The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Mickey's Magical Quest

A MAN's game, full of swearing and full frontal nudity.
Of course, this is not-so-common slang for "full of cuteness and bright graphics"

Metroid Prime 2 is taking me a LOT longer than I was expecting, so I figured I'd just buy myself some extra time by moving on for a short moment and finish this very short game in about an hour or so.

Back in the day, when Video Games were still made by real Video Game companies, and not by any old company that cares to jump on the bandwagon. Nobody cared about who did what, since there was no real money in it anyway, so everyone was happy.

Then, however, came the big bucks, Gaming became massively popular across the globe, and licenses became increasingly expensive, meaning that making a nice Disney-related game was too costly to still be unadulterated fun. Only Square-Enix has the money to work with those characters now it seems, and we have the Kingdom Hearts series as a thankful result.

Before all that however, it was almost customary for good old Capcom to handle all the Disney-related games. They released a whole SLEW of Disney games on NES, and another slew on SNES, and this, Mickey's Magical Quest was one of the more popular ones. It was rereleased on GBA a couple of years ago, along with its sequels, as a testament to how popular these games were. I think the only one to gain more critical acclaim was Capcom's Aladdin, which was ALSO rereleased on GBA.

And hell, I think I can safely say that, with the exception of the Kingdom Hearts series, Disney games used to be a lot more fun then than they are now. Same goes for the movies by the way.
The fact that Capcom is behind this means that you get colorful graphics, decent animation, an enjoyable soundtrack and just a fun game overall. Nothing to blow your socks off or anything, but more than enjoyable for any Platform Game fan out there.
It's not very interesting perhaps by modern days' standards, so the GBA version would get a slightly lower score, but back in the day this was a nice title to while away the time.

You play as Mickey Mouse, who, on a dark, but happy day goes outside to play Catch with his pals Donald and Goofy, whilst, presumably, smoking pot and shooting negro's. YEEHAW!
An unfortunately sissy throw by Goofy sends Pluto off a cliff or whatever, and it is up to Mickey to find his canine buddy back, and perhaps score some hoes on the side.
This is about the extent of the story, not including the FANTASTICALLY AWESOME ending where it turns out it was all a dream (oh, er, SPOILER!!!! Yes). And I'm sorry to say, I'm not even joking here. Best. Plottwist. Ever.

But crappy story aside, the game is just fun. You start out as Mickey in his regular, slightly exhibitionist outfit, and you can dispatch foes by jumping on their head, or grabbing blocks and throw those at them. Stunned enemies can also be used as weapons, so the realism factor has been accounted for as well.

Soon though, Mickey will earn other costumes, a Magician, who shoots magic light and can breathe underwater, a Firefighter, who can extinguish fire and use his mighty water spout to move stone blocks, and a Mountaineer, who can use his grappling hook to climb onto ledges and swing and whatnot.
Every "job", if you will, has its own merits and weaknesses, and they're actually pretty well balanced, believe it or not. There's six levels to plow through, with 4 rather short stages, and then it's over, so there's no real longevity here.
There are some hidden areas with extra coins and items to find or buy, but everything stays really simple.

The game has enough fun and appeal to just entertain until the untimely end, and then you'll probably never look at it again, unless you're a DIE HARD and want to try the Hard difficulty. What's there is fun though, and platform fans are likely to enjoy this. No frills, just a cutesy platformer with Capcom's solid experience behind it. A nice round 8.0 seems appropriate, but measured by the standards of that time of course. The GBA rerelease would score considerably lower.

posted by Ingen! @ 8:48 PM