in a room gives you a stat boost in either life, strength or defence. Will fights with a flute and can play musical melodies as well as being more acrobatic with slides and spinning jumps. Will can also change into two different forms helping him. First is the dark knight Freedan that is stronger and can reach switches further away and then Shadow, the one destined to fight the comet in the end and can go through floors. Used in only one dungeon and for the boss rush at the end, making it feel like the game was rushed a bit. They also just gives you the final mystic statue so you can reach the comet, but I wonder if they where supposed to put in Stonehenge as well as a final stage since they show it in the intro.

Overall, it was a fun game. Graphics are nice, music is good, and the gameplay is rather good. It wasn't that hard, but that could be due to having a guide at the end of the manual showing you every red jewel and some strategies for defeating the early bosses. So I wasn't cheating since the game came with it... maybe the save states actually count towards it, but mostly it saves me maybe one day of play. Would I 100 % it again? Maybe not, getting the red jewels only serve to connect the game with its spiritual predecessor Soul Blazer... which I probably wont get since it goes for over 1 000 SEK (ca € 100). It also is very linear so no instant re-playability I would say. Also, I question if it's actually an RPG, yes you have stat increases, but they are predetermined by killing all monsters in every room, so I would define it more as an action adventure. 

Battle for Olympus (NES)

From Zero to Hero in no time flat!

The game for greek mythology nerds. It's based on the story of Orpheus who have to travel to the underworld and rescue the love of his life, Eurydice, since she died and Orpheus armed only with a lyre descends to Hades and moves Hades to tears with the song and allows her to return, but only if he doesn't look back at her during their travel to the surface. It's a tragedy so of course at the very last minute he looks, overcome with doubt and fear, and Eurydice disappears forever. Stricken with grief again he grieves until he's killed by being torn to pieces by some women.

So you play as Orpheus armed with a club and shield setting of to rescue... Helena? Helena of Troy? Alright, a bit of liberty already, both in choice of weapons and name of the wife. Maybe the letter restriction of the NES made Helena a better choice? Anyway, Helena have been killed by a snake that allowed Hades to kidnap her, but Aphrodite sees the couples love for each others and persuades the other gods to help so Orpheus meets with Zeus and from there sets of all around Greece to find all the temples of the gods and get the means to find the entrance to Tartarus and fight Hades. You get the Sandals of Hermes, the Shield of Athena, The divine sword of Hephaestus, Ares Power Bracelet, Apollo's Harp, a harmonica from Poseidon and Artemis Moon crystal.  You need all of these items in order to find the three nymphs and the hearts that allows you to find Tartarus.

You gotta defeat Hades minions like the Lamia, cyclops, the minotaur and a lot of snakes. God I hate the snakes. After getting to Tartarus and defeating Kerberos (I hate that damn dog too, bosses shouldn't be allowed to regain health, especially when they are hard to hit) you traverse the maze and finds Helena turned to stone, the next room being completely dark with only water and a bridge. You use the moon crystal and the moon lights up making Hades cast a shadow in the water so that you know where to hit to fight off Hades. Really cool concept, it also harkens back to mythology again since Hades had a helmet (or cap depending on the translations) that could turn one invisible, so props for that. You beat him by forcing him against the wall and do the Zelda II Shadow Link fight by kneeling and just attacking. Beat him and the hearts of the Nymphs releases Helena from the stone and both arrive outside of Tartarus as the sun rises bringing a new day and a happy ending for Orpheus. So a sword clearly beats playing a song.

Only the penitent man will pass!

We had this game when I was a kid and the furthest we got was defeating Lamia and getting the staff and fire ability (or that was when I was in my 20's so as kid we didn't get that far really). I pretty much got lost at the forest stage. It's hard. Dying sends you back to the entrance of the stage and there are a lot of death pits, enemies that have irregular flying patterns and the damage progression is awful. You take too much damage early on and the Golden apple that halves your damage is way off. But I have nostalgic feelings for it. The music is great, and the graphics looks really good. It was released 1991 in Europe, but the Famicom version was released in 1988 and the whole game was made by only three people. It was inspired heavily by Zelda II which you see in the side-scrolling segment and the final battle with Hades. It feels nice finally finishing it, although I gotta be honest, I used the save state function a lot. Boy, I don't know how much time I would have had to spend on the game to finish it legit. And I even had a Nintendo Magazine walkthrough of the game that at least showed the beginning of the game.

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.