Title: The Disney Afternoon Collection
System: Nintendo Switch 2 (eShop)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 02/26/2026

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Prelude

Licensed games are a fascinating phenomenon for me. In the current decade, they’re almost always slapped on random Mobile games certain to die in a couple years, farmed out to a few publishers who throw out low-budget games for families to pollute Target store shelves on clearance, or given to superfans/indie teams of some kind to make a pretty darn good or decent game. TMNT for instance has had a ton of quality stuff this decade.

But back when I was young in the 2000s, licensed games were not as lucky. Literally any random movie you can think of was farmed out to a random dev team by some of the biggest companies in gaming and given super short deadlines to make the video game, leading to a huge amount of unplayable or very terrible games, and a few oddball hidden gems based on IPs you wouldn’t expect to have a good video game. Disney was another instigator of this, but for most of the 2000s they still kept good quality control leaving most of their licensed movie/TV tie in games to decent development staff and having some pretty fun games like Goin Quackers or Toy Story 3 come out of it.

Before my time however, in the mid 90s licensed games were roughly in the same shape as they were in the 2000s, with a lot of garbage and badly made games, but mixed with some top tier licensed IPs being given to A tier teams, and some being given to a company’s lower tier. This means a company with a license to a media company’s IP could have varying degrees of quality depending on the platform or port being worked on, and if you didn’t recognize the IP that magic won’t be there for you and thus the game has to sell itself to you based on the quality of the gameplay.

That’s me with Disney Afternoon Collection, which I’ve owned every other version off thanks to pretty generous sales, and I briefly mentioned it in a big article that went over Digital Eclipse’s output, where I called this their weakest set to date. Part of that is due to factors outside of the games, but the bulk of it stems from me not knowing what hardly any IP in the entire set was next to Ducktales due to the 2017 reboot. (which in turn makes Darkwing Duck semi-familiar to me) The Disney Afternoon was a TV block before I was born, and by the time I had Disney Cartoon blocks to watch, it was a mix of weirder stuff like American Dragon Jake Long and Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, with a bit of Kim Possible and Proud Family mixed in too. Not much for gaming material, those IP were.

Still, Atari managed to pull this outta the Capcom vault, added two exclusive games to the Switch/Switch 2 versions, and add a bit of extra stuff to this collection. Maybe some time away from this collection and the newer games might sweeten the pot for me here? Can a guy with next to no idea what the heck a Rescue Ranger is still find some enjoyment here? We’ll have to see…

Presentation

Starting up the compilation, it has a very identical look and feel to the Capcom published original set from 2017. You have a simplistic gallery mode, and the selection of games to choose from. Originally being the second reissue set that modern Digital Eclipse made, it ain’t too surprising to see Disney Afternoon lacking the kind of documentary-ish bonuses modern DE sets would include. Your gallery here is a bunch of different categories of images, given some nice flavor text ala what would be done later in SNK 40th.

These are nice little details that help explain the context behind things in the gallery and how they compare to the cartoons, and in this Switch 2 version they added a couple of extra images based off the two new SNES games, but not that many. I didn’t notice any newer items for the older games in the set, and as a whole the gallery is still pretty darn thin even compared to the Mega Man Legacy Collection. Still, what’s included is of decent scan quality. There’s also a music player, consisting of all the songs from each game, including the two new ones. Works as it should, though there aren’t many songs in this set I’d consider listening to outside the game.

For the games themselves, you have very basic screen size options, very basic filters, and simple borders to toggle on/off, and all pale in comparison to the sort of options Digital Eclipse would include through their modern compilations. All games look crisp as can be and scale nicely on the Switch 2 handheld screen in this version, and the scaling/art quality are the only major differences between the Switch 1/2 Edition of this game that I could find.

Gameplay

There may be no documentary style bonuses here like in modern DE sets, but there are actually two bonus modes that help the replay value of this set quite a bit; Time Attack & Boss Rush! These are all leftovers from the 2017 version of the game, meaning that Bonkers and Goof Troop do not have them.

That’s a huge shame in the case of Bonkers, since it feels perfect as a speedgame and would make the best use for these bonus modes by far, as the NES titles don’t exactly offer much for Time Attack, while the Boss Rush modes are all fun, but some games are better with it than others. (The second Chip N Dale & Talespin games are pretty tedious in this mode)

I also noticed the Boss Rush mode was incredibly buggy, since when it came time to save a completed run on the Leaderboards, a popup window telling me I was out of save storage appeared when checking the leaderboards. And it never went away; everywhere I went in the collection afterward this popup would follow me and keep reappearing, even though I obviously did not have that little storage space; this paragraph is likely bigger in file size than this warning wanted me to free up!

Thankfully exiting and re-entering the game and avoiding the leaderboards prevented that popup from showing up again, (though checking the leaderboard for any reason did make it come back), although I’m rather disappointed such clunky bugs persist in this rerelease. So please keep that in mind if you want to play these bonus modes for online leaderboard purposes, as they might not like you. My score still did technically upload, but I can’t seem to shake the silly save error popup no matter what I try. Nevertheless, onto the games…

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Ducktales: The original one that started it all and one of the most iconic NES games, Ducktales is based off the TV show and puts you in charge of Scrooge McDuck going on a world tour to hunt down some treasures. You have a pogo jump that can be used to defeat enemies by jumping and holding down + B, so if you end up forgetting that direction you might end up falling on enemies an awful lot here.

Still, it doesn’t take that long to get used to the controls, and this one is a fairly good time, even after 30+ years. You can choose any stage in any order you want, and while some of them will yoink you out of the level to get an item to open the one you were on, all the stages are pretty easy to get the hang of. From a snowy area that punishes you for pogoing on the ground, to a moon base with a spaceship, and a haunted castle with minecarts, Ducktales has a fun variety of stages and even hidden goodies if you poke around and go off the beaten path, leading to a really darn good adventure overall.

The only real gripes I have with this one are that the game doesn’t have a proper final stage and just takes you back to the castle stage, and all the bosses are remarkably easy and pretty blatantly made up for the game outside of a couple, making all of them pushovers even on the hard setting. Still, lame bosses or no, Ducktales definitely deserves its classic status and is an excellent starting point for this collection.

Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers: This Co-Op platformer tasks you with Chip and Dale being part of some rescue team who must save their friend Gadget from a Fat Cat’s evil empire. This one is more straightforward than Ducktales, and it honestly surprised me a lot going back to this one, having co-oped this in the PS4 release without giving it much extra thought. Local Co-Op lets you goof around by throwing the other player around and being able to cause mayhem to one another, so that alone will make this a great pick if you want something silly to spend an hour with a friend on.

Going back to this one solo on the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by how the fun factor maintained itself. You go through the stages by using objects like boxes and apples to throw at the enemies to get them out of your way, and each set of levels ends in a ridiculously easy boss fight where you throw a ball at the boss over and over until it dies, somehow being even more pathetic than the ones in Ducktales. Lame bosses aside, you do have branching paths to take as you progress through the game, the general game balance is pretty solid, and this was just a darn fun one to play through again, even without my usual Co-Op partner. Solo or with a friend, you can’t go wrong with the Rescue Rangers here.

Talespin: Two platformers were made, so Capcom felt like a genre shift was in need for Talespin. Here you take control of Baloo from the Jungle Book as he flies a plane around in order to stop sky pirates from causing havoc. You have a horizontal shooting game with this one, and you have a fire button on B and a rotate button on A, which flips your ship upside down and lets you go backwards. Fly through the stages, survive to the boss and take it down! There are also secret bonus areas you can stumble upon by shooting open invisible entrances. Here you take control of Baloo’s friend Kit who can somehow surf on the wind, and he must collect as much goodies as he can to help gain extra lives, which adds a minor bit of much needed variety.

This is often considered the weakest of the Capcom Disney Afternoon games, and I can see why; even as a big fan of shooting games and one who appreciates even the simple ones, Talespin is just boring. The level design is pretty uninteresting for a shooter, the variety in your weapons is just non-existent, and the bosses are the only thing remotely interesting here, which makes it good you have a Boss Rush mode for this collection so you can skip the boring parts of the game. Sure, you can upgrade your ship to shoot more bullets at once and make things a little more interesting, but even with the upgrades this game is rather mundane.

Still, that doesn’t mean Talespin is terrible by any means; I’m sure if you liked the show you’d get a kick out of seeing a cartoon bear fly around and shoot things, but as one with no familiarity with the IP before this NES game, I found the overall experience to be incredibly dull and not as interesting as the other games in this set; still better than a bunch of licensed NES titles, but definitely the lowest quality game in the bunch.

Darkwing Duck: This action platformer tasks you with sending out DW to various parts of the town in order to stop the F.O.W.L henchmen from wrecking stuff. While Talespin’s OST felt a lot like Mega Man, this game’s structure almost makes you feel as if you’re playing a Mega Man, key word being almost.

See, if you think you can just rush into stages, shoot down enemies and do super fun pixel perfect platforming to get to the bosses, then you’re just gonna lose life after life after life. DW only has four HP unlike Mega Man, so you have to be way more careful, especially since your gas gun can only shoot a few bullets on screen at a time. Add in the fact you have to cling to ceilings now and again and make use of your cape to block projectiles, and this one is more meticulous than your typical Mega Man game, and honestly I just end up treating Darkwing Duck as its own kind of action game.

If you do that, you’ll find this one to be pretty darn decent, even if some of the bosses can be headaches, but at least we’re getting proper challenges here. Go in thinking of this as Mega Man and you’ll be miserable, but go in thinking of this as DW trying to copy Mega Man all by himself and you’ll find it a pretty decent action romp, but not much more. This is around the point I’d say these games get consistently good.

Ducktales 2: It’s more Ducktales! Now you’re trying to hunt for a way to the island of Mu to discover the secrets within, and you yet again have more stages and can freely choose between them, only now you actually get upgrades that you’ll need to progress further within some of the levels, leading to a bit more poking around. The Pogo has been greatly simplified to just be a B button mid-air attack, making it real snappy and far more entertaining to use, and I quite like it.

Levels are a bit more fun than the original, the bosses are far better and actually can give you trouble here, even if they are still largely made up for the game, and all around this is just more Ducktales levels but with some extra polish, and I happen to enjoy this one a bit more than the original because of it. B Pogo for the win!

Goof Troop: One of two exclusives for the Nintendo ports, this SNES game brings back the core concept from Capcom’s Makai Island and turns it into a stage by stage puzzle adventure hybrid. You take control of either Goofy, Max or both in Co-op and set out throughout the stages to clear the puzzles permeating the island.

Each level tasks you with getting to the end, which usually has you going through each screen ala a Zelda dungeon, pushing blocks, throwing objects at enemies, and overall solving the puzzles needed to get keys in order to make your way to the end of the stage. This one is fairly fun, and I so desperately wish I was able to have my co-op partner back over again in order to give a take on the Co-Op experience, but from how typical the Single Player experience was, I can only imagine it’s like Chip N Dale in the sense that it would really enhance the experience and be a perfect game for cooperative purposes.

The nice part here is that if a puzzle room stumps you to the point you accidentally brick yourself, you can just exit and re-enter to try again without the frustration, which is a smart design move that makes even the tougher puzzles feel fair. Seeing Makai Island elements fleshed out more here really made me wish Capcom used more of their ancient IPs to collab with Disney IPs, but I’m guessing Vulgus or Sonson weren’t compatible with anything at the time. Still, this one’s pretty delightful and I’m only slightly bitter I feel like I have unfinished business by not being able to play this in co-op as intended.

Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers 2: I swore when playing this again that I must have had a mixup situation. I remember playing this and the first game on the PS4 version with my local co-op bestie and generally having a fun time working together and continuing the chipmunk throwing goodness, and having still enjoyed the first Chip N Dale more than I thought I would upon a solo replay, I expected this to be akin to Ducktales 2, featuring the same goodness as the first game, but refined and improved in almost every way.

Sadly, I think this is a perfect example of adding too much to your game to make it seem bigger than before. The branching paths of the original game are replaced by cutscenes, and while they do explain a pretty typical story, they are incredibly unnecessary and don’t offer much of value. Likewise the bosses are more complex and have trickier patterns to dodge, no longer being a pushover like the first go around but they way overcorrected here by leading to nearly every boss in this game having the same boring pattern of waiting for an item to spawn for you to hit them with, and then waiting around some more until the game gives you another thing to hit them with.

When you have scenarios where you know how to beat the boss but the actual solution is just a boring waiting game, it easily makes the boss fights the worst part of Chip N Dale 2, and they drag down the rest of the game. This is still a decently fun romp in Co-Op, but as a solo game this sequel is a lot less entertaining and one you’ll be using rewind on a lot more often, all while you goof around waiting for bosses to let you hit them again.

Bonkers: Capcom’s final Disney game released in North America for a good while, and this one was by far the one which surprised me the most. I had less familiarity with Bonkers than the other guys here, with me only knowing the bits I know about him now from this very game for this very review.

Anyhow, you take control of a police bobcat named Bonkers who ends up on a solo quest to get back some stolen Disney relics after getting his partner stuck in the hospital. This is yet another action platformer, with Bonkers being able to jump on enemies, throw bombs at them, or charge up a run. Right away I have to point out that the animation in this game is really incredible, and captures the “toon” feel the best out of any game in this set; every other game had the walk cycle not at all feel that cartoony, almost certainly due to limitations of the time, but here in Bonkers the animations are real impressive.

Bonkers is just way more expressive than your Scrooge or Chip N’ Dale, and here on the SNES the presentation nails the toon feeling almost perfectly; from pretty fitting music throughout the entire game, those aforementioned animation frames, and really well done character sprites, this is easily the game with the best looking visuals.

It helps that unlike Genesis Aladdin, good visuals accompany a great game, too! You start off in an intro stage, and then afterward can choose between multiple stages to do in any order you please. Each one has their own theme and gimmick, and I found all of the levels to be pretty darn enjoyable, although the sewer one almost made me lose my mind before I figured out what I should be doing. You can either take the levels real slowly, or use your dash to speed through them to get to the boss quicker, and clearing the stage faster even gets you a better compliment from the police chief, although there’s no secret ending locked behind clear times or anything, since Bonkers is not Samus.

Items are hidden in little balloons that can only be opened by bombing or dashing into them, and these range from your typical pickups like golden police badges that upgrade your max bomb capacity, to a potion that makes Bonkers do a super dash that won’t stop even if he bumps into something. Upgrading that capacity is a good idea too, since the bombs are by far the best way to deal with the enemies, including the bosses. Generally this game is pretty easy to get the hang of, and was the one I found myself using Rewind in the least because of how everything just clicked together real well.

Oh, how I wish Time Attack was compatible with this game, since if there’s any game that fits it most in this collection, it would be Bonkers. Definitely the surprise gem of the set for me, and absolutely a game that I wish I had back then instead of some of the GBA garbage I had to deal with.

Conclusion

In conclusion, The Disney Afternoon Collection is finally on Switch 2 after nearly a decade of being away from Nintendo systems. I’m kinda surprised Atari was able to pull such a thing off, but they largely did it without a hitch. All the original games are here, plus the two bonus SNES games, and I especially enjoyed those SNES titles more than the NES ones by far, though that doesn’t mean the NES games were bad; I still found Ducktales, Chip N Dale 1, Ducktales 2, and Darkwing Duck to be pretty darn fun.

Still, this is an early Digital Eclipse collection at its core, and you can definitely see how it lacks compared to the better quality, more feature-rich stuff they put out nowadays. While I’m glad Atari was able to add two really good games to the package to make the overall bundle a lot better, this is still a pretty basic set at the end of the day, and still has some of that clunk from the original version, with some new clunk with those online modes on top of it.

If you’re like me and not familiar with these IPs hardly at all, then these games might be a tougher sell for you; some of them are clearly better for those who are diehard fans of the original IPs already, and are just average games otherwise, while some like Bonkers, Goof Troop and the Ducktales games are excellent enough they would be great without their IP, so having them attached to Disney characters makes things all the better. Definitely a solid bundle of retro Disney fun, but I really wish this still didn’t have some of the clunk from the first time around.

I give The Disney Afternoon Collection a 6 out of 10.