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QuackShot originally a Duck Tales game?

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by ICEknight, Sep 24, 2016.

  1. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    You know, that one game where you play as a treasure-hungry Donald without his trademark costume and where Scrooge McDuck just has a pretty tacked-on cameo for a few seconds in the intro?


    Well, I was browsing the SMS Power forums earlier today when I saw somebody mentioning this:
    So yeah, it looks like The Lucky Dime Caper may have been intended to be a Duck Tales game at one point, probably before Capcom's license was renewed for the 1993 game. The whole "go rescue the nephews and get the lucky dime back" plot really sounds like a good fit for the series, and that game even has some sprites for Uncle Scrooge which may have been used for a playable character at one point.



    What about Quackshot? Well, I'd say that this does make a bit more sense when you look at it with the possibility in mind:

    Quackshot (1991)
    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    Duck Tales movie (1990)
    [​IMG]

    There's even a couple of details from the in-game logo that are based directly on Duck Tales' and don't appear in the box art, like the overlapping "K" and the distinct shape of the "T".


    Then, there's the very possible reason why Donald is not wearing his usual overalls:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    Also, biplanes:
    [​IMG] [​IMG]



    ...But this is as far as facts get without entering speculation. Unless somebody has already found any further evidence?
     
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  2. Lanzer

    Lanzer

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    Yeah its pretty clear it was supposed to be a Ducktales game all the evidence points to it.

    But come again, why was 1 Disney property changed to another during mid-development without much change?
     
  3. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    My guess is that some compatibility problems happened with Capcom's license renewal when the game was already halfway into development.
     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Be careful:

    [​IMG]

    Stealing the Indiana Jones font was all the rage in the late 80s/early 90s - the logo alone doesn't necessarily indicate a DuckTales connection*.


    You can't really rule these things out but I'm pretty sure the brief was just to make a "DONALD DUCK GAME" to go alongside "MICKEY MOUSE GAME" (Castle of Illusion). On the Game Gear/Master System we had "Donald Duck" (Lucky Dime Caper), "Donald Duck 2" (Deep Duck Trouble) and "Mickey Mouse 2" (Land of Illusion) before final names were adopted - an indication perhaps that the goal was just to make games about these two characters.

    I'm less confident about the licensing thing (for example, there are Capcom and Virgin versions of Aladdin) - I would imagine (if anything) it would be more to do DuckTales going off air in 1990 - it would have been more sensible to plug TaleSpin as the afternoon cartoon show of choice instead (which they did).


    I don't know my Disney history that well. It might be that the Carl Barks supporting cast were considered the official Donald Duck canon of the early 1990s, i.e. Huey, Dewey and Louie are to Donald as Minnie Mouse is to Mickey. They just both stem from the same source.



    *bits of these films are supposedly inspired by a the Scrooge McDuck comic "Seven Cities of Gold" though
     
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  5. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Err... Yeah, the obvious Indiana Jones connection is like their whole point. Disney even got the guy from the Indy movie posters on board for this one, I think.

    The letter formatting and specific letters were directly taken from the Duck Tales logo, in any case (also, no white at the bottom).


    It could also have to do with "Treasure of the Lost Lamp" being a flop and Disney cancelling any further related movies (according to Wikipedia, anyway).
     
  6. TimmiT

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    I wouldn't trust any sentence on Wikipedia that says "[citation needed]" next to it.
     
  7. Cooljerk

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    Ducktales itself is based off of the old Uncle Scrooge comics from the 1950's and 1960's, as is quackshot obviously. Several of the elements in Quackshot owe their origin to those old Uncle Scrooge comics, like the adventure motif, the plane, Huey, Dewy, and Lewie, The Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell, etc.

    So, while it's undoubtedly from the same overall project as Ducktales, Ducktales in and of itself was basically a modern revival of an even older disney property. I wouldn't call this all coincidence, more like Dinsey attempting synergy by modernizing old properties in a variety of ways -- sort of like how they tried to revive the Fantasia property in the late 80's and early 90's.

    And getting into the more nitty gritty, the game was more likely originally some form of I love Mickey Mouse 2, given the director and team behind the project, and the final name of the japanese version (where it's more concretely linked as a sequel to Castle of Illusion).
     
  8. MathUser

    MathUser

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    That's interesting info. Someone should archive that info at TCRF or something.
     
  9. TimmiT

    TimmiT

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    Well, not necessarily Uncle Scrooge comics specifically, more just Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics in general. There's actually a big Donald Duck universe in comics, with the Uncle Scrooge comics seemingly being the most well known outside of Europe. I wouldn't really call the characters from the comics being used as much of an indication that it was going to be a Ducktales game at first, because the same characters were used in comics about Donald Duck. Here in Europe the comics are actually advertised more as Donald Duck comics than they are as Uncle Scrooge comics.

    QuackShot also isn't the only Donald Duck video game to use stuff from the comics, Goin' Quackers/Quack Attack used them as well. And Junction Point was going to make a Donald Duck game based on the universe before they were closed down.

    There's really nothing in QuackShot that makes it much of a Ducktales game, really it's more that Donald Duck games tend to use things from the comics as much as Ducktales did.
     
  10. Dee Liteyears

    Dee Liteyears

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    It's called The Seven Cities of Cibola. And your right, in this regard Ducktales is more or less another series with the usual, well known characters. With both, Ducktales and Quackshot, we just see the inspirations going full circle there. Also, it wouldn't be the first game that's inspired by Indiana Jones either
     
  11. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    Well Magica De Spell was actually created specifically for the Uncle Scrooge comics; she appeared in Donald Duck comics as well afterwards, but her first appearance is as an adversary to Uncle Scrooge (Uncle Scrooge #36 - The Midas Touch). You're right that the other elements appeared in earlier Donald Duck and general disney comics, though.

    Although, now that I'm thinking of it, is Magica De Spell in quackshot? She's obviously in Lucky Dime Caper, but I can't remember if she shows up in Quackshot or not...
     
  12. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Nope, Big Bad Pete is the bad guy here.

    Let's see... the comics:
    -Have Donald in his regular sailor costume.
    -Don't have a biplane picking him up from place to place.
    -Don't spoof the Indiana Jones logo.
    -Don't have a logo with typography directly lifted from Duck Tales'.

    ...Which were the things I was showing as possible hints. Many of the situations in the game can be associated with both the Donald/Scrooge comics or the TV series, of course, but that was not the point.


    Don't get me wrong, these could very well be references/shoutouts to the series/movie (certainly not to the comics) along the same lines as the references to other Disney properties that exist in these games, but those magazines listing a SMS Duck Tales game before the Donald game was announced make me more skeptical about that and more on board with it being started as a Duck Tales project and later rebranded for whatever reasons, which could even include marketing research on Donald's worldwide popularity.

    Heck, they may have even planned ahead of time and chose this kind of adventure because they'd be able to easily swap franchise in case something went wrong with the license.



    tl;dr: Too many coincidences, probably. Insider info sorely needed.
     
  13. Eduardo Knuckles

    Eduardo Knuckles

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    I always thought the last boss was really Magica De Speell, since it's truely a look-a-like. Would it have her been edited in the last moment in order of making it to looks different? The boss looks a lot more... male.
     
  14. BlazeHedgehog

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    Counterpoint: Scrooge McDuck is not really known for his temper in the same way Donald is, and Quackshot has a whole gameplay mechanic revolving around making Donald angry enough to throw one of his iconic tantrums. If this was a DuckTales game, I'd bet it changed pretty early in development.

    I think it's far more likely that Sega wanted something similar to what Capcom was doing with DuckTales on the NES, but still unique to their platform. And the progression makes a weird sort of sense: Castle of Illusion with Mickey was 1990, QuackShot with Donald was 1991, and World of Illusion with Mickey and Donald together was 1992.
     
  15. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Counter-counter point: It only happens two times in the whole game and it's implementation didn't require redesigning anything.


    But then, we have one of Donald's main actions in the game:
    [​IMG]

    Which reminds me of something...
    [​IMG]

    :v:
     
  16. Fred

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    This is the most convincing argument, I think. The temper mechanic is so useless and tacked on that it makes perfect sense as an afterthought to make Donald more Donald-y.
     
  17. Prototype

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    It would make sense that it was a re-skinned Ducktales game. The existence of a non-Goof Troop "Big Bad Pete" and an army of identical clones does seem like they just needed SOME related villain character that wasn't being used in game licenses already. The Goof Troop Pete would be used in SNES's Goof Troop two years later.

    The re-skin to a Donald Duck game (possibly due to Donald being more famous around the world/Japan) might also explain that weird "Donald Duck in "Maui Mallard"" game, which almost seemed like the Donald Duck tie-in was slapped on at some point later in development. It later dropped the Donald Duck branding and continued to be sold for a time as JUST "Maui Mallard".