The Disney Afternoon Collection (Switch2) Review
Summary: A fantastic collection for fans of Capcom's delightful Disney platformers, now with added Goof Troop.
4.1
Its's a Duck-blur!
The Disney Afternoon Collection makes its way to Switch 2, with a physical edition that is exactly the kind of package collectors want.
It’s all on the cart, and it’s accompanied by a nice selection of 90s-themed trinkets, including stickers, cards, and a handful of Disney-themed pogs.
Originally landing on Switch and Switch 2 digitally back in February, The Disney Afternoon Collection is another superb helping of classic Capcom platformers from those retro wrangling experts at Digital Eclipse.
It’s a solid lineup that will bring a smile to the faces of nostalgic NES owners like me and includes DuckTales, DuckTales 2, Chip ’n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ’n’ Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin.
But that’s not all. This new version for Nintendo hardware packs in SNES titles Goof Troop and Bonkers as a very welcome bonus.
The clear draws here are DuckTales and Rescue Rangers, along with their sequels. In other words, the games everyone played, and the late NES titles you missed the first time around.
DuckTales, in particular, holds up incredibly well, mainly thanks to some rock-solid level design, superb pogo-based platforming, and an exceptional soundtrack. It still looks pretty damn good considering its age, too.
Though its sequel doesn’t quite hit the same nostalgic spot, it does take pretty much everything that made the original so great and ups it a notch; the levels are bigger, Scrooge has some new moves, and it’s easily one of the best-looking NES games I’ve seen.
Meanwhile, Rescue Rangers holds a special place in my heart as the main game I used to play whenever I had to take the ferry when I was a wee lad.
As such, it was nice to finally play more than the opening couple of minutes before my time ran out. It’s just as fun as I remember and still remains a great example of an early co‑op platformer, something that didn’t really exist at the time. Also, nailing robotic dogs with crates never stopped being fun.
Likewise, its sequel, which I blasted through in all of an hour, is a fantastic example of a very late NES game. Though it mostly drops the non-linear progression of its predecessor — although you can tackle the amusement park levels in whatever order you want — it looks great, tells a fun story with basically animated cutscenes between the levels, and there are even more robotic dogs to smash in the face with boxes.
The rest of the NES titles don’t fare quite as well, though. Darkwing Duck is a serviceable spoof of Sunsoft’s Batman game, but ultimately feels like a low-rent Mega Man. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable, but there are certainly moments when the rewind button was an absolute lifesaver, especially during some of its more egregious boss battles.
You can skip TaleSpin. It’s an awful shooter that looks good — all the games in the collection do — but it’s no fun. The enemies are too aggressive, and you can’t fire fast enough. I know it’s probably a rights issue, or they wanted to keep this mainly a NES collection, but the Mega Drive TaleSpin game would have been a much better pick. It’s a platformer too.
The NES games also include Time Attack and Boss Rush modes. These are nice additions if you’re into speedruns or want to cut out the platforming and get straight to bopping some bosses, or are the kind of person who’s a sucker for a leaderboard.
Then there’s the SNES duo.
Bonkers is the only game in the collection not developed by Capcom. It’s a straightforward platformer that sees you hunting for stolen items across Hollywood as the titular Bonkers.
Its main twist is your ability to tear up the place by dashing through enemies and items. It’s a neat mechanic, and overall, Bonkers is a pretty good time and easily the best-looking game in the collection. The sprites look lush, and the environments are rich, detailed, and make great use of colour. It’s also far more approachable than the far trickier NES platformers in the collection.
Then there’s Shinji Mikami’s Goof Troop. Did you know the guy who went on to create Resident Evil made games before it? I’m as shocked as you. Did you know Resident Evil is itself inspired by the NES horror game Sweet Home? Next on Did you Know Gaming. Sonic is blue.
Anyway, Goof Troop is a curious addition because thematically it fits right in. It’s a Capcom game based on a popular Disney cartoon series, but rather than being another side-scrolling action platformer, it’s a top-down co-op puzzle game that sees Goofy and Max save Pete and Peg from a gang of pirates.
But with the amount of block-based batterings Goofy dishes out as he solves a series of light puzzles by booting blocks and chucking items, it does feel a little like an evolution of Rescue Rangers at times.
Like Rescue Rangers, it’s also more fun playing with a friend, even more so since nothing is adjusted if you play by yourself. Regardless, it’s a fantastic addition to the collection with bright colourful spritework, plenty of devious puzzles to solve, and some absolutely cracking tunes.
Each game includes the usual visual settings you expect from these kinds of retro collections, including a couple of smoothing filters and the ability to play the game as God intended or stretch across your modern TV like a monster.
There’s also a treasure trove of ancillary materials to paw through, from concept art and advertisements to original artwork and scans of the original game boxes. It’s all annotated too, giving you further insight into the development process of each game. For game history nerds like myself, it’s great stuff. There’s also a music player so you can torture your neighbours by playing the Moon theme from DuckTales on repeat while you work.
Final Thoughts
The Disney Afternoon Collection is a delightful collection of some of Capcom’s best NES adventures this side of Mega Man. It was a decent collection when it first released on PS4 and Xbox One back in 2017, but this new Switch collection is easily the definitive version, thanks to the addition of Goof Troop and Bonkers.
However, even with eight titles packed on the cart, it’s worth bearing in mind that The Disney Afternoon Collection isn’t just a catchy title; it’s also how long it’ll probably take you to get through its contents, especially if you make liberal use of the rewind feature.
That being said, if you’re looking for some Mega Man adjacent fun, have a hankering to go globe trotting with Scrooge McDuck, or want to know how much influence Disney had on Resident Evil, The Disney Afternoon Collection is another solid museum piece that deserves a spot on your shelf.
Did I mention there’s pogs?
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