Not all heroes wear…pants?
I have extremely fond memories of QuackShot, a Sega Genesis platformer starring Donald Duck that a good friend had at his house growing up. QuackShot is sometimes bundled in with the “Illusion” series, another group of Disney platformers mostly starring Mickey Mouse. Despite being a fan of the series and ostensibly being open to learn more about it, I have to admit I’ve never even heard the game we’re playing this week – the apparently mysterious Lucky Dime Caper starring Donald Duck.
A big reason this is rather obscure is that the Master System version, which we’re reviewing here, wasn’t released in the US. This was exclusive to other, better continents – is the gameplay better as a result? Let’s find out.
The story of the game surrounds Scrooge McDuck’s lucky dime, an object that has a surprisingly detailed history (to the point that a Wikipedia article dedicates five whole paragraphs to it). In short, it’s the first coin Scrooge ever made, and Scrooge is distraught over it being missing, despite him being the richest duck in the history of ducks. Capitalism does weird things to you, regardless of species.
Much like the Castle of Illusion games, Lucky Dime Caper is a fairly simple platformer. You control Donald Duck, who has agreed to help out his impossibly rich relative because that’s just the kind of duck he is. He sets out to a handful of varied locales equipped with nothing but his wits and a big hammer (and his trademark “shirt with no pants” look, of course). You’ll need to dodge and/or hit various enemies before they do the same to you – if you take a hit, you lose your weapon, and a second hit will kill you. That’s pretty much the gist of it.
That hit system, though? It’s pretty brutal. There seems to be a certain class of platformers from around this time that are incredibly unforgiving, and ultimately task you with being very precise. This means the game likely isn’t for everyone (including, I’d imagine, a lot of kids that are ostensibly the target audience), but getting through an area unscathed feels awfully rewarding if you put the work in. This difficulty manifests itself in some cool ways, too – for instance, this tightrope can be walked along but, as I quickly discovered, can not be jumped onto:
Ultimately, I also found that swinging the hammer was also a bit of a pain to use, as the time from input to impact was needlessly tricky to get down. Fortunately, enemies can typically also be jumped on or just straight up ignored. It’s nice to see an otherwise straight-forward game give you a few different options for how to approach things.
If you’re able to look past or even lean in to its difficulty, Lucky Dime Caper is a pretty enjoyable game. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous-looking game, and has among the smoothest graphics of anything on the Master System. The environments are vivid and colorful, and the animations – such as Donald swinging his big dumb hammer – look really, really impressive. Here he his about to show a dumb mushroom who’s boss:
If you’re a fan of the other DuckTales-adjacent games or want to take a deep dive into the Master System’s catalog, I definitely recommend Lucky Dime Caper. There is also a Game Gear version that was released in the U.S., though it has a number of differences that aren’t entirely for the better.
Next week’s game is even more obscure than this one – in fact, it was never formally released, despite being a follow-up to a massive hit. What could it be? You’ll have to watch this space to find out.