Click here to see the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2 cover
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Join Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers to thwart Fat Cat's evil attempt to control the city!
—Back-of-the-box spiel for the American release of the first game
Two Platform Game adaptations of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers were published by Capcom. Developed by the same team that worked on the DuckTales game (and also worked on the Mega Man series) for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the games were released in 1990 and 1994. Here Chip 'n Dale get through the levels by picking up and throwing things, including each other in Co-Op Multiplayer.
Both games were re-released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows (via Steam) as part of The Disney Afternoon Collection, which also includes both original DuckTales games, TaleSpin, and Darkwing Duck.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Villainy: DTZ, the shapeshifting alien from the episode "Dale Beside Himself," did try to get Dale stuck in space, but he wasn't really evil, he just preferred staying on Earth. In the game, he's a recurring mook working for Fat Cat.
- Amusement Park: In the second game, Fat Cat sets up shop in the control room at an amusement park, and in order to reach him, the Rescue Rangers must obtain three keys from the park's attractions: the Clock Tower, Future World, and Western World.
- Animals Not to Scale: Both variants. Aside from some bosses, every enemy in the game is roughly chipmunk-sized regardless of species, including cats, mechanical bulldogs, weasels, and, most bizarrely, rhinos. On the flip-side, Fat Cat is downright enormous in the first game, taking up most of the screen.
- Ascended Glitch: In the first game on rare occasions thrown blocks would fly in a zigzag. It became a chargeable attack in the sequel.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: In the second game, instead of fighting Fat Cat, you fight a gigantic robotic version of himself as the Final Boss.
- Big Boo's Haunt: In the second game, once Fat Cat opens the Urn of the Pharaoh, it unleashes ghosts that begin haunting the warehouse he's in. The following stage takes you through said warehouse, where you must contend with the ghosts, as well as dark rooms lit only by candles, some of which come to life and attack.
- Bonus Stage: Both games have a minigame that you play every time you clear a stage, for a chance to earn extra lives. The first game gives you just a few seconds to pick up boxes littered around the screen and take the prizes inside, while the second game gives you one shot to throw a red ball up at some targets that fly overhead, rewarding you lives if you hit one of them.
- Cartoon Bomb: Can be found in some stages and used as a weapon.
- Crate Expectations: The first game had crates as a primary means of defeating enemies (either by throwing them, or hiding inside and waiting for an enemy to trip over it). They came in two varieties — disposable wooden crates and stackable metal ones. All small enough for a chipmunk to lift.
- Creator Provincialism: In Zone A of the first game, there's ninja flying squirrels attacking you, despite the game taking place in the U.S. and having no relation with Japan other than the developers being Japanese themselves.
- Death Dealer: The boss Card Cat in the second game.
- Directionally Solid Platforms: In both games.
- Down the Drain: Both games feature their own sewer levels.
- Edible Ammunition: Apples serve as particularly heavy ballistics. They limit your jump height as long as you're holding them, and they can't be used to hide, but they have a massive hitbox.
- Eternal Engine:
- In the first game, Stage J serves as the final level. It takes place in Fat Cat's factory. Enemies include flies, rhino football players, weasel gangsters armed with plunger guns, and lizard gangsters who toss their hats. In addition, the level is filled with conveyor belts and axes, the latter of which feature variants that can be turned off with switches. The final boss is Fat Cat himself.
- The second game has two examples; the first is Future World, a section of Fat Cat's amusement park, where Wart, driving a crane with a wrecking ball, serves as the boss. The second is the final stage, which features hazards such as conveyor belts that can change direction when the switches are hit, electric barriers that can shock the player, and cannons that shoot green balls. The final boss is the Fat Cat Robot.
- Fastball Special: During co-op mode in the second game, you can pick up your partner and perform a charged throw to launch them at enemies like a chipmunk missile.
- Friendly Fireproof: Zig-zagged. While players can only stun one another in co-op mode by throwing objects, it's possible to indirectly harm your partner by tossing them into enemies.
- Gusty Glade: One level in the first game featured giant fans that blew you around.
- Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: In the first game, the levels are far more challenging than the rather simplistic boss fights. Even Fat Cat has a very basic pattern that makes him easy to deal with.
- Invincibility Power-Up: Certain power-up boxes in the first game contain Zipper, who will temporarily follow Chip and Dale when they release him. Not only are the chipmunks immune to getting damaged by enemies as long as Zipper is with them, but Zipper will also home in on enemies and defeat them on contact.
- Macro Zone: "Naturally tiny character for whom every zone is a Macro Zone" variety.
- The game has a rather odd scale, though. Some of the levels (particularly the ones where you interact with human-sized objects) make it look like the characters are much smaller than chipmunks, more to the scale of insects, such as Fat Cat's Casino, where the slot machines and tables appear human-sized.
- Mercy Invincibility
- Mine Cart Madness: In a western-themed level in the second game.
- Mobile Shrubbery: You can duck while carrying a box to hide from enemies. The presence of blinking chipmunk eyes on the box does not give away your presence, amazingly enough.
- 1-Up: In the first game, these come in the form of flashing stars that waft onto the screen once you've collected 100 flowers. In the second game, they're often placed in hard-to-reach spots.
- Ratchet Scrolling: Used for puzzles in some stages, such as finding a way to obtain a not so obviously accessible 1-up without letting it scroll off the screen.
- Rescue The Princess: The main plot of the first game is to rescue Gadget. This notably doesn't start till after you've beaten the first zone where the goal is to find a lost kitten (which it turns out was Fat Cat's way of distracting you), and the game goes on for three more zones after you rescue Gadget.
- Rhino Rampage: In the first game, rhino football players serve as enemies in Zones G and J. They charge at Chip and Dale and knock away any boxes in their path. While they are bigger than Chip and Dale, they're still very small for rhinos.
- Rise to the Challenge: In the second game, there's a level where you must outrun rising water from a sink to avoid drowning instantly.
- Ship Level: The ship stage from the second game.
- Shout-Out: In the first game, the first stage is based on the episode "Catteries Not Included", and the final stage is based on "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- Schrödinger's Gun: In the second game, the player faces a Wire Dilemma when defusing a bomb. Any choice turns out to be the right one, though one causes the screen to flash white with a boom, then revert back as Gadget says "Just kidding!"
- Skippable Boss: In the first game, entire levels can be ignored depending on what path the player chooses.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The refrigerator stage from the second game.
- Stationary Boss: In the first game, the bosses of Zones 0, G, and J do not move from their spots.
- Super Drowning Skills: All water, either standing or from faucets, hurts, with deep water counting as a Bottomless Pit.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: ...Except during the boss battle in the park stage of the first game, which takes place entirely underwater.
- Timed Mission: You've got 3 minutes to make it through the refrigerator stage in the second game before you're turned into a munk-cicle.
- Toy Time: The toy store level in the first game.
- The Unfought: Fat Cat in the second game. Instead of him fighting you directly like he did in the first game, he sics a mechanical version of himself as the Final Boss.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Subverted. The first level of the first game feels like an adaptation of the episode "Catteries Not Included," as it involves the Rangers setting out to find a girl's missing kitten, facing the very same robot dogs as enemies throughout it, and finding the trail leads to Professor Nimnul's lab. However, it turns out there was no missing kitten at all; it was all just a trap devised by Fat Cat to distract the Rangers and allow him to kidnap Gadget.
- Wicked Weasel:
- In the first game, weasels serve as enemies in Zone J. They are dressed like gangsters not unlike the Toon Patrol in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, fire plunger guns, and take two hits to kill.
- In the second game, a weasel pirate serves as the boss of Stage 3. He attacks by blowing out fireballs after drinking hot sauce.
- Wire Dilemma: In the second game, the player faces a Wire Dilemma when defusing a bomb.
- Xanatos Gambit: Fat Cat pulls one off at the very beginning of the first game. He devises a plan to lure Chip and Dale into a deadly trap. If they died anywhere along the way, then he'd finally be rid of a couple of his worst enemies, but even if they didn't, they'd be distracted long enough for Fat Cat's gang to capture Gadget, whose engineering skills he would then use for his own schemes.
