Skip to content 
We were happy to see The Disney Afternoon Collection get a physical release since it first came out on consoles back in 2017. The original collection contained six classic Disney titles from the NES: Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, DuckTales, DuckTales 2, TaleSpin, and Darkwing Duck. The new physical release on Switch includes two new additions to the lineup: the SNES games Goof Troop and Bonkers. This brings the total number of titles in The Disney Afternoon Collection to eight, which makes it great value.
In addition to the main games being brilliantly emulated by retro specialists Digital Eclipse, each game has plenty of extras, including behind-the-scenes materials, archival content from the Disney vaults, and original soundtracks for all eight games. It isn’t just a great selection of digital content that makes the package enticing for retro fans; the Switch box also has a few physical bonuses in the form of some milkcaps, which are very 90s retro, a sticker sheet, and a couple of collector’s cards for the games.
The Disney Afternoon Collection also has some quality-of-life updates to the original games and a number of additional features. The rewind feature lets you correct missed jumps and other mistakes if you are looking for a casual game session, and the save feature lets you mark your progress to come back to at another time. You can also test your speedrun skills in the NES games that have a boss rush and time attack modes, each with online leaderboards.
Well, with all the details of the package and its extras out of the way, I guess we’d better get on with playing the actual games. We tried all eight games for about half an hour each, making sure to see at least a few levels and some bosses. We tried out the save and rewind features that work well and were pleased with the minimal input lag on the emulation controls. The Disney Afternoon Collection is well put together, and although the games didn’t always run 100% smoothly, it would be nitpicking to say Digital Eclipse hasn’t done an excellent job preserving these classics.
You can change controls for the games as well to get them as close as possible to the original layout. That said, we found most of the controls had been mapped out well, and considering most of the games only use two buttons most of the time, you don’t need to mess about with them. The Disney Afternoon Collection feels like a perfect fit for the Switch as well, given its portability and the fact that it has become many gamers’ go-to retro console.
Overall, The Disney Afternoon Collection will make a fine addition to any retro gamer’s collection, especially if they also have other retro collections on the Switch. It isn’t perfect, with the odd emulation issue, but nothing that spoils the experience. The inclusion of the gallery, highlighting the game’s releases and histories, is brilliant, and we did find ourselves tapping our feet along to the music player soundtracks when we had a whizz through those. A brilliant collection of classic Disney titles that will please retro fans.
