Capcom freaking killed it on the NES (and SNES) with Disney's licensed properties. We've already seen what they could do with Aladdin, Rescue Rangers, and Mickey's Magical Quest, so their ability is clear. Now, though, I'd like to discuss perhaps their best—and my favorite—Disney-based game, based on my favorite Disney afternoon cartoon character: Darkwing Duck. Mild-mannered Drake Mallard is a faithful father during the day and a crime-fighting powerhouse at night! He and his sidekick, Launchpad McQuack (yes, from DuckTales), brave danger and daring to defeat the fowl criminals and villainous secret societies of St. Canard!

Even the boxart was awesome.

Darkwing Duck is known for its colorful characters—many inspired from the Batman franchise—and the game throws every popular character it can at you. The treacherous Steelbeak, leader of F.O.W.L., is your final opponent, but in between you'll face such series mainstays as Bushroot, the Liquidator, Megavolt, and others as boss characters. Many of the boss fights have a similar multi-level jumping about aspect to them, but all are fun, and it's just great to see your favorite Darkwing characters in a video game.

Drake can latch onto hook and some ceilings to avoid enemies and get higher in the environment.

Darkwing Duck almost completely apes another Capcom property, Mega Man. You choose which area of St. Canard to visit (in any order) after the first stage; you can upgrade Darkwing's gun; the platforming is fun and spot-on, but there is an added wrinkle to the standard formula: Darkwing can grab onto certain objects in the environment between jumps, like hooks. This gave Capcom the ability to create fun and sometimes quite challenging platforming scenarios, but also to hide special items out of the way. The game even features an enemy that's seemingly a re-skinned Sniper Joe enemy from the Mega Man games: he is often behind a cape (shield), but sometimes pops his gun out to fire at you.

Darkwing takes on two Sniper Joe-type enemies.

The graphics are great, as the standard for Capcom's NES library. All of the franchise characters are recognizable and unique. The music is also something to behold--again, par for the course for Capcom. When I was on an episode of Radio Trivia Podcast with Michael "TYP" Cole and this game was played, my brother thought it was a Mega Man game. Capcom definitely has a distinct sound to their platformers, and Darkwing Duck is no exception. Excellent through and through, Darkwing is one of those games I keep hoping we'll see re-released somehow, though I doubt it'll ever happen.

I sense a "Potent Quotable" Connectivity Jeopardy question here.