Review - The Disney Afternoon Collection for Switch and Switch 2

During the dark days of Nintendo’s history when the Wii U was the new, room temperature thing, Capcom was a strong supporter of Nintendo’s ill-fated tablet-based platform. In addition to an exclusive port of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, the company released things like Ducktales Remastered and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara for the device as a show of good faith to the Nintendo loyalists. It would eventually drop support when it released the Mega Man Legacy Collection in 2015, though that would wind up on 3DS for any holdouts (not to mention eventually get ported to Switch).

I bring up this history because there is a rather strange blind spot in all of this: The Disney Afternoon Collection. A joint venture between Capcom and Digital Eclipse, The Disney Afternoon Collection would hit PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 18th, 2017. Now, that was probably a bit too early within the Nintendo Switch’s lifecycle for a simultaneous release, but a belated port never materialized. In fact, it’s been almost nine years since that collection was first available and Switch owners are only now getting it in the form of a slightly expanded version.

Available for Switch and Switch 2, the new Disney Afternoon Collection is pretty much the same thing from years back, just with the addition of two SNES games that round out the collection pretty nicely. It’s got the same gallery, the same menu design, and the same extra modes, just with two more games that better help justify the price. While those games do feel a little stapled to the collection rather than fully integrated, Goof Troop is such an important and overlooked classic from its era that Capcom could have sold it alone and still gotten away with a $20 MSRP.

So, how does one review a collection like this? For the most part, people who were interested in the Capcom/Disney NES games probably already bought the collection years ago. I’ve had it on PC for quite some time, and after a rumor of a new version made the rounds, I installed it and plowed through the games again. That version doesn’t quite play nice with new 4K displays, but it’s otherwise a fun little compilation of a fruitful period where Disney cared about its series beyond making a quick buck. Its bonus features are great, and I really like having full page scans of design documents available for viewing. Having played the Switch 2 port, though, I’m surprised at how little tweaks can result in a better feeling experience, even if nothing monumental has been changed.

Let’s start with the game lineup and some quick thoughts on each title included here. For those unfamiliar, The Disney Afternoon Collection features six NES games developed by Capcom: DuckTales, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, DuckTales 2, and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2. This new version adds the SNES titles Goof Troop, and Bonkers. All eight of these games were released over a six-year period that technically began before the titular Disney Afternoon animation block. For kids of the ’90s, these games represent some of the best licensed titles ever made and were the genesis of Disney’s involvement in games that would culminate in the 1993 Genesis classic Aladdin, which featured digitized cels from the movie.

Interestingly enough, I only ever grew up with DuckTales and Goof Troop in my house. The rest of these games I was familiar with, but didn’t play until the collection was released nearly a decade ago. DuckTales is truly a classic, but the other five games range from good to bad if taken at face value. One has to remember that these titles were developed for children, so expecting involved platforming or challenge beyond NES nonsense is silly. DuckTales gets by on pure charm and audio/visual prowess, though it does offer a rather unique non-linear structure for players to dig into. DuckTales 2 even does that better by including a bonus level only accessible by finding hidden treasures. Those games were the cream of the crop in this collection until now.

The two Chip ‘n Dale games… well, they were innovative in the ’90s for featuring simultaneous co-op support. Again, there is charm here, but if you’ve been playing platformers for your entire life, nothing here is going to stand the test of time. There are numerous points in each game where you can stand perfectly still and hit jump to quick large chunks of the vertical scrolling segments. The boss fights are brain-dead, and while the first game does offer some non-linearity, the second comes off more like contractual obligation rather than an expansion of the ideas from the first.

Darkwing Duck is fairly overlooked when it comes to the Capcom/Disney collaborations. Produced by Tokuro Fujiwara, known for his work on Mega Man’s 2-7 and Mega Man X1-3, the game is basically a toned-down version of The Blue Bomber’s titles that does a great job capturing the aesthetic of its show. Where it kind of stumbles is with regard to items, which are pretty much pointless. The boss fights can also be obtuse, though are considerably easier than the stages before them.

TaleSpin, then, wrapped up the original package with a pretty average shmup. There is a unique mechanic that lets players flip their plane upside, allowing the ability to shoot behind them, but it’s not utilized much. The main levels can also be quite tricky as your plane tilts when going up or down, causing shots to fire at an angle unless holding two directions at once. It results in these stages that can feel unfairly designed, but then you get to the boss fights, and they are so ludicrously easy that I’m not sure what happened. It’s very uneven, that’s for sure.

With this Switch and Switch 2 version, you then can add Bonkers to the list and um… well, if it wasn’t an SNES game, I don’t think I’d look as favorably on it. Don’t get me wrong: Bonkers is not awful. It just feels like a continuation of how Chip ‘n Dale was designed where levels are devoid of much challenge, and you don’t ever need to think about what you’re doing. I like the idea of collecting badges to increase your supply of ammo, but since you can jump on enemies to defeat them, the ammo doesn’t factor in too much. It’s really only boss fights where bombs are handy, but those are also quite easy (minus, maybe, a later boss that finally requires some lateral thinking).

Goof Troop, however, is godlike. Designed by Shinji Mikami, who you may know as one of the best action designers ever, the game feels like the prototype that Nintendo would borrow from when designing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. One or two players will control Max and Goofy over a series of levels that not only feature some combat, but demand puzzle solving and item swapping to progress. Played from a top-down perspective, you have a clear view of the playfield at all times and there is an element of strategy that is involved when dealing with foes. The boss fights can be somewhat tough as you don’t get any health items during them, so mistakes are costly. It’s not overly difficult, but is the one game that can get by on its relatively breezy campaign because it just has so much else going on. It’s a true classic in every sense of the word.

As far as the emulation quality goes, I didn’t notice that big of a difference between the PC version and this new Switch 2 port. Since we’re talking older games that are being stretched to fit modern TVs, the graphics can be a little chunky on large displays. I like that look, but some CRT filters and scaling options exist for you to get your preferred presentation. I always turn off borders, but the scans of the game boxes as a border design is a nice touch.

Where this new version vastly improves on the original collection is with things like save states and rewinds. Rewinds feel a lot more seamless, and while you won’t really need that feature much, at least it works without a hitch. Making a save state in the original collection was bizarrely slow, even on a souped-up PC. On Switch 2, though, it happens so fast that you might not even realize it’s already finished. The menus also feel snappier and scale better to 4K displays.

I was actually quite surprised by the gallery, which does seem to feature native 4K output. It’s hard to tell what resolution this collection is actually running at, but the full-page scans of design materials look brilliant on here where they looked blurrier on PC. The addition of some Goof Troop and Bonkers material is nice, though it doesn’t really feel like much consideration was given to them. Those two games also lack the “Boss Rush” and “Time Attack” modes the six NES games have, which is a bummer. There is no online support, either, though I don’t believe that is a dealbreaker.

Even if this was just a bare-bones port, though, adding Goof Troop to the mix shoots this thing up in my eyes. When I replayed everything on PC a week before the Switch 2 version was confirmed, I was a little disappointed by how simple all the games were. I still enjoy DuckTales and have an affinity for Darkwing Duck, but the other games are starting to show their age. As I’ve grown older, I crave more complexity from my games that these Disney titles don’t offer. The difference between Super Mario Bros. and Chip ‘n Dale is gigantic, even if the chipmunks can partner up to tackle things together. But Goof Troop? The only other game that really comes close is Zelda, and you still can’t buy Four Swords or Four Swords Adventures in any legal capacity anymore (the DSi remake is gone). Even if those were available, it’s an incredible mixture of genres and styles that creates a wholly unique core. I joked that it would be worth the $20 MSRP alone, but I’m actually dead serious. It’s a great game.

If this new port were simply the old Disney Afternoon Collection re-released on Nintendo platforms, it would be fine for what it is. By including two new games, even if one is kind of a dud, I feel that this really is a no-brainer now if you have any curiosity from this particular era of games. Getting to own these classics is also something that is becoming increasingly rare in an era where subscription services are relegating older games to either streaming or priced tiers. It also includes an all-time classic, so why wouldn’t you want it?