Five Disney games that should come to Xbox Gamepass
I say this as someone who owns pretty much every console I can afford to: Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is the greatest deal in all of gaming. It’s hard to imagine just how much value you are getting for just $15 a month and there are so many games to keep you busy with more coming every month that you could literally never run out of stuff to play.
That is not to say there’s no reason to own other consoles (exclusives obviously) or even buy games that are on Gamepass for other consoles (just about any indie game I’d play on Gamepass I’d rather play on Switch for the form factor and portability w/o needing an internet connection for cloud gaming but I can at least try it out on Gamepass and see if I like it enough to buy it), but it really is an insanely unbelievable service that I can’t recommend enough.
But above getting new games day one, relatively new games not far after launch, and giving indie games higher visibility, there is one other thing Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is great for: discovering old games! You can play a number of older Xbox 360 and PC games through Gamepass, so I thought it would be fun to list five Disney games that I think should come to the service.
I’d like these games to be on Gamepass for console and PC (and mobile as well) but just having them on the service might open up a whole new audience for said game. For this list, I did try to stick to games that are available in some modern form so if you read this article you can just go out and buy them if you are interested. I may in the future do more lists for games that are less available, Star Wars games, Marvel games, etc but at least this time it’s going to be something that seems more in the realm of plausibility.
#5. Tron 2.0
Let’s just get this out of the way. Tron is a bad movie. Influential? Absolutely. But it’s a bad movie. It spawned a lot of games, most of them very bad. One of them, however, was pretty damn good and it’s Tron 2.0. It looks cool, delivers on a lot of the promise Tron as a movie franchise has failed to do (Tron: Legacy is pretty but incredibly boring). A high-profile release on Gamepass could be a huge boon to the franchise, maybe even get more games made and maybe a good TV show for Disney Plus would be in the cards. Tron 2.0 is available on PC and often on sale for dirt cheap if you’d like to give it a try.
#4. Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon
This may seem like a theme is developing here, but it’s not. Just the first two entries on this list are ambitious theatrical failures that somehow still produced memorable games. Treasure Planet has its fans but it infamously was a hugely expensive bomb that arguably was the nail in the coffin for not just Disney 2D animation, but 2D animation as a whole as there really has only been a couple of attempts since and none have brought 2D theatrical animation back to the forefront.
Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon lets you be a goddamn space pirate with space pirate ship combat and it rules. Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon has no right to be as good as it is and much like the previous entry it’s available on PC, often very cheaply so check it out but I feel it would get a great boost on Gamepass and it might revitalize the IP itself and maybe make good on the potential there.
#3. Ducktales Remastered
You can play the original classic Ducktales in the great Disney Afternoon Collection, which would be a great add to Gamepass but I do slightly prefer this updated take on the classic with slightly tighter yet more forgiving gameplay and the wonderful voice acting of the original Ducktales cast. I also want this to be on Gamepass and be hugely popular so they make a modern Ducktales game based on the recent series but either way put this fantastic game on Gamepass but you can also buy it on Xbox and PC.
#2. Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
Thanks to the incredibly brilliant new shorts and his very first ride at a Disney theme park, Disney’s biggest mascot, Mickey Mouse, is arguably having relevance and a renaissance he hasn’t had for decades. Sure Mickey has been perpetually popular, but it’s been a long time since anything new has been done with the mouse that built the house.
It’s time we remembered that at one time Mickey Mouse was a huge star in the video game world as well. He had many great games in the 16-bit era and probably deserves a shot at coming back to claim some platforming glory. What better way to test the waters than with a really great remake of one of his greatest games on Gamepass?
That’s exactly what Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is; a tight remake of a classic platformer starring the most famous mouse in the world and it should be available on modern consoles in some form. It’s available on mobile platforms but not consoles, which is insane frankly.
#1. Disney Infinity: Gold Edition:
So I’ve gushed about how good Disney Infinity (I will get back to playing it sometime in the future and writing about it again) is, and while I would love for it to continue, that’s not the reason it’s on this list, nor is it the reason it’s number one. Firstly, while you totally can buy Disney Infinity for modern consoles, there’s no all-in-one version or even some kind of digital package available, and that’s kind of ridiculous. That means if you want to play it on a console you need to track down all the physical components to get the experience you can get on the PC Gold editions. That’s insane. Disney isn’t making money off that, just sell the Gold edition! Put it on Gamepass!
But the second and more important reason is that as much as the Gold editions of Disney Infinity offer the most complete package without all the useless plastic, they are incomplete. There are patches and entire sets and characters that weren’t included in the Gold editions which is also pretty ridiculous. If the Gold editions were brought to Gamepass, I would think they would patch in all that missing content and fixes and then you would truly have the ultimate version of Disney Infinity. That’s enough of a reason to bring it but I truly think it would be a huge thing to offer on Gamepass this version that you really can’t get anywhere else if it has all the patched-in content and all the physical content digitally included.
That’s all for today, I’ll definitely be back by next weekend so see ya real soon!
