Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi (SFC) Review

Received: January 23rd, 2018 / Written: April 9th-17th, 2019

Year: 1995 | Developed by: SAS Sakata

Published by: Epoch | [ ⬤ ]

I don't feel I did a good job with my last review to be quite honest (it was a rather lightweight game, but still), so here's to making up for that by covering something slightly more substantial and doing a better job.

Having debuted in 1934 in The Wise Little Hen (with most of his trademark character traits and quirks introduced in Orphan's Benefit), Donald Duck turns 85 this year

Oh, Donald...  I think most people can relate to him in one way or another: whether it's becoming temperamental when some don't go our way sometimes or the fierce determination or not being easily understood by the person spoken to when we talk (for some of us).

But Donald Duck doesn't have to worry about that when it comes to his audience because as far as most of what he's appeared in is concerned, if we pay close attention to his words we can comprehend them just fine in spite of sounding semi-intelligible to those around him...…

Image from Wikipedia

… unless it's the 2017 DuckTales reboot animated series in which case in the episodes that feature him it's hard to accurately make out what he said the first time you hear his dialogue which wasn't the case in stuff like Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas or Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas or the ensemble animated show Disney's House of Mouse or the Flash animated Mickey Mouse shorts from 2013.  Either the recording equipment for Tony Anselmo's lines is faulty or his age might be catching up with him.  😟  Even so it's still a good show and Donald Duck is well-written and funny and it was refreshing to see a deeper layer with this iteration of the character.

Anyway, today I'm talking about a Donald Duck game that is a Super Famicom-exclusive, Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi, which came out in Japan on August 11th, 1995 which was developed by SAS Sakata and was published by Epoch.  SAS Sakata is primarily a Japanese company though they have made Famiconversions of Data East arcade games such as BurgerTime, Bump 'n' Jump, and Karnov early in their careers before graduating to develop games for the Game Boy and Super Famicom (most of them license-based).  Not only is this the first Super Famigame to star Donald Duck but it's also the first Disney game the developer worked on (with the second one being Alice no Paint Adventure).  How did they do?

Oh, before I continue further, you probably noticed that label on the cart.  This game was one of the Super Famicom titles to utilize Epoch's Barcode Battler II interface that had the ability to enhance the experience of a given game (through barcode cards) which Nintendo took advantage of when it came to certain Famicom and Super Famicom games published by Epoch (which could be attached to the respective console via an adapter).  Think of it as a kind of precursor to Nintendo's Game Boy Advance-centric e-Reader when played on the Game Boy Player attached to the Nintendo GameCube.  Now I don't own any form of Barcode Battler or the barcode cards pertaining to it,

though that would explain the bottom option in the options screen and why nothing happened there when I pressed left and right.

One day as Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy Duck are having a walk until a pink hat behind a glass display catches her attention which she's taken into and would like, but at a $300 price tag it's very expensive.  Since Daisy's birthday is coming up shortly Donald plans on surprising her by buying it for her, so he takes on two or three jobs in order to earn the money to afford it.

There's the choice to do the paper delivery for $140, washing (or rather wiping) dusty windows for $180,

rescuing Elvira "Grandma" Duck's yellow canary for $150 who was taken by Pete and is being guarded by his bulldog Butch, or undergoing a timed race hosted by Goofy that you must finish before time runs out for $120.

Regardless of the jobs you chose to do once Donald earns the sufficient amount of money he rushes to the same shop he'd been in before but to his dismay someone's already bought it.  Just then a mysterious stranger beckons for help from Donald and informs him that the clock tower has been haunted by ghosts and that Donald must turn the interior light on to banish all the ghosts.

Once he's fixed the clock tower Donald is taken by surprise when it's revealed that the stranger was a sentient hat once he removes his coat.  The hat explains to Donald that he used to be the king of the Magic Kingdom until Pete usurped the monarchy and transformed him into a magical hat and that he wants you to reverse the curse and put everything right.  Donald is enraged that this is happening on the day of Daisy's birthday, but the true king hat assures him that he won't be late for her birthday for he agrees to help him and should he save the day from Pete's nefarious ways the hat promises that he'll reward Donald the pink hat he wanted to buy for his girlfriend.

The default controls for Donald Duck are moving left and right to walk or run if you hold down the Y button, you press B to jump (with your altitude dependent on how hard or lightly you pressed it), hold up to look above you, hold down to duck and look below you, while the A button performs the "special".  During the paperboy routine Donald is continuously riding on a bike where the A button lets you drop off the paper inside the mailbox the moment you get close to it (or in the hardest difficulty beside the rider of the hot air balloons), you can jump to ride on inclined paths (unless you wish to ride downward) and must jump over passing vehicles, you can speed up by holding right or slow down by holding left, and the job is over once your paper count is down to zero.  If you feel you missed some slots, don't worry because this neighborhood is so small that it loops pretty much indefinitely.

In the window washing job (the go to event that'll ensure that you only have to do two jobs instead of three) Donald must clean up the requisite amount of dirtied up windows in the Duck Building, all nine stories to be exact; and to help get that high are occasional ladders to climb up or down and side elevators  By holding down A in front of the unclean window Donald will use his sleeve to make it cleaner, with one wipe being half clean while two wipes equate to being completely clean.  Things you have to watch out for are a couple children throwing a baseball at each other and certain children who look like they're old enough to know better dropping dangerous stuff down from their window; both of which simply reek of irresponsible parenting.  Sometimes you'll have to run to clear off wide gaps because some window sills are broken but if you fall all the way to the bottom not to worry because Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie will catch him with a trampoline which you can bounce from.

I love how despite this taking place at the Duck Building that it's got a Goofy statue adorning the entrance door with copies of Mickey and Minnie statues acting as platform support on both sides of the building.  Funny.  😄

I feel simultaneously excited for and ambivalent at the prospect of A Quiet Place receiving a follow-up next year; I loved the first one, but can the sequel recapture what made it so good?

It's the dead of night in the rescue mission to save Grandma Duck's canary as you must use your stealth and shushing mechanics by pressing the A button beside any potential noise-making items to get through it.  Do be mindful of Butch's icon in the upper right corner because it will signal if he's close to waking up, because the slightest bit of sound will be enough to wake him.  The moment something happens or should a fragile item threaten to fall down and break immediately shush it to make it hold still, more than once if you have to; if you fail, Butch will rush towards you from offscreen and you must start over (it doesn't matter if you were on the ground or up in midair, do not let him catch you).  It is possible to run here, but only reserve it for noise-making obstacles that you can jump over (like alarm clocks and old-fashioned radios).  Once you reach the canary and free it the lights will turn on as Butch proceeds to automatically chase you down.

Pluto's probably glad he isn't around for this because he and Butch are like water and oil--they don't get along well.  Lastly, the timed race has Donald perform in front of an audience as he must jump over vats of water (if you can) and yellow gelatin(?) that you slowly sink under, run down slopes, jump over gaps, swing on poles, and if you do fall in the water then Donald evades becoming shark meat by leaping high above.  Reaching the end of the goal must be accomplished before the timer reaches zero.

Swinging

The moment you finish the last job though, whatever it was, is the moment the game really begins because by and large Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi is an action platformer--mostly of the sidescrolling variety but during certain points of the game in an open-ended manner.  Aside from all his other functions I covered he can also climb ladders up and down and swing off of hooks where your distance will depend either on the momentum of your swing or depending on which direction you pressed while you were in midair for you can control your jumps in midair; and the primary way of disposing of enemies and damaging bosses

Dangling over clockwork gears

is by bouncing on them with Donald's bottom (default) or with his head (holding down in midair) after jumping.  The only power-up icons you'll stumble across on occasion are Donald's sailor hat to earn another life and some turkey legs to replenish a bit of your small health (divided into quarters), and if you find a plateful of turkey you'll increase your health capacity by a full round (you start with a red circle which is 4 HP, then yellow which is 8 HP, until finally your biggest health capacity is a blue circle which is the equivalent of 12 HP).

And once you clear the clock tower stage up until the moment you face off against Pete in the end the main function of the A button during this course is to protect yourself by holding it down while remaining in place as the titular magical hat (as "Mahō no Bōshi" is what it roughly translates to) will shroud over Donald's entire body in order to protect him from certain obstacles up until you decide to let the button go thereby rendering you vulnerable again.

I kind of preferred the way ASCII did a similar feature in their Super Famiplatformer Ardy Lightfoot as the projectiles would fly through Ardy as opposed to being deflected off of him and the way he incorporates it is almost akin to being invisible but I digress.

Climbing upward

Most of the stages post-clock tower bookend in a boss fight where they must be jumped on or knocked on their heads enough times in order for you to clear the stage.  In-between stages you'll be given a simple four-character password (mostly in the literal sense) so that way you can come back and pick up your progress from there if you don't feel you can beat it in one go.  If you lose a life, whether your health was fully depleted by enemies or spikes damaging you or by falling offscreen, you'll resume from the beginning of the segment you were in when that happened (if it was a boss room, that's exactly where you'll resume after losing a life).  Losing all your lives will take you to the password screen and you have a choice to continue the game currently or forgoing a continue for another time via password, and the number of continues are unlimited.

"All I wanted was to go around wearing a

red nose without anyone noticing!"

The backgrounds designed by E. Kato, T. Inoue, Y. Sekura, and R. Nakaji are equal parts detailed and colorful, and at points when it comes to the darker sections (the clock tower and the clouds during the second half of the stage leading to the castle) there is a lot of atmospheric depth.  During the introduction sequence and in the stage where you're cleaning windows there is a nice reflective surface about them, in the snowy stage where you're racing against the hare pilot there is a beautiful backdrop of snow-covered trees with a transparently gradient filter (where the top portion becomes darker) as it snows down on you,

"Heheheheh, head concussions are hilarious,

heheheheh!"

there is a breathtakingly mountainous backdrop in the stage where you're canyon and leaf hopping under a cool blue sky, the crystal caves are adorned with crystals and elegantly color layering crystal walls on occasion, and the cloud stage begins all bright until eventually everything darkens itself with the major source of light being the occasionally thunderous dark clouds.  There is one stage that is dedicated to Mode 7 effects wizardry where you go around in a maze where any angle you land on automatically fixes itself so that you can move straight which can occasionally feel a bit disorientating

but it does grow on you with the purple/cyan/yellow gradient sky in the background and once you find the exit you're taken to a boss fight where you run atop a rotating sphere which scales downward with one or more hits against the weak spot.  Pophouse Design Studio did an overall incredible job with the game's graphic design.

Jumping over the fire

And just like backgrounds look wonderful so too do the character models by Y. Sakuma and H. Nomoto.  Donald Duck is wonderfully designed in-game with a fitting color palette and most of his animations are fluid; his walking, sneaking, teetering at the edge (with him precariously looking below him as he emulates wing flapping), and running animations are smooth and I like the follow-through animation for the black tassel(?) on his sailor hat, his temper tantrum animation is faithfully replicated with such fluid motion, I like the animation for when he proceeds to do a midair headbutt followed by his flipping forward to his standing position once he made contact, and when you lost your last life (and when Donald finds out the mysterious stranger is a magical talking hat) his incapacitated and weakened animation is smooth (but during the game over sequence while he's in his sitting incapacitated pose his nephews are all doing Donald's temper tantrum pose around him which I find incredibly bizarre coming from them).  Finally the victory animation pose is solid, but he only ever faces the right when he clears each stage.

I swear some games were made with the sole purpose just to haunt me

Is that more or less annoying than when Takahashi Meijin/Master Higgins only faced the left direction in Produce's Takahashi Meijin no Daibōken Jima/Super Adventure Island whenever you lost a life?  I'm going to have to go with less, only because Donald doesn't pull off an obnoxiously dopey "oh" face every time like a certain troglodyte in his first 16-bit excursion did.  😒

Enabling self-protection mode

Donald's girlfriend Daisy has a fluid walking animation, plus his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Grandma Duck, and Goofy have got a pleasant design also; it's also cute how the magic hat can stretch itself wide enough to cover up Donald's entire body as a means to protect him.  The enemies have a good design and animation as well, like the mage wizards with the magic cane and the lanky wolves that charge at you with their sticklike weapon that have a fist attached at the front end to name a couple of them.  Some of the bosses have incredulous reactions upon being bounced on and knocked out, and they animate to a solid degree.

And at one point you even get to face off against Phelan "Phelous" Porteous' favorite Ghostbusters character Sliiiiiimeeeeeer!  😁  I kid, I kid, I know it's Peter Venkman.  😏

Pete has a good design and appears as an imposing force during his second phase as his stature has increased in size.  His color palette is well-chosen too with the purple skull-adorned robe and red shoes and hat/sleeve patterns.

A one on one race against a hare pilot

Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi's music and sound was provided by the Epoch Sound Team.  The game's soundtrack was composed by Takahisa Hirano and Takeshi Miura and it is the most impressive aspect of the game.  For one thing the sound quality is incredible as there is an orchestral feel to it with its instrumentation, it succinctly matches the tone and atmosphere of any given cutscene and stage as it gives this adventure a grand sense of scale, and it's all a game with Donald Duck as the main character!  😲  I genuinely find much of its soundtrack to be impressive as it's got many standout themes going for it.

Riding a cork up high to a pair of leaves

The cue that plays during the pre-title credit screen serves as a very great indicator of what to expect from the rest the soundtrack, the window washing theme is a pleasant listen, the timed event has an energetic sport-like theme backing it up, and the theme for when you're attempting to rescue the canary sounds creepy and legitimately intense--though that might just be because you're trying to accomplish it without attracting the attention of Butch.  😰  The soundtrack starts to get even more impressive the moment you first meet up with the magic hat (disguising himself with a coat) as the theme that plays during the first encounter has got a big sense of mystique about it, and when the magic hat reveals to Donald as being exactly that there is an appropriately magical theme that eventually segues to something wonderful.

The music will absolutely blow you away

(for a Donald Duck platformer)

The clock tower stage has got a darkly atmospheric theme throughout with the lights out as you occasionally contend with ghosts, the theme for when you race off against the hare pilot has got a competitively friendly flair to it and fits well with the snow-laden land, the crystal cave theme is endearingly adventurous, and the theme for the Mode 7 stage is relentlessly pressing.  The first half of the stage that transpires in the clouds has a theme that sounds atmospherically light for it gives you the sensation that you're flying while the theme for the second half is darker and more menacing in tone which prepares you for things to come the moment you storm the castle.

Ummm… is Donald a cannibal now?  😦

The songs heard within the castle are some of the darkest songs in the game as you near the end of your journey.  The first theme you hear upon entering it takes you right at the moment as there's an epic sense of urgency about it, but my favorite song of the bunch is a deeply rooted impending melody with a riveting composition throughout.  Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi has three boss themes; the first two are solid (with the second one sounding imposing), but what steals the show in this regard is the final battle theme once you battle Pete's final phase for it's darkly foreboding, it's epic, there's a do or die nature about the battle, and its prelude is incredible.  The staff roll music is a nice reward for finishing the game (among other things), and the "The End" screen has got a gently relaxing theme (brief though it may be).

Flashing red corks

For a platformer featuring Donald Duck in it I wasn't expecting a powerhouse score that would be engrossing but it genuinely wowed me, even if it's admittedly better than a game of this quality deserves, it bring atmospheric life to its given location settings.  🙂  T. Kutsukake and K. Hirota served as this platformer's sound designers and several sounds I felt to be ideally chosen: when Donald wipes a window during the Duck Building stage it sounds like a genuine window wipe, I like the drumroll sound for when he rushes down the slope as well as Donald's shush sound during the stealth stage, and while there might not be any digitized soundbytes I do like the game's attempts at replicating Tony Anselmo's quacking variants when it comes to Donald sustaining damage, losing a life, when you clear a stage, and as he serenades Daisy at the end.

Cartoon logic: hammer hits the platform and

summons the corks to fall on Donald from far away

Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi is not a game that I was aware of growing up, mostly because it was a Japan-exclusive, but even when I started physically collecting games from eBay almost ten years ago I still had no idea of its existence until years after the fact; it didn't have a section dedicated to it on MobyGames--though the fact that the credits comprised itself of nothing but first initials and last names didn't really help (I was lucky to find a handful of full names on other sites, but that's as much as I could find).  It was more obscure than even the obscurest Nintendo 16-bit games I learned and found out about.

Crystals abound

When I did find out about it (I forgot how) I decided to watch some video game footage on YouTube, and I remember it did strike my fancy from what I saw.  Once I had the means to play Super Famicom games there were moments when I considered importing it but being a collector and retro enthusiast it didn't occur for one of two reasons: there were other games that caught my attention or whenever I did find copies of it on eBay it more often than not had an estimated delivery date that was two or more weeks and I didn't feel like waiting that long.  It was still on my games I was curious to play list, but it wasn't until the holiday season of 2017 that I considered asking for it for Christmas (among a few other games).  Of the games I asked for on my Christmas list this game was not among the ones I received, but you know what I did get?

The Eurocom-developed Super Famiport of the MegaDrive-based Disney Interactive platformer Donald in Maui Mallard, which is a bizarre mix-up since I already had the American SNES cart.  I was a good sport about it, though I can't complain because I'm happy to own a version of the game that actually acknowledges that it's Donald Duck that you're controlling instead of just owning the version that outright acts like he's a different character despite sharing the same design and mannerisms (Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow).  😃

Vanquished the skeleton-hogging mirror

I knew I was going to play this game eventually, so I decided to import a copy that I found to be affordable the next month on January 2018 which had an estimated arrival of two weeks; normally I decide to order games that would arrive within days if not one week, but since my curiosity overcame me I decided to wait.  I kept my expectations in check because I practically knew nothing of it apart from what little gameplay I saw of it on YouTube.  Of the Disney licenses made for the Nintendo 16-bit console between 1992 and 1997, this was among four to not see a release outside Japan and it was also the first of three games where Donald Duck was a playable character--and of the three it is the weakest.

Capcom's Disney-based swansong for the Super Famicom Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3 was the most polished in terms of structure and gameplay, and Donald in Maui Mallard/Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow had an open-ended environment with plenty of challenge and depth throughout.

Checking things below

I just want to make one thing very clear before divulging any further: I like Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi and despite the shortcomings it's got which I'll go over I never found the game unpleasant.  The controls are solid for the most part but Donald can only incapacitate and defeat enemies by jumping on them which means he can't protect himself otherwise leaving you in a vulnerable spot if you're not careful.  The jumping could've benefited from a bit of polish because if you jumped while walking or standing still then the momentum of it feels awkward and stiff (which is also true after letting go of a hook during certain angles)

Can't help but feel like I'm being watched

which means you'll get the most traction in midair by jumping after running but because it's a bit on the loose side during this situation you're going to have to adjust your jump so that you'll land for sure on the platform.  The hammer-wielding boss requires that you jump on his head after accidentally letting it go to which he'll run after it giving you an opportunity, but in the hardest difficulty setting you never know when he'll let the hammer go as it happens randomly, and to compound things even further you have to defeat him before he gets  a chance to destroy the last pillar that holds the platform together because if you both fall down you have to start the battle over again.

Bees are a nuisance

There are no checkpoints in these stages, which is understandable since they're generally short but the exception is the cloud stage which is one long and continuous auto-scrolling area where you simply cannot afford to misplace your jumps lest you wish to start from the beginning of that.  The Mode 7-driven stage is a good idea in concept, but to have the perspective fix itself each time you land on an angle can make it feel more disorienting than it should at points, and until you know the exact path to take that will lead you to the exit of the maze you'll be going around in circles; Nihon Falcom's constant perspective-altering Brandish A-RPG series was never dizzying to this degree.

Oh, and Pluto is not in it.  You can't have a character appear as a password icon and not have them contribute or appear in some form or another in the game.

Seriously, why are ducks having turkey as one of their servings?  That's just wrong!  😖

Everyone else made an appearance in the end while also acting as password icons if not having appeared earlier in the game, including Mickey Mouse and Scrooge McDuck in one of their rare moments of sharing the screen together in a video game as well as Goofy and a considerably dopey-eyed Minnie Mouse.

There it is

Regardless of which of the three difficulty modes you play it takes roughly fifty or sixty minutes to beat, which is a reasonable length, but the stages are largely too short for their own good.  It's still enjoyable in its own right though, as there are plenty of things that make up for its flaws.  There is a polished aesthetic to its visual design and the colors are succinctly chosen, SAS Sakata captured the Disney charm and did justice to Donald Duck as far as his character was concerned; as I said earlier the soundtrack is brilliantly composed as the latter tracks emit a sense that there are high stakes at hand and give the settings a larger than life atmospheric quality.

Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi is not devoid of replay value, as in the beginning you have the option to choose which two or three of the jobs you'll have Donald undergo until you earn the $300 necessary to buy Daisy's hat, and between the village and cloud stages you can select the four stages in the order of your heart's content.

Thundering clouds

I also liked how each stage had a different gimmick or how it presented different kinds of challenges in it.  The stage with the pilot hare is essentially just a race to the finish, the crystal cave stage has you go through mirrors in a warp-style maze, in an upward-scaling stage you must contend with warping platforms based on their color as the flames slowly consume the room from the bottom, during a later auto-scrolling stage you have to occasionally evade being hurt by the monsters' teeth going up and down by standing in the spot that serves as a safe gap, and in the very last room you go to before heading off to confront Pete there is an unusual gravitational force permeating throughout the room, just to name several examples.

Warping platforms aplenty

Each of the three difficulty settings have slight variants or additions depending on which one you selected to undergo.  There are less enemies and obstacles on easy mode than there are on hard mode, there are more life icons on easy than there are on hard, enemies and bosses might require more damage to defeat in the harder difficulty, the cloud stage scrolls automatically at a slow rate on easy than it does in the subsequent difficulties (this time with sentient wind clouds that will attempt to push you back should you be within their vicinity), in the stage with teeth some of the blocks comprising of platforms will stick in later difficulties as opposed to remaining in place like on easy, to name some examples.

But regardless of the difficulty you chose to play, the game is on the relatively easy side of things even with the additional challenge incorporated.

While Donald's 16-bit foray title doesn't have the high challenge value and depth of GRC's Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibōken, it is more manageable and approachable in terms of difficulty of the two individual characters' Super Famicom-exclusive outings.

*bump*

Poor Donald Duck, though, always following in the shadow of Mickey Mouse; even since their first crossover together he's been this comedic foil who's often been portrayed as the butt of the jokes and being down on his luck.  He wasn't exactly lucky on the Nintendo gaming side in the '90s in America and Europe either: his self-titled Famicom title by Kemco had to be changed to a Peanuts license for the NTSC NES version Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular because Capcom was the only company exclusively allowed to handle Disney video game licenses for Nintendo in the West back then until the dueling video game versions of Disney's Aladdin in 1993 by Virgin Games (for Sega gamers) and Capcom (for Nintendo gamers) convinced the Big N to give all third-party companies a chance to craft Disney entertainment besides just Capcom, he was always relegated as a secondary background character or a cameo (like in Capcom's take on Bonkers), it's unfortunate enough that Visual Concepts' Mickey's Playtown Adventure: A Day of Discovery was canned but the company couldn't find a way to incorporate him in it but could find a use for Daisy, and now he finally gets a chance to shine as a main lead

Image from GameFAQs

and it remains exclusively in Japan.  😞  Even Capcom's attempt to finally utilize him as a playable character for once in Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3 is denied a localization (until the Game Boy Advance port in the early half of the 2000's) because apparently it went something like: "Don't localize this game, it would be too late in the SNES console's lifespan but do localize Rockman X3 (as Mega Man X3), Final Fight Tough (as Final Fight 3), and Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems, that's eligible!"

Image from MobyGames

But to be fair, I'm wondering if it's because Disney Interactive was pretty much the de facto handler of Disney licenses in the West at this point regardless of what company developed it, but by that logic I wonder why these respective developers could not have made a deal with Disney Interactive to ensure their Western release--or maybe there was, but they just could not afford it.  But the biggest factor behind the lack of a localization is timing as it was made in 1995 which was before the Nintendo 64 came out but the Super Famiconsole's popularity slowly began to wane because of the 32-bit era with Sony's PlayStation One and Sega's Saturn consoles.

For crying out loud, it took two years after the Super Famicom's 1990 debut for Mickey Mouse's first Nintendo 16-bit stint, Capcom's Mickey no Magical Adventure/The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse, to come out.  Even Sega's 16-bit console had the first Mickey Mouse came two years after the console's 1988 MegaDrive debut in Sega's I Love Mickey Mouse: Fushigi no Oshiro Daibōken/Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse while Donald got his Sega 16-bit debut I Love Donald Duck: Guruzia Ou no Hihou/QuackShot starring Donald Duck a year later in 1991.  Sega loyalists got the best treatment in terms of Donald Duck-related video game entertainment outside Japan in the '90s.  That's a stark contrast versus how long it took for Donald to get his Nintendo 16-bit game after Mickey did.

If Europe and Japan had no qualms with Donald's name being attached to this incredibly moody and atmospheric game, I fail to see how American audiences would've taken issue with it

And the one Nintendo 16-bit game that Donald Duck stars in that would be experienced and enjoyed by Western audiences way back when and it's one where he plays his metafictional persona Maui Mallard (where the American version completely elides the name "Donald Duck" out of Disney's apparent fear that "it would ruin Donald's image" or some such nonsense), which has got the official Disney touch thanks to the animation by their animation studio Creative Capers, the atmosphere was beautifully and effectively moody, it had a great soundtrack by a pre-movie composer Michael Giacchino, Patrick J. Collins, and Steve Duckworth, and it's good and challenging entertainment despite some imperfections in its controls.  Unfortunately Donald in Maui Mallard/Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow bookends itself on an unfulfilled sequel bait as Maui never appeared again in any medium because it didn't sell a sufficient amount of units.  Again bad timing rears its ugly head because apparently the promised sequel would've been 16-bit only.

Contending with a boxing kangaroo

Donald could just never win, it seemed, which is too bad because I think people would've enjoyed this game had it been released outside Japan for it is endearing in its own right.  🙁  Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi does pale in comparison to most of the other Disney games in the system because of the sometimes faulty jumping controls, mostly short stages, and easygoing nature in spite of the added difficulty in later settings, but it is a decently fun and charming excursion while it lasts.  It did make me curious enough to look into other Super Famigames developed by SAS Sakata... maybe not right away because they mostly cost a lot, but someday I'll revisit their realm.  Today's game had six programmers (M. Aso, S. Ikeda, H. Imai, Toshihiko Imai, Hisashi Satou, and Keiichi Hinata), a planning map designer (O. Ogiwara), two producers (K. Sawada and S. Oda), two executive producers (M. Maeda and H. Jatani), one supervisor (M. Horie), two directors (T. Horikoshi and Y. Kazama), and a special thanks section dedicated to twenty-eight people, and overall I find the game to be very decent but falls just shy of being solid in my book.

Teetering on the platform's edge

If you like Donald Duck and are in the mood for a game that stars him in it then this game is decent to play while it lasts; if you wanted to play a game that is high in polish or high in depth and difficulty then you might have more enjoyment playing Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3 and Donald in Maui Mallard/Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow respectively, but if you're indifferent about those things then you might enjoy this game all the same--provided you own the means to play it anyway--plus it doesn't entail any block/tile sliding puzzles so that automatically makes it a plus.  It may not be the greatest Donald Duck game out there, but there is enough replay value and magic to make the experience entertaining and pleasant.  🙂

My Personal Score: 6.5/10

d(^-^)bTO EACH THEIR OWNd(^-^)b

● So the first movie I saw in theatres on the weekend I turned 28 was the Pet Sematary remake.  😐  It was more bearable than I thought it would be, the production values are solid and the performances are good across the aboard (especially by John Lithgow), however I personally felt the movie to be unremarkably meh otherwise.  Maybe it was because I kind of knew what I was getting into, changes from the source material aside, and from having seen chunks of the 1989 version beforehand, combined with the dreaded jump scare stinger in places where it did not need to be (like passing trucks) which took me out of the movie; but this Pet Sematary did not click with me.  And the ending of this version... the more I think about, the sillier the implications behind it.  Sometimes dead is better, but I can say this: it was the first Stephen King movie I saw in theatres.

Thank you for reading my review, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think (neither spam nor NSFW allowed); hope you have a great day, take care!  🙂

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Hare: "How's about you have a race with me, strange sailor duck?"

"Normally I would race against a tortoise but he's stuck on Planet Earth doing a dead end job delivering junk mail to everyone.  I mean, what a loser!  I, on the other hand, am better than my competition."

"And as history has proven, the hare has always proven victorious against the tortoise on account of the natural-born agility and anyone who says otherwise is in complete denial!"

Donald: "You're one to talk, what you just said is nothing but a bunch of hogwash!  Aesop didn't write the story with the hare as the winner in mind, you hypocrite!"

Hare: "Ohhh, wise guy, eh?"

Donald: "And what about that time that the tortoise knocked the hare out of the ring during that one boxing match?"

Hare: "That doesn't count, that tortoise cheated his way to victory!"

Donald: "Can you prove it?"

Hare: "...…...no."