The 'Disney Afternoon Collection' Lets Players 'Rewind' Their Mistakes

The Disney Afternoon is an early '90s nostalgia touchstone—a two-hour block of animated cartoons that ran every weekday after school, from 3PM to 5PM. The shows, each 30 minutes in length, starred Disney characters in alternate universe scenarios. Mischievous chipmunks Chip and Dale, for example, were recast as the heads of a pint-sized detective agency. Baloo from The Jungle Book was reenvisioned as an air cargo pilot who battled pirates.

Japanese game publisher Capcom markets to the childhoods of millennials and their Gen X predecessors. It published DuckTales Remastered (Win, Mobile, PS3, Xbox 360, WiiU) in 2013. It published the Mega Man Legacy Collection (Win, PS4, Xbox One, 3DS), a compilation of six 8-bit Mega Man classics, in 2015. And today, April 18, Capcom releases The Disney Afternoon Collection (Win, PS4, Xbox One), which takes six games from the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and compiles them under a single banner: DuckTales (1989), Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (1990), TaleSpin (1991), Darkwing Duck (1992), DuckTales 2 (1993), and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2 (1994).

Each game features characters from its respective TV show. Take, for example, the green aliens in the kitchen stage of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, which morph into impostors:

They're based off of the shapeshifting villain in Season 1, Episode 3: "Dale Beside Himself." Or check out the aliens in the Moon stage of DuckTales:

They're based off of the Kronkian aliens in Season 1 Episode 8: "Where No Duck Has Gone Before." There's plenty of "blink and you'll miss them" show references to reward devoted, older Disney fans.

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and DuckTales are the standout, bonafide classics. Talespin is the weakest game, a side-scrolling air shooter with bad steering and underpowered projectiles to start. Darkwing Duck is a decent (if difficult) platformer with fantastic graphics, and it features the biggest rogues' gallery.

And the final two games— DuckTales 2 and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2— are rarities. They were both released at the tail end of the NES's life cycle in the early- to mid-90s, when most Nintendo fans had already moved on to the Super Nintendo (which was released in 1991). The opportunity to play these two games, for the very first time, will be a main selling point for older fans.

The games' reputations have been well-established for over two decades; to review them in full would be redundant. Instead, the most interesting aspect of The Disney Afternoon Collection, and what sets it apart from being a box-it-up-and-ship-it-out compilation, is its "Rewind" feature. Each game now allows the player to rewind his or her gameplay by pressing and holding a single button (on the PlayStation 4, it's L1).

This is not the same mechanic as a save point or save state; the gameplay literally rewinds itself, like a video cassette on a VCR. Here is a gif of the Rewind feature at work. While crossing a crumbling bridge in the Amazon level of DuckTales, I mistimed my final jump. But, through the magic of "Rewind," I was able to retry the sequence and advance, unscathed, with no loss of life.

The Rewind feature is optional; players can simply not press the button, or play the game in Time Attack or Boss Rush modes, which disables the mechanic entirely.

But most players will play around with Rewinding at some point. And depending on when one uses the ability and how one uses the ability, it can change the gameplay experience significantly.

Darkwing Duck, for example, features perilous platforming sequences, where the player must jump, mid-air, from hook-to-hook. I missed these jumps all the time as a kid; because the window of detection for each hook is so small, it seemed that I would fall through the hook, instead of grabbing onto it like I should have.

I had no problem, at all, with rewinding this particular section. Because what's the alternative? The margin of error on the jumps so thin, and there are so many jumps, that the only way to master this sequence is to die multiple times and eventually, through tedious repetition, commit the sequence to muscle memory. It wasn't fun back to do back then. And it certainly isn't fun to do now.

Thus, the "Rewind" option is a backdoor fix to any "unfair" gameplay. It allows the player to bulldoze past areas that are disproportionately difficult, and move on to areas with fun, challenging tasks to accomplish.

But ethical gameplay exists on a slippery slope. A player might start off by only Rewinding sequences that he or she deems "unfair." But what if the player gets distracted and makes a careless jump? What if the player's thumb slips? What if the enemy moves in an unpredictable pattern? Where does one draw the line on retries? At what point does it spoil the gameplay?

Take, for example, the battle against Magica DeSpell in the Transylvania level of DuckTales. I first beat Magica when I was eight years old, and she was a tough, but fair fight; I had to jump over her lightning shots and onto her head in a single, fluid motion to avoid getting hit. I took great pride in my ability to defeat her without being hit once.

But when I fought her on The Disney Collection, she killed me, for the first time in a long time. So gamely, I tried again. She killed me again. And at that point, I rewound the gameplay and took her down.

A "victory" has never felt so hollow and so dirty. This was not a "broken" fight, after all; I had once possessed the skill to beat Magica cleanly. I wasn't rewinding as a means of bypassing an unfair area; I was rewinding because I was lazy. And in the process, I cheated myself out of remastering a challenge I had once taken pride in.

Eight-bit platformers are notoriously difficult; any old school gamer has negative memories of trying (and failing) to beat his or her favorite games. But playing The Disney Afternoon Collection reminded me that there are two types of "difficult" in games. The first type is rooted in broken mechanics and poor hit detection—flaws in the gameplay itself. The second type requires mastering—of recognizing a pattern, planning a strategy ahead of time, and adjusting one's gameplay to launch a counterattack.

The Disney Afternoon Collection allows a player to rewind both types. But a player must take care to only rewind the former—not the latter—to have the best playing experience possible.