onsdag 16 februari 2022

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! TurnParry! 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.  

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