“Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg. Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes, its a duck-blur. Might solve a mystery or rewrite history!”
When that iconic verse rang through the halls of PAX East, a chill formed down gamers’ spines both young and old in anticipation of the newest adventure with the greedy yet lovable Scrooge McDuck. From the charming 8-bit graphics to the beautiful chiptune music to the masterful gameplay, Capcom’s DuckTales for the NES has been revered as one of the greatest licensed games of all-time. To see such an iconic game be remade for a new generation of gamers to experience and older fans to lovingly revisit is simply amazing especially considering the NES original has never been released on any online service. Being developed by the wonderful team at WayForward Technologies, who are responsible for great titles like Shantae, Contra 4 and the Mighty series on DSi and 3DS, there are high expectations for the return of Scrooge McDuck.
DuckTales: Remastered is not a quick and dirty remake of the NES original. The team at WayForward has put their heart and soul into reimagining DuckTales for this modern era of video games. The 8-bit sprites have been replaced by beautifully hand-drawn and animated sprites that look straight out of the cartoon itself. Even with the limited bleeps and bloops on the NES processor, DuckTales’ soundtrack is held in high regard by most older gamers. Jake Kaufman, the composer of DuckTales: Remastered, did his best to preserve the original compositions of the soundtrack while taking a more orchestral approach on each track. The NES did not have enough processing power to convey a story through cutscenes like games do today so most of the storytelling was put in the game manual. With the extensive power of the game systems of today, WayForward expands on the original story of DuckTales with brand new cutscenes which add more context to Scrooge’s objectives in each level and explains some lingering questions such as how a duck is able to breathe on the moon. Along with the obvious additions to the presentation and audio, DuckTales: Remastered contains two new levels, new areas to explore in returning levels, the privilege to swim in Scrooge’s money vault, a map screen, an easy pogo jump setting and tons of unlockables such as concept art and music.
As a big fan of the show, DuckTales has been a game that yours truly has wanted to play for the longest time. I have listened to the music and watched quite a bit of gameplay from DuckTales, but I had never got the chance to play the game itself. Thanks to DuckTales: Remastered, this writer can finally experience this NES classic now in high definition. DuckTales: Remastered is available now for 15 dollars on PSN, Steam and the Wii U eShop. Sadly, Xbox 360 owners will have to wait until September 11th to join Uncle Scrooge on his globe-trotting adventure. For those who prefer physical copies of their games, a physical copy of DuckTales: Remastered will be available exclusively for PS3 on August 20th, which will cost 20 dollars instead of 15. No matter if you enjoyed DuckTales on the NES or never played the game before, put down your money and support DuckTales: Remastered in order to convince Disney to revisit more of their classic video game library and hopefully inspire them to start a new age of quality Disney licensed games.
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