Disney Afternoon Collection Review – Review

Growing up as a Sega kid turned the off chance of coming across a Nintendo game into an event. You’d go to a friend’s place, get cheap pizza delivered, and dive into a world of fire flowers, master swords, and Mike Tysons that the Genesis was sorely lacking. I didn’t have many friends with the Mario machine, but in the recesses of arcades, bowling alleys, and hotel pools you’d often find The Playchoice 10 – an NES connected to a coin-operated arcade cabinet that could let the player swap between up to ten games. It was a uniquely insidious design – coins bought time, not lives, so I always felt the need to rush-in as many levels before my fifty-cents wore out. I got my hands on one at a pizza parlor, which was also my first time playing Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers. The time flew by quickly as I scrambled to make headway in a game not meant for arcades or rushing. Decades later (and years after it came out on PC and other consoles), I’ve had a second bite of the apple with the Disney Afternoon Collection.

The Disney Afternoon Collection on Switch & Switch 2 features six NES games: Ducktales, Ducktales 2, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Talespin, and Darkwing Duck. As a bonus treat, the Nintendo release also includes two SNES games – Goof Troop & Bonkers (bonus points for anyone who remembers Bonkers). The afternoon collection moniker comes from a time of television where nothing was on demand – TV stations told you when you could watch a show, and you had better show up on time. Right after school, most stations would schedule kids programming until the news started at 5. It was also a time when games based on licensed properties were king. From The Simpsons to Sesame Street, if you watched it, you could probably play it. A lot of it was slop, though – bottom-feeder experiences with extremely cheap difficulty or a flimsy facsimile of the genuine article. In Disney Afternoon Collection’s case, we’ve been presented with a slate of (mostly) solid classic 2D titles.

The most fun comes from the Ducktales and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers games. Ducktales is a classic 2D platformer; simple on its face but Scrooge McDuck using his cane as a pogo stick to bounce on top of enemies and to use as a platforming device is easy and intuitive. Both it and the sequel contain challenging-yet-approachable gameplay, colorful & charming pixel art, and a wonderfully bright and melodic soundtrack. The Chip ‘n Dale games feature gameplay of picking up boxes & items, tossing them at enemies, and getting to the end levels. Key differences are 1) much larger/zoomed in pixel art in the first game and 2) much better designed boss battles in the second game. These games aren’t about quick platforming or robust battling, only uncomplicated side-scrolling adventure that I never would have enjoyed under the Playchoice-10 time constraints.

Moving on from the first string, Talespin is a quirky side-scrolling shoot-em-up, taking over Baloo’s cockpit as you fly through obstacles, collect packages, and shoot down enemies. It’s a very bare bones experience, though being able to fly backwards means some interesting challenges of how to navigate both left-and-right. Unfortunately, it’s just bland and unwieldy – the flight is too slow to be fun, the aim isn’t precise, and the obstacles are stymying. Darkwing Duck is a fun side-scrolling shooter that won’t make you pull out your hair like a Mega Man. Between the two SNES additions, Goof Troop is the clear winner. The top-down dungeon-crawler-like game is an oversimplified Zelda-style experience that relies on short-term weapon and item procurement rather than continued long-term upgrades. You get a hookshot up front, but it’s only a temporary item until you run across another one needed. It’s a genuinely fun game! Bonkers, on the other hand, is a potpourri of awful design choices. The jumping is sluggish, the screen is littered with platforms and items that feel less like level design and more like someone just threw a bunch of items to collect on screen with no rhyme or reason, and there’s a dash mechanic that is more trouble than it’s worth. Bonkers is the quintessential game that is thrown into a compilation to round out the numbers, and I doubt you’ll be putting much time into it.

Disney Afternoon Collection is heavy on the ‘90s vibes – ‘90s neon art with the clean white backdrops, layered bordered shapes, and little slits that are reminiscent of sprinkles. Beyond the aesthetic, you’ll find what has been the expectation of these collections for some time. It’s become pro forma for there to be things like key art, box art, and jukeboxes of games’ soundtracks in these collections. Features like rewind, save states, and boss rush modes are boilerplate in most retro bundles. Outside of the games, however, you won’t be spending time diving into an anthology of materials, developer interviews, videos, or anything to suggest there’s a storied history to these games. It’s a collection of games conglomerated under a vague tentpole that millennials and older people will appreciate, but that’s the only thread that binds. But that’s enough for what most, including myself, are expecting out of this.

It’s bewildering that this collection of games, birthed on Nintendo consoles, took nearly a decade to find its way back home on the Switch/Switch 2. Now that it’s here with an additional two SNES games (one of which is really good), this iteration of the Disney Afternoon Collection feels more rounded-out, expanding what genres are represented, and I applaud including more of Disney’s licensed back catalog. This is as workmanlike a collection can get without being a straight-up ROM dump, a la that Wii copy of Super Mario All-Stars on my shelf. That said, it’s been a pleasant trip down memory lane being able to experience these classics with a controller in-hand in the comfort of my own home rather than in a pizza parlor next to the bowling alley that reeked of cigarette smoke. If you have fondness for classic 2D games and are now a Disney adult, The Disney Afternoon Collection is a no-brainer. Even if you are just a retro aficionado, there’s still a lot of fun in store.