 One of the more inexplicable oddities of the Super Nintendo library is the game Donald Duck, No Mahono Boshi, or Donald Duck and the Magical Hat, made by SAS Sakata back in August 1995, and for some weird reason this game never left Japan. I guess one explanation why it never got localized that I can speculate is that 1995 was just too late for any publisher to invest that much into a Super Nintendo game, since a lot of folks were already focused on the next generation of consoles. I've talked about this game a couple times over the years and it's surprisingly good, better than I originally thought. And the thing is about games that stay in Japan, there's not always a whole lot of information out there, case in point with Donald Duck and the Magical Hat. The way this game starts is with a series of minigames, one has you racing around on a bicycle delivering mail while you're getting chased by dogs, another has you competing in a game show where you have to complete an obstacle course set to a time limit, one has you sneaking around a house to rescue a bird, and the other has you, uh, washing windows. The reason you have to do all this is so you can buy a hat for Daisy, and if you didn't know any better, you'd think this was the entire game, like maybe that's why it never came out to North America, because it's just a simple game for kids, but after you complete the four minigames, Donald Duck and the Magical Hat opens up as a regular old platformer, and it's pretty good. You get a health meter with three lives and three continues to get through five levels after the four minigames, and there is a password system, and you don't need to know Japanese for this one. Even the passwords are English friendly, although I should point out that there is an English patch available, made by GorgiRip, and there's a lot of story sequences here with some great looking graphics, so if you like what you see here, it's worth your time. Once you get past the minigames, you first have to clear ghosts out of a clock tower by luring them into these lights, then the game shows an overworld map and your mysterious friend reveals he's the King of the Magic Kingdom, and he's been cursed by none other than Pete, and you have to complete four more levels to get to him. It's completely unexpected and the game gives no hint at the beginning that it opens up like this, and it's not like I can read the manual since it's all in Japanese, so you'll have to forgive me for missing all this. The platforming levels kind of sort of feel like a game in the magical quest series, although you don't get the same power-ups instead. The King of the Magic Kingdom helps you with his magical hat and allows you to turn invisible so you can dodge enemies, and you also get a diving headbutt for an attack, and that's about it. The gameplay is really simple, nothing all that different from many other action platformers of its time. It's just a slightly above-average game that happens to look and sound really, really good. I do like this Mode 7 rotating level, and one of the levels is a race against a rabbit for a change of pace, and the final section before Pete does get a tiny bit challenging, which is nice. The gameplay may be limited and Donald's jump is a bit clunky, but the sprite animation and the backgrounds in this game are top-notch, and that's really what carries this game. The big hang-up is, the mini-games at the beginning are just kind of annoying, and the section where you deliver mail, your bike automatically rolls forward, and the town just loops over and over until you reach every house. But you've got dogs chasing you, cars that pop up out of nowhere. Yeah, this section looks great, but it's hard not to flail around all over the place. When you have to retrieve Grammar Duck's bird, you creep around, and again the sprite animation is great, but the tiniest little thing can wake up the dog, and when that happens, you have to start over. Sometimes I wonder if these were purposely made annoying because it's an excuse to show Donald throwing a temper tantrum, and I can't help but sit there and be like, yeah, I can relate, dude. But still, if you want to skip to the regular platforming stages, you can just enter a password and play the rest of the game. But yeah, I think I would still recommend playing Donald Duck in the Magical Hat. It has enough going for it that it's an above-average game, albeit a bit limited and kind of annoying at times. It's not as good as any of the Magical Quest games or the Illusion games on Genesis, but it's still a good time. The ending, after you beat Pete, is a surprising seven minutes long. It's kind of cool. Just don't be fooled like I was. If you want a regular platformer, then just use the password I showed earlier, and you can skip past all those. This game was never released outside of Japan, so this is another game you'll have to play any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.