Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers (Game Boy Color)

US cover.

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers, stylized as "Goin'*! Qu@kers" is a platform video game developed by Ubisoft Studios and published by Ubi Soft Entertainment for the Game Boy Color on 2000-10-19. A game of the same title was released on all the home platforms of the day, but this game is quite different from it. The game is part of the DuckTales universe.

In the game, the evil magician Merlock has kidnapped Daisy Duck. You play as Donald Duck who wants to rescue her, so he recruits Gyro Gearloose for help. Gyro uses his teleporter, but Merlock has scattered the device's blueprints. Donald must first recover the blueprints and bring them to Gyro so he can finish his machine and finally confront Merlock and rescue Daisy.

Personal

I decided to play this game to improve my knowledge of the Game Boy Color catalog. I was a bit surprised that, as a licensed title, the game wasn't awful. I finished it on 2022-01-20.

I don't own this game, but I have beat it.

Review

5	7	6	4	4

Best Version: Game Boy Color

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game's graphics are pretty good for the GBC. Donald's sprites are very well animated and it has dozens of full-screen cut-scenes.
• You're given unlimited continues, plenty of free lives, and a password every few levels, so you don't have to worry about ever having to start all over again.
• The game uses the common trope of Donald going berserk to reflect his health. This is a nice in-universe way to handle it.

Bad

• I would like it if there was a health meter in the status bar rather than relying on Donald's animation to determine if you can take another hit.
• Although you can press up and down to see what's slightly above and below you, it doesn't show enough below, and you often find yourself falling into spikes that were just slightly off screen. This is annoying and punishes players for exploring.
• The items are pretty uninspired. There are blue spinning discs, blue and yellow spinning discs, blue bouncing orbs, yellow orbs, and blue and yellow swirls. Surely someone in the art department could have come up with something better?
• The game lets you miss the blueprints in every level and keep advancing, even to the point of facing Merlock. However, if you missed any of them, you'll have to go back and redo all the levels where you missed one, which is a pain the butt. I wish they had either forced you to have to get blueprints, or made it so you only have to redo the exact map where the blueprints reside.
• The music is passable, but doesn't have anything memorable. I expected more by 2000.
• Another damsel in distress. Boring.
• The manual uses Comic Sans. Gross.
• There are too many generic bad guys in the game. This is a shame because DuckTales has a wealth of enemies to choose from. Even the iconic Beagle Boys are missing.

Ugly

• The game is too monotonous. Every level uses the same mechanic: collect the objects while avoiding the hazards. There is a little variation with a couple auto-scrollers, but that's it. You don't get any power-ups and everything is linear. This would have been unimpressive in 1990, but, by 2000, it was unacceptable.

Media

Covers

Both covers have the Beagle Boys, but they're never actually featured in the game.

• 

  The US and EU regions use this where Donald looks his typical pissed self.

• 

  The Japanese cover uses a much more friendly Donald.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - USA.

Videos

Longplay.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English (Europe)	Donald Duck: Qu@ck "Att@ck"?*!	Donald Duck: Quack Attack	Donald Duck: Quack Attack
English (USA)	Donald Duck: Goin'*! "Qu@ckers"	Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers	Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers

Links