Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow! Unlikely Shirts, the Art of Ninjas, and Disney as You've Never Seen It!

Se ripercorro il river of time of my adolescence, permeated by the cheerful memories and dense afternoons spent tinkering so as not to lose the last life available, I can only bring to mind gems like Castle of Illusion for Sega or the dark and intriguing Darkwing Duck on NES. However, the title I want to talk to you about today has nothing to envy in those mentioned above: I am referring to Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow, known to us as Donald in Maui Mallard.

Flashback, 1995: MegaDrive and Super Nintendo battle each other on store shelves with shoot ’em ups, fighting games with hadouken-like vibes, and excellent platformers in which you jump, run in spinning mode, and the player is not spared the classic embarrassment of choice. Good times, right?

Maui Mallard was introduced into this cauldron of succulent titles by Disney’s department devoted to video game productions, Disney Interactive, with a cutting-edge desire to dare that, regrettably, we will hardly see again in the new millennium: after its debut on Sega, the title then landed in quick succession on Nintendo, PC and also on the Kyoto house’s handheld. But let’s return to our private detective with the features of Donald Duck, but who is not Donald Duck, an issue we will come back to.

Teatro dell’avventura main is the tropical island where the home idol, Shabuhm Shabuhm, which sounds more like the onomatopoeia of the ninja blows dealt by Maui (ninja? We’ll come back to that too, don’t be impatient!), has mysteriously vanished into thin air.

Maui Mallard will have to jump, shoot, dodge deadly bullets and sneaky attacks, and get through colorful levels designed in a truly inspired way by the developers: just think of the native village level, with the blue waterfalls in the background and an overall maniacal attention to detail, both graphic and sound.

Il risultato è una colonna sonora allegra e frenetica, che ben si sposa con l’anima platform del titolo e la componente action dettata dalla trasformazione all’occorrenza di Maui in una macchina da guerra ninja. Detective privato di giorno e combattente ninja di notte, Maui Mallard was conceived as an original character with his own lore, despite being the spitting image of Donald Duck, as you may have noticed. Why? Because initially the title was Donald in Maui Mallard (even in Italy the reference is to Donald Duck and not Maui) leveraging, of course, the strong media appeal of the grumpy duck we all know, even though it later became clear that the two characters were different and that Donald Duck was not playing the character of Maui, because the latter existed on his own.

Il gameplay of the title is mainly based on the dual playable mode that can be activated, both of which are necessary in order to advance from level to level: thanks to his training in the noble art of ninjutsu, our duck sheds his Magnum P.I.-style Hawaiian shirt and puts aside the long-range bug-shooting gun to don the guise of the ultimate cool warrior: as a ninja, Maui can jump higher and climb to otherwise unreachable spots, while with the aid of his Bo he can fight hand-to-hand with the numerous local enemies. 

The whole thing blindfolded, because you know, if you're a ninja you also have to be full of yourself and act tough, otherwise there’s no fun in it.

A title certainly worth (re)discovering, which will put your manual skills to the test and deserves to have its place of honor in your collection.