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The Most Important Video Games of all Time (for me): Donald Duck's Playground


Some of my earliest vivid gaming memories were made while raiding the big boxes of floppy disks with pirated games on my uncle's Commodore 64. With no screenshots or cover art to check what I'd be playing before I would spend several minutes to load the game, this to me was always an exciting exploratory experience that was only rivaled one other time in history, when searching for hidden treasures by downloading entire romsets one by one through a dial-up connection in the early days of widespread emulation for classic gaming consoles.

I never saw this cover back then cause my uncle was a filthy pirate.

I already knew I was in for something special when I started loading "DONALD DUCK’S P.", since it was unmistakenly referring to one of my big childhood heroes. Well, I had no idea what the P was supposed to stand for, but my mind was yet innocent and I didn't suspect anything as shocking as you'd might brace yourself for today when typing it in an online search. (PLAYGROUND! The P is for playground!)

When the game boots up, it drops you as Donald on a road with shops on the left and jobs on the right. The latter represents a variety of opportunities to earn a few dimes. I'd call them mini games, but they're actually pretty good at simulating uninspiring rote jobs.

Trapped in between the prongs of commerce and labor.

There's a job at the railway company where he has to man the track switches to guide a train to the displayed destinations, which at first seems like a neat puzzle game but turns to routine very quickly cause the map never changes. At the toy store the task is to move around a ladder and carry toys to the matching spots on a shelf, which is only interrupted every 80 seconds when the Amquack Special passes and knocks all the toys off the shelf unless Donald flips a switch to shutter the shelf in time. (How can the store even operate at such a pace?)

Another job has him pick airport luggage from a conveyor belt and throw them into matching containers on the transporter that brings them to the plane. The most "fun" one has him helping out at a produce market, where various types of fruits and vegetables are thrown at him from a transporter and he has to catch them to put in the right boxes. Incidentally, it's also the worst payed one of all the jobs.

If you drop it, Donald will cuss you out.

Sadly, you never get to shop here.

But that doesn't really matter much, cause on the lowest difficulty level you don't have to work all that long to earn all the money you need. The only way to spend it is on a variety of playground toys a the shops run by Mickey, Minnie and Goofy. One thing I really like about this game is the tactile way money is spent and earnt. All the currency is divided into a variety of coins and bills, and you need to put the right amount on the counter yourself to buy stuff. (For some reason you also have to grab any change from the register yourself.)

Why is there even a clerk...

... when I have to do everything myself?

So what's it all for? When you cross the rail tracks at the end of the road (looking left and right first to check for incoming trains), you get to another screen where you find yourself in the feathers of one of Donald's nephews instead. Here you can rearrange all the toys you bought and "play" on them, which doesn't come down to much more than pressing the fire button to start playing and pressing it again to stop (with the exception of the nets and ladders, where you can climb around a bit).

The fruit of Donald's labors.

Even though there's really not much to Donald Duck's Playground - you can basically experience all the program has to offer in 15 minutes - I loved it as a kid. It was the first game I ever played that was not some kind of contest against human opponents or virtual foes, and even though I surely didn't think of it consciously at the time, in a way it showed me that games could be about anything, even if it's just working your plumage off to do something nice for your imaginary nephews. In a way it could be seen as a very early forbear of the modern cozy games trend. While the game is aimed at little kids, it's not exactly an edutainment title. The box presents it as a "game about change making", which is kinda cute and inspirational.

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