The Disney Afternoon Collection

Nine years ago, I reviewed The Disney Afternoon Collection: an awesome package of six Disney games for the NES, all made by Capcom, with some bonus features such as artwork, soundtracks, along with a time attack and boss rush mode for each game. As someone who grew up playing those games, I was excited to see them get some love and jumped at the chance to check it out. Nearly a decade later and we have an updated released for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 that adds a couple of new games. So, step right up, come on in, and here’s where the fun begins…again.

The Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 versions of The Disney Afternoon Collection retain the original six games consisting of Ducktales 1 and 2, Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers 1 and 2, Talespin, and Darkwing Duck. But joining the lineup we now have Goof Troop and Bonkers from the Super NES which are exclusive to the Switch and Switch 2 versions. I’ll try to quickly break them down without going into full-blown reviews of each.

TaleSpin is a shooter with both vertical and horizontal elements where you have to collect cargo and money bags in each stage while defeating the minions of Shere Khan. In between stages you can upgrade your plane with a few different parts.

Darkwing Duck is a platformer where you get to choose your stage order in the first two segments before taking on Steelbeak in the final stage abord F.O.W.L.’s Floating Fortress.

Ducktales 1 and 2 follow Scrooge McDuck as he travels to five different locations in each game while searching for a treasure in each stage guarded by the stage’s boss. While Baloo in TaleSpin and Darkwing in Darkwing Duck have some sort of projectiles to use, Scrooge only has his trusty cane to swing at blocks and bounce off of like a pogo stick to traverse each level. Stages will typically have hidden paths you can find to collect more treasure and gems and Ducktales 2 allows you to spend the money you collect between stages for a few different items.

Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers 1 and 2 let you play as the pint-sized titular duo in an attempt to stop the evil Fat Cat and his henchmen. Stages are littered with boxes and other objects that you can pick up and throw at enemies to defeat them.

Then come the two newcomers to this version. Goof Troop breaks the mold of the collection by being more of a top-down action game with some puzzle elements. Each screen will have enemies to defeat and possibly an item to pick up, such as a hook shot to stun enemies or cross long gaps, or a bell to lure enemies towards you to group them together and defeat them easier. Some rooms will have gray blocks you have to kick around into specific places on the ground to open a door to proceed to the next room or to pick up an important item.

Finally, we have Bonkers which goes back to the side-scrolling of the rest of the collection. Here you have to traverse several levels to get back three treasures that were stolen. A lot of enemies can be defeated by jumping on them or by throwing bombs at them, though your bombs are limited. You can also dash into enemies, but this seems a bit finicky, which I’ll get to in a moment.

If you’ve never played any of the games in this collection, DuckTales and Rescue Rangers are probably the two easiest games to tackle, followed by their sequels and Darkwing Duck. TaleSpin isn’t too difficult of a game, though because it’s a shooter it’s kind of hard to rank it amongst the platformers in terms of difficulty.

Goof Troop’s action screens can be a bit challenging, especially during boss fights as you have to learn how to catch projectiles and hurl them back at the boss, but the puzzle rooms can definitely rack your brain, especially towards the end. The good news is that Goof Troop and both Rescue Rangers games have two-player co-op so you can play with a friend, and all games have a rewind feature that allows you to rewind the game roughly 30 seconds into the past to correct any major errors the player might have made.

Bonkers is kind of the outlier of the collection and probably the most difficult. That’s not to say it’s overly hard—and it was the only game of the eight that I had never played before—but there are two aspects that made the game a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. While you can increase your bomb limit by collecting sheriff badges (every 10 increases your max capacity by one), they’re your best bet to defeat bosses.

If you run out, you have to either jump on or dash into the boss. Some bosses can’t be jumped on and, for some reason, dashing into enemies can be finicky. As you’re dashing you can jump to dash into enemies while in the air, but sometimes I lose the dash when I jump and basically just body check the boss which, as you would guess, damages me. This became especially annoying on the second stage boss, part of which is a helicopter. And I shouldn’t have to explain why jumping onto an airborne helicopter is a bad idea.

Adding two more games to the collection might have one thinking, “Eight games now instead of six—that’s awesome.” Which it is, but there is a bit of a downside: the extras. Much like the original version of The Disney Afternoon Collection you have a decent number of extras such as the soundtracks for each game, box art, and some images and sketches from either the shows represented and/or scenes from the game before being fully fleshed out.

My initial issue from the original collection was that a lot of the extras featured went towards DuckTales, which makes sense as it’s arguably the most popular series from the four initially featured, and still so even with Goof Troop and Bonkers’s inclusion. The issue is that not much was added for Goof Troop and Bonkers: maybe a couple images each along with their box art.

What’s more disappointing though is that while each of the NES games retained their Time Trial and Boss Rush options from the original collection, neither of those game modes are available for Goof Troop and Bonkers. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issues with the inclusions of either game and I understand why those two were chosen.

Given the Disney Afternoon lineup of shows that had video games, the only other options would be Aladdin—which is already part of a collection with The Lion King and The Jungle Book—and Gargoyles which only had a Sega Genesis release and wasn’t made by Capcom, so maybe they were limited in what games they could use. From everything I’ve seen online, Goof Troop and Bonkers will be exclusive to the Switch and Switch 2 versions and will not be coming to other platforms, though this may change in the future.

The Disney Afternoon Collection for the Switch and Switch 2 are still great collections of some of the best Disney games from the 8 and 16-bit eras, but the inclusion of Goof Troop and Bonkers almost feels a bit slapped on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see new games for the collection. But with their exclusivity to the Switch and Switch 2 versions for the same base price as the original collection, and the fact that there’s no Boss Rush or Time Attack for either game, it might not be worth picking it up if you already have the original. It basically comes down to whether you want to play Goof Troop and/or Bonkers, and if so then you’re limited to the Switch versions.

I’m hoping that changes and those two will eventually come to the other platforms, but we’ll just have to wait and see. For now, though, if you have a Switch or Switch 2 and are looking to pick up The Disney Afternoon Collection, this is the version to go with.