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Donald in Maui Mallard – Retro Review

A Duck Pretending to be a Duck Pretending to be Another Duck

This is the second and last review I wrote for Sega Mania Issue 8, and as such is written from a 90’s perspective. This one had a couple of boxouts as well, which I’ve presented as best I can with any knowledge as to how to do layout properly.

Donald’s back, put possibly not quite how you remember him. Eschewing his usual, fashionably questionable sailor outfit, he’s arrived for his next action-packed platformer in a much more agreeable Hawaiian shirt and cap ensemble. That’s right, this is Maui Mallard, Donald Duck’s medium-boiled, crime-fighting alter-ego. The identity swapping doesn’t stop there, either. Maui Mallard has an alter-ego of his own. Cold Shadow is a black-clad ninja, a master of bo staff combat, and a proponent of nimbly leaping up narrow shafts. This explains the confusing situation of the game’s alternative title, Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow. Really, if we’re being accurate here, the game should be called Donald Duck in Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow, but I guess they would have run out of space on the spine. Whichever way you look at it, you’re going three-deep in Donald Duck personalities during the ninja sections, which is an experience in itself regardless of how good the game actually is.

Luckily, the game is really good. Donald in Maui Mallard is a platformer in the same vein as the cantankerous mallard’s previous Mega Drive escapades. However, Donald seems to have been doing some cross-fit training since the QuackShot days, as he has a much sleeker sprite, moves much faster, and controls a little bit looser. Where QuackShot (and indeed the Illusion series of Disney platformers) had a very considered pace with tight controls and forgiving platforming. Donald in Maui Mallard has a much more frantic feel, with enemies coming from all angles, more haphazard jumping controls, and platforms whose edges aren’t always clearly identifiable.

This screams Aladdin to me. You know, apart from with a ninja duck. There were no ninja ducks in Aladdin. Just an angry parrot.

In this way, it feels like it inhabits the lane between the “traditional” Disney platformers like the Illusion series, and the more modern Disney platformers based on the big, box office movies such as Aladdin and Lion King. This crossover can be seen in the art-style and the gameplay, as well as the mild jump in difficulty, and it could well be exactly what many Mega Drive owners are looking for.

Leaving his plunger gun at home, Donald as Maui is armed with a bug-launcher that fires insects that can be collected throughout the stages. The basic ammo has a fairly short range and takes a few shots to defeat most enemies, but upgraded invertebrates can be collected and even combined to form powerful, boss-bothering bullets or handy homing projectiles. The enemy designs are imaginative and in-fitting with the tropical, voodoo vibe, ranging from juicy-looking spiders to wild natives to zombie ducks. Maui has plenty of health to survive numerous enemy encounters, and there is a generous sprinkling of health-restoring power-ups to be found throughout the stages, but this generosity is offset by some devious level design and a fair few tricky platforming sections suspended over instant-death drops.

From the second stage onwards, Donald as Maui can take on the form of Cold Shadow. This feathered ninja warrior can take out most enemies with one thwack of his stick, and is a lot more manoeuvrable with a plethora of staff-based options to traverse the expansive levels in interesting ways. He can attach himself to various outcroppings and swing to higher platforms, and can wedge his stick in narrow shafts to gain the leverage he needs to leap higher. For the most part, you’ll want to play as Cold Shadow as much as you can, but there are times when Maui Mallard’s ranged attacks and bungee jumping abilities are preferable (or even necessary). In order to stay in his Cold Shadow form, Donald must collect symbols to stop a meter from ticking down. Luckily, these collectibles tend to respawn near tricky jumps that require Cold Shadow’s specific skills to negotiate, so you’ll never find yourself in a situation where you’re unable to progress, even if it can occasionally feel that way.

Both the Maui and Cold Shadow sprites are smooth and full of character, and have plenty of amusing idle animations to entertain you while you’re having a breather. The environment graphics are top notch, too, with sinister voodoo mansions, clandestine ninja hideouts and savage, moonlit savannahs all looking suitably atmospheric. The game has a dark and mysterious ambience, with later levels even taking on a bit of a Lovecraftian vibe, consisting of maddening death-worlds with bizarre architecture and gigantic, floating eyeballs. It’s not the kind of location you’d expect to be exploring in a Disney title, but I guess kids have to face up to the concept of hell dimensions at some point.

That’s right children, it’s always watching.

The music befits the tropical and occasionally occult vibe, usually taking the form of ambient accompaniment in lieu of catchy tunes that you’ll be whistling while you take the dog for a walk. Most of the tracks feature a pleasing and thematic beat to match the game’s quick and occasionally frantic pace, and you’ll probably find that your toes are tapping throughout. You’ll also hear plenty of sampled martial arts cries and grunts, artfully representing Donald’s new-found ninja skills.

As a platforming experience, Donald in Maui Mallard gets the basics right, and then takes you on a weird and wild journey of new ideas and unusual themes. Donald’s two distinct personalities offer different gameplay styles, and the levels that allow you to jump between the ninja and detective personas give you the freedom to take on enemies and obstacles however you please. The boss fights provide another layer of variety. Whether you’re unloading special bug ammo into the metallic spider boss of the first stage, or battering a floating lava-duck head around with your bo staff in the volcano level, the bosses are wacky, unique and appropriately challenging.

Remember Darkwing Duck? What about Count Duckula? Hey, remember that penguin from Wallace and Gromit?

The game isn’t without its frustrations. Platforming sections can occasionally be fiddly and unsatisfying, and there are moments when the way forward is unclear, but on the whole the challenge is well balanced between being accessible to kids and newbies and giving platforming pros and gaming veterans something to think about for a week or so. Donald in Maui Mallard feels like a modern Disney game. Whereas QuackShot was like playing an episode of Duck Tales and The Lucky Dime Caper was reminiscent of classic Donald cartoons or comic strips, the animation style and dark undertones on offer here exude that new and edgy ’90s style. It’s not quite as comfortable as the previous Disney mascot titles, but it’s not trying to be. This one is trying to get your heart pounding and act as your gateway to the concepts of dark magic, the risen dead and tribal sacrificial practices, rather than take you on a wistfully whimsical journey through wistful whimsy.

Donald in Maui Mallard is a glimpse into Disney’s darker side, but more importantly, it’s a very competent platformer with loads of personality. It won’t replace the likes of QuackShot and World of Illusion in my heart, but it will definitely sit proudly alongside them on my shelf. I suggest you find a place for it on yours.

Donald, P.I.

I mentioned in the main part of the review that Donald in Maui Mallard is a very modern-feeling Disney title, but there’s a hefty dose of the 1980s mixed in that makes that claim come across as a little tenuous. Maui Mallard, self-described “medium boiled” detective, is this game’s take on Tom Selleck’s Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, the lead character in ’80s detective thriller series Magnum, P.I.

The similarities are plain to see – both are pistol-toting, Hawaiian-shirted heroes with action star qualities and effortless cool. Donald doesn’t have a well-groomed, bristly decoration on his upper lip, though, and I haven’t seen much evidence of him being a Vietnam vet either. Still, at least he can turn into a ninja at a moment’s notice and start cracking skulls with his bo staff. I don’t believe Mr. Selleck ever donned a headband and started performing ninjutsu techniques throughout the tropical beaches and bamboo forests of Hawaii. At least, I don’t think he did, but maybe I missed a few episodes.

Tick, Tick, Shabuhm

“So what’s Donald got himself involved with this time?” I hear you ask. Well, there’s a witchdoctor, you see, and he’s stolen the idol of Shabuhm Shabuhm from a tropical island. This idol is considered to be the island’s guardian spirit, and Donald as Maui as (occasionally) Cold Shadow needs to get it back. Our hero must track the nefarious shaman through the various locales of the island while winning over the natives and even taking a trip to the underworld, before coming face to face with the masked meddler and engaging in a climactic showdown.

The thing is, when you do finally meet the witchdoctor and find out what’s going on under that creepy tribal mask, it’s only going to cause more questions. I won’t completely spoil it, but let’s just say that this guy epitomises the term “air-headed”. That’s some bad mojo right there.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into what might have been if Sega Mania Magazine had kept going. I did actually start writing one more review, but I never finished it. It was on a Sega Saturn game called Robotica Cybernation Revolt, but I only wrote a snazzy, cyberpunk-style intro and never got into the review proper, mainly because I hadn’t played the game yet! Maybe I will one day…

 

Aero the Acro-Bat – Retro Review

Bother in the Big Top

This review was written for Issue 8 of the sadly now defunct Sega Mania Magazine, as such it is written from a ’90s perspective.

Does anyone actually like the circus? I mean, I’m sure they were great in the olden times, when the only other forms of entertainment were gathering around the wireless or playing with a hoop and a stick, but do we really need them here in the futuristic ’90s? We have television, spectator sports and video games, bars and nightclubs, Pogs and Slinkies. I for one think that it’s time for circuses to go. The animals don’t want to be there, I question the motives and mental capacity of anyone who chooses to be a clown, and acrobats can use their impressive suppleness and contortionist abilities elsewhere. Maybe they can perform elaborate robberies or something.

Aero the Acro-bat for the Mega Drive has an unavoidable big top vibe, with the titular Aero being the game’s protagonist and the star of the in-game show. A villainous industrialist named Edgar Ektor has sabotaged the World of Amusement Circus and Funpark, and has kidnapped all of its performers, replacing them with nefarious, evil clowns and other such appropriately-themed bad guys. It’s fallen upon Aero to use his high-flying skills and acrobatic feats to save the day, rescue his girlfriend Aeriel, and put a stop to Ektor’s machinations. This includes taking care of Ektor’s lead henchman, a certain Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.

Aero is contemplating the tiny, one-hit-kill spikes that infest every stage. Can you see it?

If you’ve seen Aero the Acro-bat before, you’ll know that he represents yet another developer having a dip into the “critters with ‘tude” well. This time it’s Sunsoft who have their straws out, attempting to slurp up some of Sonic’s lucrative success water. Have they backed a winner with this Chiropteran tumbler? I’m not so sure. The designers doubled down on the mean and cool attitude and forgot to add any charm or charisma. Also, he’s a circus performer, which means I immediately question his moral and social ideals.

Initial impressions paint Aero the Acro-bat as a fairly standard platformer, and it feels a little dated compared to some of the platformers that have appeared in recent years. Aero himself is somewhat stiff to control, and he commits that platformer hero sin of not being able to stop quickly, which can result in some aggravating slides into certain doom. The stages, while colourful, seem fairly lifeless, with levels that don’t evolve as you progress and forgettable enemy designs. There is some stage variety later on, with a few cool gimmicks that are mostly based on fairground rides, but nothing really stands out or sticks with you. Visually, this is closer to James Pond or Krusty’s Super Fun House than it is to Ristar or our iconic hedgehog pal.

A bat in a barrel, rolling past featureless trees and hills.

Mechanically, the level design philosophy seems frustratingly centred on catching the player out with traps that they could not have foreseen. The admittedly-large levels are littered with spikes, and said spikes are small and inconspicuous, and are often found in the most annoying of places. For example, some of the levels ask you to jump on certain platforms, which causes them to disintegrate, and you can be darned sure there are going to be spike pits underneath all of them. There’s a particular spiked pit during act two that you get dumped into immediately after a unicycle tightrope ride, the likes of which have thus far given you no reason to think they’re going to end in certain, spiky doom. This would all be fine if the spikes just made you lose some health, but these barbed bad boys are insta-death, baby.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, have oodles of time to spare, and enjoy memorising massive levels using a process of trial and error that involves lots and lots of dead bat, then you might get a lot of enjoyment out of Aero the Acro-bat, as there is satisfying gameplay to be found once you’ve mastered Aero’s initially-awkward dive attacks and formed your mental map of the levels. It’s a heck of a slog to get there though, and with its forgettable mascot, uninspiring visuals, small sprites and irritating, circus-themed music, you might not want to go through the trouble.

The rollercoaster section is just another memory test.

I can’t help but feel that the game doesn’t want you to have fun. Did you know that bats are the only mammal capable of true, full flight, and are even more nimble and agile when airborne than most birds? Not this one. He can hover for a bit, and can only fly temporarily after collecting a certain power-up. He’s also able to fire star projectiles, but they’re extremely limited, he starts with none, and the pick-ups are located in fiddly places to get to. Enemies are positioned specifically to catch you out, which you could say about your average Sonic the Hedgehog level, but Sonic’s zones are mostly focussed on fun, spectacle, exploration and a satisfying challenge, rather than just aggravating schmuck bait.

The Mega Drive is absolutely stuffed with top quality mascot platformers, and Aero, despite all of his impressive acro-bat-ics, struggles to even trouble the top 20. Perhaps he should go back to shooting soundwaves at unsuspecting moths or sucking blood out of horses. You know, all that bat stuff that real bats do.

I hope this was an enjoyable little extra for any Sega Mania fans out there. I wrote one more review for Issue 8 which I will be posting at a later date, and I may also be uploading some of my favourite reviews from throughout the mag’s seven issue run, so stay tuned! 

Vigilante – Retro Review

Green-Trousered Rogues

As a kid growing up in rural Somerset, I didn’t see much in the way of gang violence (although I’d argue that a group of shifty-looking cows can be just as intimidating as a gang of ruffians with flick-knives), and my only experience of that culture came through films and music videos. Loading up Double Dragon or Target Renegade on the C64 was my chance to live out that Los Locos scene in Short Circuit 2 or pretend I’m one of those cool and mean-looking dancers in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video.

Upon closer inspection, Vigilante for the Master System seems to have taken its cues from more adult-targeted media like 1979 film The Warriors, what with the antagonist gang being called the Rogues and all. No sign of David Patrick Kelly though. In fact, all the bosses of Vigilante’s Rogues are the “large and in charge” types, rather than diminutive, trouble-making rat-bastards.

The boss of the first level. Is it Bruiser Brody or Brian Blessed?

To me, Vigilante was the herald of the next generation of side-scrolling fighting games. After sampling the likes of Renegade and Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja on the C64 and Amstrad CPC, Vigilante was my first taste of streets-based violence on a console, and mighty impressed I was too. Bright colours, neat backgrounds and cool animations greeted my eager, innocent eyes, but what would my contemporary opinion be of this near-forgotten 8-bit beat-’em-up?

Well, it ain’t no Streets of Rage, that’s for sure. Released on the Master System in 1989, Vigilante is a port of a 1988 arcade game by Irem, and is apparently a spiritual successor to the 1984 arcade game Kung-Fu Master. An unnamed city has been overrun by crooks, thugs and ne’er-do-wells, and Maria, the protagonist’s girlfriend, has been unceremoniously chucked into the back of a van. It’s time for the titular vigilante to clean up the streets. The levels consist of a single, linear run towards a boss waiting at the end of the road. Contrary to what you might expect from the genre and the screenshots, there is no vertical movement, with our vigilante friend limited to a single, horizontal plane. Enemies will attack from either side, and you have punches, kicks and jumps at your disposal to fend them off.

As such, Vigilante plays less like a traditional scrolling beat-’em-up and more like some kind of violent rhythm game. This is because much of the game comes down to the timing of your button presses, especially when it comes to one particularly annoying thug-type whose modus operandi is to repeatedly rush in and attempt to grapple you. Seriously, these guys are the worst. Every other enemy will approach from either side of the screen, hold off for a bit as they get close, and then attempt to catch you out with an attack. The aforementioned grapplers, identified by their white vests and green trousers, will rush in at full speed, single-mindedly intent on locking you in an energy-sapping hold. Your only defence is to batter them before they get to you, but they come in so quickly that the timing is extremely precise. It’s difficult enough when just these green-trousered hooligans are rushing you from either side, but pair them up with other crooks and things can get immensely frustrating.

Look at him, coming in from behind while you’re occupied with t-shirt and jeans guy.

If you can survive this glut of grapple-happy nutters you’ll reach the boss at the end of the level. These guys are intimidating, but will soon fall once you figure out which of your attacks they’re particularly vulnerable to. Be careful not to let the boss push you too far back through the level though, as once you’ve defeated the stage’s head honcho you still have to walk to the end, and if you’ve gone too far back you can expect to be set upon by thugs and green-trousered grapple guys again.

I played the Master System version of Double Dragon so that I could compare the two, and there’s so much more to that than there is to Vigilante. The stages are larger, with vertical movement, pits and multiple height levels to traverse, you have more moves at your disposal, and Double Dragon has that all-important two-player mode. Vigilante looks nicer though, its alleyways, scrapyards and city skylines artfully delivering that retro urban vibe. Vigilante’s nameless city is a pretty cool place to be, it’s just a shame that I have to spend my entire time there desperately fending off infuriating bastards in fetching aquamarine slacks.

Played on Master System/Emulator