Time to pop back to the Disney afternoon collection to the other great of the collection. Not that there are bad ones, just these 2 are the absolute top and one I have history with, and more than just the cartoon.

Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers took the classic chipmunk characters Chip and Dale and gave them a small team which included 2 mice and a fly as they dealt with missions rescuing animals and people against a series of foes who were also recurring characters.

Released for the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES (a name given as part of Nintendo’s forced need to trick shops to sell the console because of the market crash earlier, but there’s videos you can watch about that) The video game lets you play as either Chip or Dale. It initially starts out as what would seem like a normal episode, rescuing a girl’s kidnapped pet, soon turns out to be larger than you expected and leads to a confrontation against one of the team’s major antagonists.

The game is surprisingly big for a NES licensed game then. You get a world map that will let you pick what levels you wish to tackle outright, missing some if you so choose. Cut scenes happen between levels allowing the plot to develop. For a game on the NES that’s surprisingly a lot.

Gameplay is easy to learn. You have the standard move and jump, but attacking rather than jumping on enemies is done by grabbing objects and throwing them. Against bosses you will find they provide you with a ball that can be used to attack the boss with as long as you avoid taking hits from them. You have a health bar at the top left of the screen, so it’s not one of those one hit and your dead games, but with some of the later bosses, you can’t assume you can just trade blows.

Rather innovative of the game as well as the story is that it contains co-op. Both players are active at the same time and work very well. Normally it would be only limited to a vs or be one person controls one then another person tackles the next level, but no, this game lets two people play together towards the common goal. That said you can have projectiles thrown by your team mate at you, it won’t damage you but you will get stunned by friendly fire.

Despite the world map, multiple levels and co-op, the game isn’t long. Even if you’re 100%ing I can’t imagine it takes an hour. But during that you can see how once again there was a time where licensed video games not only weren’t instantly reviled, but some could get genuinely great.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮