Quackshot (Sega)
Exclusive to the Sega family of consoles, Quackshot was part of a line of games based off of Disney cartoons. It puts Donald Duck in the middle of a Indiana Jones inspired treasure hunt, with his nephews to tag along. With great platforming and puzzle aspects, as well as a nice soundtrack of music to play to, this game is a blast to play from start to finish.
The Story
While looking through his Uncle Scrooge’s study, Donald finds a book titled King Garuzia’s Duck Treasure. King Garuzia was the leader of a duck kingdom who, before his death, hid his most prized possession in a secret location. Also in the book Donald finds a treasure map and decides to go on a quest to find it.
Outside the window, a member of Pete’s gang was spying and overhears everything so they set out to follow Donald and steal the treasure map from him. Donald manages to escape and returns home to depart on his adventure, bringing Huey, Dewey, and Louie with him, blowing off a dinner date with Daisy in the process. He quickly promises that “somehing very important” has come up and that he’s off to find something special for her as a surprise. Donald then flies off with his nephews, not knowing that Pete’s gang is still on his tail.
The Controls
Due to the original Sega controller only really having the A, B, and C buttons in addition to the D-Pad, Start and Select, the control schemes weren’t very in depth, and Quackshots is one of these.
Your D-Pad controls your movement from side to side on the ground, with down allowing you to duck. Up and down are utilized when Donald reaches ladders.
A speeds Donald up making him move faster, B fires whichever one of your 3 weapons you have selected, and C is your jump button.
Select doesn’t really do much (at least not from what I could see), and Start brings you to your main item screen. On the item screen, you have the weapons available to you displayed up top, below this is your in game items that you’ve collected along the way, and next to this are three options : Use (uses the item you’ve selected, Look (inspects the item and tells you what it is or what it says when applicable), and Call Airplane (I will explain this one in the next section).
All in all, a fairly easy control scheme, although it begs the question of why not put the run and jump buttons adjacent to each other? Anybody who has held a Sega Genesis controller knows that the three buttons are a decent size, so trying to jump while sprinting isn’t an easy thing to do.
The Gameplay
Quackshot plays mostly as a platformer, but it runs a puzzle aspect through the game too. Upon first entering the game, you are brought to a map screen representing the map thast Donald discovers in the book. On this map are marked three locations : Duckburg, Mexico, and Transylvania. From here you can choose your own destination. But, you won’t be able to finish either of the levels until you at least visit all three of them, as each one requires something from another in order to progress. What will happen is you will reach as far of a point as possible into the stage, and Donald sticks a flag in the ground.
This is where the Call Airplane option on the item screen comes into play. From the flag, you can select this and the nephews will swoop in in the airplane and pick you up. The beautiful part about the flag is whenever you return to a level to finish it, the flag is the exact point where you get dropped off, saving you from having to fight your way back through the stage again and again.
Regardless of which path you take, you will end up in Transylvania at Dracula’s Castle in a fight with the fanged duck himself (yes, Dracula is a duck in this universe, I personally think they missed their chance on calling him Duckula). As soon as you enter the castle, a ghost informs you that Duckula (I don’t care, I’m using it) possesses the full treasure map for the Garuzia treasure. This map unlocks the additional locations of Egypt, Maharaja, a Viking Ghost Ship, and the South Pole. All of which utilize the same formula of not being able to complete one stage until obtaining something from one of the others.
To begin his adventure, Donald has a rappel-like gun that shoots yellow plungers. These plungers, when they hit an enemy, will stun them for a short period of time allowing you to pass them without threat. Eventually this gets upgraded to a red one while in Mexico which will stick to walls for a few seconds when shot, allowing you to trampoline jump up them to reach higher places. The last upgrade (and my personal favorite just because of what it is), is a green plunger that you can shoot vertically at buzzard flying overhead, then jump and hold onto it to cross long chasms. The reason this is my favorite though, is because it is given to you after beating the viking ghost ship and it is called an “ancient viking plunger”. Really, how can you top that for a name for a weapon or item?
Donald’s other weapons include popcorn kernels which get shot five at a time in a scatter pattern, and lastly bubble gum which explodes when it comes into contact with an enemy or specific walls and getting rid of them. This is a plus against enemies as it doesn’t just stun them it removes them completely, so no worrying that at the last moment going by them, they will be active and able to damage you again.
The items you pick up on your adventure are really only good for one purpose each. For example, to enter the tomb in Mexico, you have to obtain the Hero Key, which is rendered useless once youo gain entry into the tomb. These contribute to the puzzle aspect of the game as you need to figure out which item gets used in which area. And despite each only having their sole purposes, they remain in your item list for the entire game.
Along the way, Donald has to face many foes. These include a scattering of Pete’s gang members, as well as some specific to the levels themselves. For examples, in the south pole, small penguins will slide-attack at you, on the viking ship, there are vikings firing arrows at you, and so on. The early members of Pete’s gang fire regular guns at you while later ones upgrade to lobbing bombs in your direction. Regardless of which enemy you come across, all are stunned or killed with one shot of your plunger/popcorn/bubblegum. All, that is, except for bosses.
Each stage, except for Duckburg, comes with it’s own boss that is tied in with the theme of the stage. The Maharaja ends with a fight against a tiger, the viking ghost ship ends with a viking ghost, and so on, eventually leading up to fighting King Garuzia himself at the end.
Overall, Quackshot is a fun play, setting you out to hunt for treasure and shoot plungers all over the world, with a good soundtrack playing for you along the way. So, let’s break this game down a little bit.
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
While Quackshot brings a challenge to the table, it’s not a very big one. The combat is very minimal, and the puzzles don’t offer a ton of thinking to solve them. Games where your enemies go down in one hit, it takes away from having to go through a quick battle each time you come across them. Instead, it turns into more of a “Can I hit them before they even come on the screen?” Which in Quackshot, you definitely can.
The majority of the enemies that are able to fire projectiles at you almost never even do so while you’re strolling through the levels. But for a few that do, their shot moves across the screen so fast you’re unable to even dodge it. Ducking (no pun intended won’t work because the shots hover close enough to the ground to still hit you, and jumping doesn’t work fast enough. You don’t have enough time to clear the shot before it tags you in the toe.
Other enemies are much the same, either easily avoided, or no matter what you do you are stuck taking a hit. In the Mexico stage, while you’re crossing the level, a section brings you through some hills and some platforms that raise and lower themselves. While making one jump in particular, there is a buzzard that doesn’t even spawn until you’re already in mid-air, basically forcing you to jump right into it.
Bosses prove to be a little bit tougher, but only by a sall margin. They take multiple hits to bring down and have different movement patterns and attack strategies. However, this is all easily avoided as each boss arena has a specific spot you can stand in where you won’t have to move very much, and can even avoid their attacks. The Viking ghost boss, for example, you are able to situate yourself so the boss is barely on the screen, and still be able to hit him with your plunger, while at the same time being far enough away that when he does his attacks they don’t even reach you.
The most difficult boss would probably be Duckula (not giving up on the dream) as he is always floating above you, he has four different positions he will glide to for his attacks, which they contribute to the difficulty as he sends out four small bats that flap around the stage in random patterns making it harder to hit Duckula.
The puzzles focus solely on figuring out which item to use in which area. Since there are a finite number of stages and only one key item for each, if you really wanted to give your brain a rest you could simply get through this element of the game with a guess and check system. So while there is a bit of a challenge to the puzzles, it’s easily avoided.
So overall, a bit of a challenge, but the more experienced of a gamer you are, the quicker the challenge fades away. That being said, let’s take a look at the good side, and the bad side, of Quackshot.
PROS
- Having the freedom of choice on what order to play the levels is a cool, unique feature to the game. This comes in handy especially when replaying the game, as it helps cut down on the fetch-quest feel of running back and forth through all the levels figuring out which item unlocks which door.
- This game posesses one of my favorite features in a retro game : unlimited continues. This means that no matter how many times you die, you never have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over. (I’m looking at you Top Gun).
- You get to play as Donald Duck, dressed sort of like Indiana Jones, in an Indiana Jones-esque adventure...what’s not to love about that?
CONS
- The layout of the controls is frustating, putting a button between the run and jump controls. Not placing these two next to each other in a platforming game of all things is a huge miss.
- Imbalance between the enemies. Most are far too easy making you question why they’re even there in the first place, while the others are so near impossible to avoid that if you happen to be coming through on your last bar of health, say bye bye.
- A few things in the game just don’t make sense. One instance in particular is when you’re on the Viking ship, you have to go find a key to get into the hold of the ship which is locked. Once you go and get the key, you drop down to find members of Pete’s gang already setting up shop waiting for you. I don’t get it, if the hold was locked, and you’re the one who unlocks it, how did they get in before you?
Final Verdict
While Quackshot is a fun, quick game to run through in a day, it’s nothing to go running out to hunt down in a heartbeat. It doesn’t really bring anything memorable to the table other than Donald Duck starring in an Indiana Jones adventure. A quirky arsenal of weapons, and some appearances from some Disney favorites are really the only things you’ll be talking about after finishing it. This game definitely got outshined by some other Disney inspired games at it’s time (some of which will eventually make their way into this blog so keep an eye out).
As always, thank you for stopping by to read my blog, I will be back with something else next week. Feel free to drop a comment below or email me any suggestions for games you’d like o see up here at mbentonphotog@gmail.com
