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1992 · NES
| Region | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| North America | Jun 1992 | Capcom |
| Europe and Australia | 9 Dec 1993 | Capcom |
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A crime wave has hit St. Canard. The spy agency S.H.U.S.H. calls in Darkwing Duck, the caped crime fighter from Disney's cartoon, because F.O.W.L. and its agent Steelbeak have hired six of his old enemies to run riot across the city: the Liquidator, Megavolt, Bushroot, Quackerjack, Professor Moliarty and Wolfduck, a villain made up for the game.
You choose your first stage from three, then from another three once those fall, and only then does F.O.W.L.'s Floating Fortress open. Darkwing fires a Gas Gun and can pick up special gas along the way: Thunder, Heavy or Arrow, each with its own ammunition and its own use. You carry one kind at a time, and a new one replaces it. Select swaps between special and standard gas. Press up and Darkwing raises his cape to bat back some shots.
Capcom developed and published it for the NES in North America in June 1992, with a Game Boy version in February 1993. It is often held up as an example of how well Capcom handled Disney's cartoons, and reviewers liked it. They also saw the family resemblance: Entertainment Weekly gave it a B and pointed out how much it shares with Mega Man. Nintendo Power ranked the Game Boy version the third-best Game Boy game of 1993.
The NES game came back in The Disney Afternoon Collection in April 2017, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows, and the collection reached Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in 2026.
In 2018 Headcannon, a developer of Sonic Mania, worked with comic writer Aaron Sparrow and Disney comic artist James Silvani on a pitch to Capcom for a sequel, inspired partly by DuckTales: Remastered. Capcom passed, and Headcannon put its sewer-level prototype online on 7 January 2019.
This is the Capcom NES house style at its most confident. Pick a villain, learn the stage, take the gas that suits the room. The cape block adds a small timing game Mega Man never had.
It is not long, and anyone who has played a Mega Man will be at home in minutes. That is the point of it: a known engine wearing a funnier costume, with a hero whose dignity is always one bad landing from gone.
Darkwing Duck is a hero in a cape and a wide hat, and the game handed both to the kids who watched the cartoon. For an afternoon, they were the one St. Canard called.
Przybylski and colleagues found games are most engaging when playing a character brings people closer to who they would ideally like to be. A small duck with a big hat and a gas gun is a modest ideal, but it is a clear one, and for six stages and a fortress you get to live up to it.
Read: Who you are when you play →
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
In the game. Press up and Darkwing raises his cape to bat back some shots. It's a small timing game Mega Man never had.
Do it on purpose. Pick one enemy and only use the cape on its shots for a whole stage. Count clean blocks.
Off the couch. Comedic timing is the same instinct. Know when to land the joke and when to let it breathe, and you're good company anywhere.
In the game. Choose your first stage from three, then another three, and pick up Thunder, Heavy or Arrow gas. You carry one at a time, so take the gas that suits the room.
Do it on purpose. Before each stage, decide which gas you'll want and skip the others. Note when your pick was right.
Off the couch. Turn up with what you need: the right outfit, the right docs, a plan for after dinner. Prepared looks relaxed.
In the game. Anyone who's played Mega Man is at home in minutes. Each villain's stage has its own rhythm to learn.
Do it on purpose. Before a boss, describe its attack pattern out loud from your last try.
Off the couch. Recognising a familiar situation in a new place, a new job that's like the old one, lets you settle in fast.
Verdict · 7/10
A Mega Man in a cape and a hat, made with care. Short, sharp and still funny.
