Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers (Game Boy Color)

US cover.

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers is a platform video game developed by Ubisoft Studios and published by Ubi Soft Entertainment Software for the Game Boy Color on 2000-10-19. The title was released on eight different platforms with five individual games, though the GBC version is fairly unique. Each of them is part of the DuckTales universe.

In the game, the evil magician Merlock has kidnapped Daisy Duck. You play as Donald Duck who want 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 to 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.

Status

I don't own this game, but I am playing it.

Review

5	7	6	3	4

Best Version: Game Boy Color

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game's graphics are very impressive for the GBC. Donald's sprites, especially, are very well animated.
• 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.

Bad

• I would like it if there was a health meter in the status bar rather than relying on Donald's animation to determine how much health you have.
• 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, 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. But, after you defeat Merlock, you'll have to go back and redo all the levels where you missed it. This is a pain the butt, and I wish they'd either force you to have to get blueprints, or made it so you only have to redo the exact map where the blueprints reside.

Ugly

• The game is pretty boring. 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.

• 

  These Japanese cover uses a much more friendly Donald.

Videos

Longplay.

Links