Ducktales holds a place in my heart as a beautiful game I had growing up in the 80's, and even though I only really wanted it because I always watched the cartoon as a kid, but after growing up a little I eventually came to realize that Ducktales was a beautifully designed game with a wonderful soundtrack, and became a true stand-out in the very impressive N.E.S. library.

So when I got the news that Wayforward games was developing a reboot and bring back to entire old game with a layer of modern spit and polish, I was very curious how the game would be after 24 years and presented to a new generation.

After getting a hard copy of the game, because I'm a disc man myself, I decided to play through the whole campaign in one sitting mainly because this was based off a N.E.S. title, the game itself wouldn't be that long, (truth be told, I finished everything in 3.5 hours) but I noticed just how much effort they poured into this game.

Opps, did I just land my cane on your head?

Level Design:

The levels are identical from the original, with the same soundtrack, now remixed to sound even better, making the Moon stage even better to listen too. The real grab is the crisp High-Definition hand-drawn everything, the new backgrounds really pop in contrast to the newly designed enemies with animations, plants snap onto Scrooge until he smacks his cane on it to let go, aliens on the moon float and spin around, and rabbits on the Himalayas burrow through the snow before leaping up to attack. The boss fights aren't anything fantastic however, but only in mechanics mind you, because it is a exact remake, the boss will use simple patterns and single attacks, but considering this is a game from 1989, it is easily looked past.

Is it moon gravity or alien abduction?

To increase replayability, they decided to add little twists to the difficulty settings. Not shocking that Easy and Normal, are nothing to write about, however with Hard, you are only given a set number of lives per stage, and if you use them all, you start the whole thing over. Then Extreme only gives you 3 lives total, and to make it difficult, you have to play the entire game in one sitting with no save points ever.

Super heavy armoured duckling

Overview:

Overall, I was very happy with this remake, and this is what a retro remake should be like from now on, and hopefully this can spark a sweep of new remakes to grace our systems with, so we can show the younger generations what they missed out on.

Overall score: 8.5 /10