The fine gents at SuperPod Game Club spent St. Patty's Day the only way they know how - by playing some video games! The game for March 2026 was Goof Troop, which was one of the first games designed by Resident Evil creator, Shinji Mikami! In fact, he worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Goof Troop, and Aladdin before finally working on Resident Evil. Wild, right?!
Goofy and his son Max go out to the ocean for a fishing trip with their neighbors, Pete and PJ. While fishing, a large pirate ship appears and abducts Pete and PJ, and begins travelling towards the pirates' stronghold on Spoonerville Island. Goofy is unable to stop the ship before it makes landfall, so he and Max decide to explore the island and rescue their friends.
Does Aaron know the theme song to Goof Troop word-for-word? Did Tony finally skip a month of Game Club? Will SumoKirby be able to get this game running? Answers to these questions and more in this month's edition of SuperPod Game Club.
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It's well documented that the 80s & 90s was this bizarre time for Disney where they were crawling their way back to relevance in every avenue possible. Touchstone Pictures was formed to open the avenue toward more mature productions while Disney-Disney can face forward with more family-friendly fare. And boy did they. Animated delights in a theater and your television! What a time!
This of course spread to this new fad called video games, and the quickest way to crank out a licensed title for anything was to just make a side scrolling platformer for whatever and call it a day. Capcom had enjoyed this relationship for quite awhile by this point, but Shinji Mikami (yes, THAT Shinji Mikami), looked at this cartoon where Goofy's a single dad living next to Pete as a car salesman and figured “puzzle action game. We got time for one of those!” And honestly? It works! The art, music, and gameplay are all what you figure from Super NES Capcom fare, but uh... BRING A FRIEND. I don't have any of those! So it can get borderline tedious solving these puzzles if you're me which means it probably IS tedious if you aren't.
Goof Troop is one in a long list of Disney/Capcom crossovers. Their partnership has created some eternal classics like DuckTales, Chip n Dale and TaleSpin. This game, based on the animated show of the same name, is famous for being designed by the one and only Shinji Mikami, who of course went on to direct the all-time classic P.N.03 and nothing else! The plot of this game is something. Max and Goofy are out fishing with their neighbors Pete and PJ when a pirate ship comes by and steals Pete and PJ. It’s up to Max and Goofy to save them and return to fishing - the real shit.
This game is known mainly for its co-op, so me and our pal e_x_i_t aka: Tony Baloney decided to play it. We didn’t expect the game to be so short because after 2 hours, we were rolling credits. I liked how quick it was for one. The graphics and sound were well done also. Gameplay wise, I thought it was alright. Goofy and Max have different stats and those come into play as this game is a top-down adventure game with light combat and heavy puzzles. Controls were responsive and it was overall a fun time, especially with a friend. I don’t think I’d recommend this game solo as I feel it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Regardless, I thought it was inoffensive fun so we got off light this month. Hopefully April isn’t a nightmare…
Goof Troop was an animated series that ran for 79 episodes from 1992-1993 on the Disney Afternoon and also received two sequel movies, aptly named “A Goofy Movie” in 1995, and a direct to video follow-up, “An Extremely Goofy Movie" in 2000. The series also received a video game adaptation by the one and only Capcom for the SNES, who made games for just about every Disney Afternoon show up to that point. In the game you play as Goofy and Max and must save your neighbors Pete and PJ who were captured by pirates while on a fishing trip. The gameplay consists of clearing enemies out from areas and solving simple block puzzles, although there are a few that can be pretty tricky. You will also need to pick up items to help you along the way, such as a grappling hook gun that can be used to grab items and get across certain areas, a candle to brighten up dark pathways, keys to unlock doors and the Bell which can be constantly rang to annoy your co-op buddy. Both of the characters play pretty much the same, the main difference is that Goofy is stronger and can take out most regular enemies with a single hit, while Max is weaker but can move a lot faster.
I had the pleasure of playing the game with Thrak of 3DO Experience and Thrak Ops fame via Retroarch and I think we both genuinely had a good time playing it. But by the end we were relieved when it was over. Not that Goof Troop is at all a bad game, it’s pretty short with only 5 levels and can be completed within 2 hours. The problem is that it lacked the kind of polish you’d expect from a developer like Capcom - the controls felt a bit janky at times, the hit detection was spotty and some of the level design was pretty questionable, specifically the areas with cheap deaths that can drain all of your lives in an instant. This isn’t too big of a problem in the 2 player mode, since as long as one person remains alive you pretty much have unlimited continues, but it can be down right frustrating in single player mode where you only have 3 continues and then it’s back to the start of the level, provided you remembered to write down the password.
As far as Capcom’s Disney games, it’s far from the best and a bit rough around the edges. It also felt like it could've easily just been a TaleSpin game with the whole pirate theme it had going on, but the series had long since ended by that point and releasing a new game for it in 1993 probably wouldn’t have made much sense. Anyway, Goof Troop is a solid enough co-op experience, but I probably wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to play it single player. It was recently re-released for the Disney Afternoon collection on Switch and naturally it lacks online co-op for some stupid as hell reason, because why would they add even the most basic of features to a game in the year of our lord 2026.
Any time the name “Shinji Mikami” pops up in a conversation about video games, it doesn’t take long for the titles of “Resident Evil” or “Devil May Cry” to shortly follow his mention if they didn’t already outright conjure the developer into the discussion themselves.
One piece of his work that doesn’t get as frequently cited as those aforementioned classics, however, is his role as Lead Game Designer for Disney’s Goof Troop—the video game adaptation of G. G. "Goofy" Goof’s journey of parenthood as a clumsy-ass widower tasked with raising an eight-year-old hellion. In the toy industry, there’s a term that manufacturers use when they work on the R&D of adapting a license around a toy—is this property that’s “toyetic”? This line of thought carries the same sort of principles towards Video Game design too. Despite the slapstick Disney-flavored hijinx, the premise squeezed out of Father-and-Son Goof and their misadventures with frenemy-turned-neighbor, Peg Leg Pete, and his respective family every other afternoon, the concept didn’t exactly translate to the typical platformer formula that Capcom had already produced with Goofy’s afternoon co-stars on the NES.
But did that stop madman Mikami from squeezing out an interesting and surprisingly fun experience out of an unconventional property like Disney’s Goof Troop? Nope. Dude came out with this Principal Skinner-ass revelation from the kitchen and said, “What if The Legend of Zelda: The Link to the Past and Sokoban had a dumpster baby?” Then he threw in some cooperative multiplayer for good measure and straight up cooked in the process.
Similar to its contemporaries, Capcom’s delivery of the Disney style guide is beautifully executed, expending every 16-Bit utility the platform can offer out of its 256-color palate and 8-Channel sound chip. The sprites and the miscellaneous environments of the pirate-infested isle setting the Goofs are marooned on, all pop with vibrant animation that stays true to the syndicated source material. In terms of gameplay, the ebb-and-flow of the action is pleasantly balanced between action sequences and puzzle areas, and becomes surprisingly complex in its problem-solving density the further you advance through the island. The main mechanic driving the overhead exploration is item management, as the hapless Dog duo will need to shuffle their two-slot capacity for knick-knacks between a multitude of tools to get them to the end of the stage. These tools include a grappling gun that works eerily similar to Zelda’s Hookshot, giving players the ability to retrieve items from long distances across the screen, stun enemies temporarily on contact, and even create one-time rope-bridges across specific chasms that exhaust your grappling gun out of your inventory. Other items include a Bell to attract enemies to your position for tactical maneuvering, planks to bridge crucial gaps, and shovels to dig up valuable items.
The biggest drawback to the experience is the uneven combat with the pirates, as the perspective between you and a mob of goons never seems to be consistent, resulting in a pirate landing a fluke attack on your respective Goof after seemingly closing an impossible gap in distance with their assault. The only means of defense the 90’s canines have at their disposal are various items that they can pick up and throw at their scurvy pursuers, like barrels or boxes, along with pivotal Sokoban blocks they can kick towards their foes with a one-way ticket to Video Game Hell attached to them. Now, the mechanics involved aren’t broken per se, their implementation is just a little clumsier in action than you’d expect from a development team based under Capcom’s roof.
Still, in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay and hours of unique replayability, this dynamic can offer a cooperative multiplayer session. Disney’s Goof Troop definitely has the juice to deliver yet another solid afternoon, be it from a TV Station, or in this case, a Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
I didn't play this month's SPGC game, but hear me out! I had the game downloaded and slapped it into the SD card for my Anbernic. I was ready to rock, fuck, suck, and roll. Unfortunately when I was inserting the SD card back into my Anbernic device, I must not have pushed it in all the way and it shot out, flying across my room and I guess into another dimension, because I cannot find that thing anywhere. I spent nearly 3 hours that day moving every single item in my room in a desperate attempt to search for this SD card. Guess what? I can't find it. That thing held my games and save files, so I guess RIP to my Legend of Dragoon playthrough that I was about 25 hours deep into.
I felt so defeated that I didn't even try to play it on my laptop or any other device. Sorry folks. I knew I should've just added the game remotely. UGHHHH.
Thank you for reading!
Come back next month and see what we have to say about April's game - April Ape Escape 2
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