Disney’s Talespin (NES)

The Talespin cartoon saw the animal characters from Disney’s The Jungle Book reimagined as pilots, Baloo the bear making deliveries while having to outmaneuver sky pirates and other dangers. The focus on flight makes it sound like an easy fit for a video game adaptation, but a realistic flight sim or a shoot ’em up might be a bit much for an animated show’s young audience. However, while a platformer could be more accessible, it would draw attention away from the high-flying excitement that people would expect from a game adaptation, even if that was ultimately how the game adaptation was handled over on the Sega Genesis. Capcom came up with a somewhat clever way to get the best of both worlds though, designing a shooter where flying your plane is handled similarly to a side-scrolling platformer.

 

Disney’s Talespin sees Baloo heading out on some deliveries to a few eccentric locations, the bear courier having to leave behind his usually large cargo plane for something smaller and more maneuverable. The Mini Sea-Duck faces frequent resistance from the forces of Don Karnage’s air pirates, but many of the destinations are inherently dangerous on their own. While you can expect Baloo to fly over some places that befit a plane like the ocean, a city full of skyscrapers, or a mountain, he also needs to get his small aircraft into caves, a sports stadium, and surprisingly even a haunted mansion. Considering Baloo is almost as big as the Mini Sea-Duck it won’t be the tightest fit, but maneuvering around walls and enemies is key to making your deliveries and taking down Don Karnage in one final confrontation.

Baloo’s personal aircraft can move around the screen with ease and isn’t overly fast, the screen scrolling forward as you fly but not too an unmanageable degree. Enemies will be placed on platforms to try and take you down, the Mini Sea-Duck able to sustain a few hits but the ways foes attack changes up quite a bit over the course of the adventure. One foe might try to fill the sky with bubbles to crowd you out while others might fly towards you quickly, most levels coming with a new range of baddies to learn and adapt to. There’s a fairly creative mix, but some levels do push things a bit too far like the haunted house where some attackers pop out of the wall so it’s hard to see them coming. You can fight back against your foes with a forward firing shot, but Disney’s Talespin also allows you to angle your shot. If you are moving up or down you can fire at an angle, but this can be a bit of a bother to do intentionally. It might throw off your shots when you’re just trying to dodge, but when you do it intentionally it’s easy to move more than you need, and with some bosses relying a fair bit on diagonal shots to hit their weak points, it can be a bit tedious trying to angle your attacks due to the necessary movement throwing off your aim.

 

However, a more interesting trick arises in the Mini Sea-Duck’s ability to fly completely upside-down. While normally your flight takes you to the right, when Baloo flips his aircraft, he’ll now be facing the left, and what’s more, the screen will even start scrolling to match. You can go backwards if you so wish in a level, this particularly useful for grabbing the various collectibles that are both out in the open or only exposed when you shoot an innocuous spot. Boxes of cargo, fruits that enemies drop, and money bags can all be scooped up to go towards an end-of-level total, the player then visiting the mechanic Wildcat to buy plane upgrades. Not only can you get 1-Ups and extra continues beyond the fairly generous starting sets of three each, but you can make the Mini Sea-Duck faster, able to take an extra hit, or even attack more rapidly if you’re able to afford it.

The game does sometimes slow down if you are firing too much in a busy area though, but you do feel rather weak in the opening stages so getting the power upgrades keeps you competitive and prevents the overall action from feeling too slow. However, while flying backwards helps with item acquisition, enemies do respawn the moment their designated area appears on screen, and flying leftward tends to make them appear ready to attack you the moment they become visible. There are vertical sections and boss fights that make more interesting use of your ability to fire forward or back though, so while there’s a lot of risk in using this technique to backtrack, it also adds some flexibility to certain skirmishes.

 

Exploring levels can also reward you with a portal to a bonus game where Baloo’s young pal Kit Cloudkicker hops on an airfoil and surfs through the skies popping balloons. 1-Ups aren’t too rare in Disney’s Talespin which helps with deaths often setting you back to level start, and the bonus area with Kit is likely to earn you one easily as well. That doesn’t mean Disney’s Talespin is always easy though, mainly because of a fair few enemies being rather speedy or having a bothersome secondary aspect like the ghost that splits into smaller ghosts that can be harder to line up shots on. Bosses are similarly a mixed bag. Some are just a matter of learning their simple pattern, the giant robotic baseball of the sports stadium for example a breeze after you realize how it moves, but the wrecking ball and Don Karnage himself both throw so many attacks around the screen it’s difficult to find a safe space in the chaos. Usually if the boss has a clearer central idea there a decent challenge to learn and overcome, but some of the game’s eight multi-part levels cap off with a frustrating fight instead.

THE VERDICT: Disney’s Talespin is brimming with more interesting ideas than you might expect, but sometimes adding a new concept to the pile starts to strain it. A range of unique enemies and some rather fun and strange places to fly through keep the interest high, but things start slow before you can afford the right upgrades and while flying upside-down to go left instead of right is a mechanic with some legs, angling your shots feels like it gets in the way more than it helps. The difficulty can swing around a fair bit too, fair bosses that take a bit of learning joined by ones where you’re just hoping to find a gap in the bullet spray, Disney’s Talespin uneven but still having some neat parts worth bearing the rougher stuff to see.

 

And so, I give Disney’s Talespin for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

An OKAY rating. While hidden goodies and some more reliable means of getting power-ups help to ease up the difficulty found in the rougher moments of Disney’s Talespin, it doesn’t change that facing those moments where foes attack too quickly or too frantically isn’t all that entertaining. A good deal of the bosses are well handled in terms of providing a boss fight you can learn even if some are a drag due to diagonal aiming not being the greatest, but Disney’s Talespin feels like it is in need of more horizontal flying space. Going to the left can lead to enemies appearing too quickly to respond to while other threats can sometimes crowd the screen, so if you could see some of the danger in advance or maneuver a bit better, that could help with the enemy designs that aren’t so much challenging as they are hard to react to. Enemies like the ones that pop out of the haunted house walls in particular show the game isn’t shy about cheaper tricks, but there are still enough moments where you’re flying around taking on hazards and foes unique to the current area that make for some decent maneuvering challenges. It ends up feeling a great deal like a platformer because of the stage shapes and enemy placement, Baloo not jumping around but many stages could be traversed on foot all the same. The freedom of flight and a decent way to fight back doesn’t rob it of its challenge compared to that platformer hypothetical, although if the scrolling was more in your hands perhaps like it would be in a game where Baloo handled things on foot than maybe some of the surprise attacks would be more feasible to account for or feel fair when they do hit you.

 

Disney’s Talespin decided they would be taking liberties with the size of Baloo’s aircraft and decided to fully embrace fantasy, flying through buildings and even upside-down for an aerial shooter with some fun ideas. It is a bit of a rocky flight at times, but there is still enjoyment to be found in trying to build up your cash to get the upgrades that really let you stick out the more turbulent moments. While it could iron out some parts of its design, Disney’s Talespin on NES still feels like it found a smart way to provide the show’s high-flying action and still add some cartoony personality to it to boot.