Looney Tunes Duck Dodgers Starring Daffy Duck

Developer: Paradigm Entertainment Publisher: Infogrames

Released: September 16, 2000 3/10 Rated: E

There’s a small set of releases by Infogrames right around the year 2000 between the N64 and PS1 that seems to garner a lot of nostalgia. Mostly platformers, with a few other genres like racing mixed in, Duck Dodgers is probably one of the lesser known titles in this group, having been limited to a late N64-exclusive release. Having fond memories of my own renting the PS1’s Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time on several occasions, I can attest to these titles having a lot of clout with me and other gamers of a certain age, along with games like Sheep Raider, Looney Tunes Space Race, and the PAL-only N64 exclusive Taz Express. And having both recently revisited Lost in Time as a more seasoned gamer and platformer fan, as well as playing Duck Dodgers on the N64, I think I can say that the rose-tinting is extra intense on these bad boys. Duck Dodgers isn’t just a shoddy licensed game that you didn’t know wasn’t as good as you thought it was, it might actually be the worst platformer in the entire N64 library.

We’ll start with the problem you’re probably expecting, given that even good games in the genre still need work grappling with it, which is that the camera is an embarrassment. I’d say it’s the most frustrating camera on the system, but really it’s just par for the course, and if anything, you’ll be used to it if you’ve already explored most of the platformers on the N64, or many on the PlayStation, for that matter. It’s funny, because good platformers can still have bad cameras, but no bad ones fail in spite of good cameras. The thing just acts of its own accord, finding the worst angle possible in most cases, and lacks any intuitive manual control to fix. It’s the worst type of double down when the collision detection, more definitively, I might add, does indeed seem to be at the bottom of the barrel. There’s such an unholy trifecta on display of awful camera, poor collision detection that specifically involves defining where Daffy Duck’s feet are touching while you run towards the edge of a platform or maneuver along a narrow pathway, and a psychotic sense of momentum while jumping. The latter specifically involves this feeling as if jumping forward at all will always make Daffy jump a few feet in front of him before you can regain some control with the analog stick or change direction entirely on a double jump. Imagine the knockback of the 2D Castlevania titles — you’re always going to move six or so feet — which is a problem when even early levels will set you up with a short series of platforms to jump across, and you’re always jumping too far; you have to overshoot them and pull yourself back in midair to land on them. It’s a basic failure of game design.

The use of classic Looney Tunes-esque gags is actually kinda funny, like this one where you have to choose which door is correct, and two of which end up getting Daffy injured by some unseen hazard (you get a health item on the way in to make sure you don’t die). But that’s just it — they’re gags. There’s no actual gameplay motivation behind them.

And then we start talking about collision detection. Never mind how easy it is to just run towards the edge of a platform and hear the sound effect of your double jump as Daffy basically does a Smash Bros. aerial dodge instead of leaping across a gap. For a game that takes lots of its cues from Banjo-Kazooie, it doesn’t seem to have a clue how the characters are meant to move or behave. This comes up consistently as well as there is essentially no reason to engage with enemies via melee attacks. The hit detection is simply too inconsistent for Daffy to kick or ground pound the actual enemies in the game effectively, let alone do so a tedious three times, as most tend to require before being done away with. You’re just going to take too many hits, even in a game that’s strewn its health recovery items around like seed on a patchy lawn, for it to be worth the time and effort to clear enemies out so you can accomplish whatever your task is.

These failures, purely mechanical as they may be, are probably not the most informative in a profile of a game about the Looney Tunes license, as there’s certainly something to be said for a baseline sense of novelty playing as Daffy Duck in his Duck Dodgers persona, fighting minions of Marvin the Martian that he’s enlisted from across the Looney Tunes’ roster, such as Yosemite Sam or Rocky the Gangster, but it’s such a failure at every aspect of being a game that I can’t start talking about any of it, lest I abandon the reality of this miserable experience for that of simply describing a cartoon, something that actually sounds appealing in its familiarity. I will take this opportunity, however, to wonder exactly why Duck Dodgers is laid out the way it is, with what is effectively supposed to be a sci-fi themed adventure full of aliens and shoehorned explanations for cameos by familiar faces, to be lazily populated by less tasteful efforts like Prince Hassan’s Castle. An entire Arabian palace literally thrown smack dab into the middle of an unrelated alien planet, with no explanation or set up, to serve as the boss fight.

Actually, Hassan might even be one of the better bosses, as lots of small concepts or gameplay ideas like boss fights or even just mini games meant to reward more of the primary collectible (atoms that Marvin needs to power his latest doomsday device) are just not good. Really leaning on the Banjo-Kazooie inspirations again, mini sections like shooting basketballs into a hoop or blasting across canyons on Acme-branded rockets are just.. bad. They’re either so cringe-inducingly bad that it feels like you’re alpha-testing an idea that might not have enough legs to keep working on, or they’re so controller-throwingly maddening that you can’t believe anyone actually did test it. At various points I was forced to remind myself that the Banjo comparisons might not be justified if this was intended for a younger audience, but when the second level end-boss is a single stage insult of “pick the bomb up and throw it back six times” there’s just no credit left to be given, as far as I’m concerned.

This game is not good, it doesn’t look or feel good, and it barely even tries to go full Gex with a license that can handle it, as there were points I even forgot I was playing a Looney Tunes game, it was so lacking in polish and so lacking in character. It’s not completely without charm, there were certainly a few good sight gags, and Daffy has a couple of lines, but he is nowhere near the sassy, zany, overly confident leading man he should be. It’s kind of sad, because once you realize that it’s too far gone as a video game for it to be clawed back to salvation by the charm of the Looney Tunes license, you start to wish it would actually try to do so anyway, but even the effort there is just lacking.