Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse
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User Review

Review by joseph_valencia
July 09, 2009

“Mickey Mania” is a potent combination of technology, imagination and tradition. In other words, it’s the Disney paradigm expressed in video game form. I don’t know if Walt would have a created a game like this, but I’m certain he would be proud, and awed, of its achievement. “Pong” wasn’t even a glint in Atari’s eye when the old master passed in 1966. Could he have imagined that children would one day interact with the sort of images his studio animated? That the drawings of his company’s own animators could become an element of a game, played on a screen? Such wonders, taken for granted these days, are what games like this and Sega’s “Aladdin” contributed to interactive entertainment in the days of the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.

This is no more and no less a journey through but a few of this icon’s greatest moments. We experience this ride in the form of a side-scrolling platforming game, a genre suitable to the antics of Mickey Mouse. If you reduced “Mania” to the barest of its elements, it wouldn’t sound very impressive: a game where you jump around and throw pebbles at things. The magic is that it thrusts us into the middle of Mickey cartoon, and credibly too. A game like “Kingdom Hearts II” can’t make us believe we’re walking around in a world like 1928’s “Steamboat Willie”, a short which provides a logical starting point for “Mania”. The illusion here, created with less processing power than the Playstation 2, is more convincing because the elements are digitized drawings animated by authentic Disney talent. Cel-shading can’t emulate personality.

The rest of the tour takes us through “The Mad Doctor”, “Moose Hunters”, “Lonesome Ghosts” and “Mickey and the Beanstalk” before finally dropping us off in 1990’s “The Prince and the Pauper”. The Mouse frolics across a cryptic chemical lab, a crumbling home, a land above the clouds, a subterranean cavern of minerals and spiders, a giant’s dinner table and a royal castle sheltered from the winter. He encounters such perils as a runaway trolley heading into a gauntlet of booby traps, a very territorial moose, flooded hallways and sauntering spooks, a tower being consumed by fire; weasels and, yes, a mad doctor. There’s more, but I believe that’s a pretty thorough picture of the kinds of wonders you can expect from “Mickey Mania”.

If there’s any shortcoming to this game, it’s that we don’t quite feel we get enough. We’re given a lot, but not to the fullest extent that this high concept can deliver. Mickey has an extensive, rich animated heritage, the surface of which is hardly scratched here. What about “The Gallopin’ Groucho”, “Plane Crazy”, “The Chain Gang” or “The Fire Fighters”? Any of these could make for great levels. Oh, this game certainly delivers more than the average platformer. It certainly has a great vision which is superbly realized. It certainly has personality, expressed in each hand-drawn frame of each character. You can tell that the people who made “Mickey Mania” had lots of fun in the development process. One can only imagine what this talent would have been capable of if liberated from their tight schedule.

Maybe the plan was to make a “Mickey Mania 2”? The programmers certainly don’t conceal the intention, imploring us “If you liked this game, buy it twice.” (One of many whimsical gags in the staff roll, another being a reverse credit and staffers nick-named “Sonic” and “Tails”.) Too much time has passed for a true sequel to be produced, but what if a game like this were to be realized today in high definition, with animation cels scanned at 720p? It’s depressing to think that Disney (the company) would sooner green light “Kingdom Hearts III” than undertake a project of such ambition. But why bother with ink and pencils when you can just use cel-shading on textured polygons?

Rating: 9/10

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