The Lucky Dime Caper Starring Donald Duck (Sega Master System & Sega Game Gear Review)

The Lucky Dime Caper Starring Donald Duck
Platform: Sega Game Gear & Sega Master System
Developed by Sega
First Released October, 1991 (Game Gear)
First Released December, 1991 (Master System)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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In case you didn’t know, in Europe (and later in Brazil), the Sega Master System got hundreds of new releases after it was discontinued in favor of the Genesis in America. While almost all of these titles were adapted from the Game Gear, which uses very similar hardware, it’s a misnomer that the games are simply ports of Game Gear games. They often have several changes somewhere, be it level design or mechanics or health meters or play control or enemy behavior or whole boss battles. It’s all of the above for The Lucky Dime Caper. Although these titles share the same name, the Game Gear version of Donald Duck’s first big solo video game that wasn’t co-opted by Snoopy is significantly stripped-down from the Master System release. Also this is probably the first “big” Master System release that didn’t come out in the United States.

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I should note that I played the Game Gear version first, and that I’ve previously played the Lucky Dime Caper. After one level of the Game Gear build, I thought to myself “I distinctly remember liking this more.” Which I did.. on the Sega Master System. On the Game Gear, Lucky Dime feels slower and eliminates a lot of the elements that break-up the platforming monotony. Swinging off vines? That’s not in the Game Gear version. A trippy auto-scrolling “run down a hill that becomes increasingly steeper” segment? That’s gone on the handheld version. Even the boss fights are cut-up. On the Sega Master System, at one point you fight two gigantic statues that are possessed by a spirit. On the Game Gear, it’s just one statue, with nothing really added to make up for it except for the fact that the whole game is nerfed.

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In addition to stereotypical “jump on enemies” combat, Lucky Dime has two weapons. In both games, you start with a hammer, and you can also pick up a frisbee. On the Game Gear, from the moment you get the frisbee, Lucky Dime Caper might as well start playing the end credits over the action because you just beat the game. You can throw it the length of the screen and take out most enemies and especially the bosses (who don’t damage you when they blink) without having to time when to attack them or wait for them to position themselves to be vulnerable. And, only on the Game Gear, even if you die you’ll still have the frisbee when you respawn. On the Master System, it’s totally different. There, when you take damage, you lose your weapon. The changes they went with are so bizarre that it makes the Game Gear title feel like an unfinished prototype. Also, I have to go ahead and say the last boss, be it Game Gear or Sega Master System, is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen.

Just hit the crystal ball six times. It doesn’t move and Elvira Duck or whatever her name is doesn’t exactly have the most difficult to dodge attacks.

I assume some elements from the Master System build were cut because of the smaller screen dimensions, while others were cut to avoid motion blur/ghosting problems. HOWEVER, many changes are just baffling. The Master System had the right idea about losing your weapon when taking damage. It adds incentive to not just run up to every obstacle, guns blazing. Especially at the risk of losing the frisbee, which I went long stretches of the SMS version without. However, that’s not why I disliked this. The nail in the coffin for me was the sluggish jumping physics and overly bland level design. The game just plays much cleaner on the Master System and it takes the level design in much more surprising directions. Sorry Game Gear version. Ya basic.
Verdict: NO! to the Game Gear port, but keep reading..

The SMS version has time limits to the levels. They frequently reset when you change rooms, so I never came close to timing-out. Also this thing basically drip feeds you extra lives. I’d have to be trying to play badly to game over.

Now then, the superior Sega Master System version is also too easy for different reasons. I would have never guessed the working title of this game was “DuckTales.” This was the Sega version of one of the biggest cake walks on the NES? Nope. Never a million years would I have imagined that. To this version of Lucky Dime’s credit, the item system here gives the game SOME stakes. The problem is that enemies drop items in crazy intervals, so you won’t really have to go without. The hammer isn’t that fun to use, but if you kill enough baddies, you’ll eventually get the overpowered frisbee and enough extra lives to assure Donald Duck will survive the heat death of the universe, rendering the whole experience a cinch. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. There’s some potentially cruel jumps near the end, and there’s one really annoying mechanic to movement/jumping. Take a look at Donald right here:

This is the typical Disney “teetering on the edge of a ledge, I’m so afraid” animation. Only, in this game, it’s got what I’ve termed a “movement tax” attached to it. If you’re not doing the “oh crap” animation, you can just press the opposite direction and start moving. But if you’re teeter-tottering on the edge, there’s a noticeable delay to turning around and starting to move. Just a half a second or so. Why does that matter? Oh, because of level design like this, where you have to shimmy left and right in the air to make sure you stick the landing.

And there’s level design like this, where you have to heel-toe your way through platforms.

You can’t see it but I was teetering on the edge before this.

And it’s not just turning around. It saps your ability to jump forward in the direction you’re already facing as well. The whole game is full of platforms and sometimes you might want to.. you know.. turn around or quickly leap from platform to platform. But quick reflexes are taken from you if you’re barely on a ledge and have to pay a movement tax. Which you’ll almost certainly have to pay if it’s a single character-length platform. Seriously, who was the brain trust who decided to add this to a platform game? I’d say that this is game breaking, but you get so many extra lives that it doesn’t really even matter all that much.

The enemies behave differently too. The top hat skeletons have to be “tempted” to expose themselves on the SMS. They’re generic baddies that are just there and easy to get rid of on the Game Gear.

What matters a lot more is that, despite this completely weird decision to have the lookie-ledge dance factor into movement, Lucky Dime is just better on the Master System. It has much more memorable set pieces, better boss fights, and even the movement.. yes, that thing I just complained so much about.. is significantly improved. Oh, another difference: the Game Gear version scatters items around, but on the SMS, everything is dropped by the enemies. And the stars aren’t your “life” like they are in the Game Gear version. Instead, if you get five of them, you become invincible. WHAT THE HELL? What, did they not want the sprites for the tiny little red diamonds that represented your hit points on Game Gear to go to waste when they did away with hit points on the Master System?

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Is it fun? Yea. Problematic as it is, and toothless as it is (seriously, I’m not exaggerating when I say enemies drop so many extra lives it’s almost patronizing), it’s one of those generic platform games that leans on the positive side. It’s nowhere near the same level as Castle of Illusion. This feels like a B tier Disney platformer. But, like, somewhere near the top of the top of the B tier. Not quite as good as Disney legends DuckTales or Rescue Rangers, but worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as them. You know when you do a run on sentence and you barely have any air in your lungs but you keep trying to talk anyway? Yea, that’s when you utter Lucky Dime.

What? I’ve done almost 20 Disney games in a row, folks. I’m running out of words over here.
Verdict: YES! to the Sega Master System port.