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Much like that one Amazing Spider-Man game that never made it to the West, Disney's very own Donald Duck found his way exclusively onto the Japanese Super Famicom with Donald Duck no Mahō no Bōshi - or simply put in plain ol' English, Donald Duck & The Magical Hat.

Released in August 1995 by Epoch, the game saw the player controlling Donald on his quest to buy a hat for Daisy's birthday by the most obvious means: Hard, honest labour. You start the game by picking one of four odd jobs - including window washing or mail delivery - until you get those three, vital Benjamins to purchase said headgear.

That would have been a rather original video game pitch on its own, but of course the hat has already been sold by the time our duck hero arrives at the store, so Donald agrees to help a mysterious old man get rid of some ghosts by the clock-tower. He eventually discovers the old man is none other than (spoilers!) a magical hat himself, King of a land of magic where Donald finds himself soon afterwards and where the proper adventure begins - complete with all-new magical hat powers. As a neat aside, using Epoch's extremely popular Barcode Battle Reader you can unlock extra exclusive content.

The game was sadly never released in the West, a fate that also befell Capcom's lovely Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey & Donald - a no-show on our side of the planet until its eventual Game Boy Advance re-release. This is a real shame because the game looks lovely, as you can see from the footage below.


You can now play the whole game in English thanks to the hacking efforts of Gorgyrip, Freedman and Nagato. Grab the patch from here and use it with your cartridge on a RetroN 5 or Retro Freak.

The things we do for love.