Mickey Mania

[drpepperfan]

Oh man, I had this as a kid. It's honestly a gorgeous game, absolutely beautiful, with so many wonderful touches like the black and white world of Steamboat Willie transforming into colour as you progress....

But I never finished it. Not once. I played this game frequently for months and months, and I just couldn't finish it. Thank god for this thread, as it reveals that I didn't just suck, it really was that impossibly hard.

FUCK THE SKELETONS.

[apachacha]

Oct 30, 2013 10:47:05 GMT -5 drpepperfan said:

Oh man, I had this as a kid. It's honestly a gorgeous game, absolutely beautiful, with so many wonderful touches like the black and white world of Steamboat Willie transforming into colour as you progress....

But I never finished it. Not once. I played this game frequently for months and months, and I just couldn't finish it. Thank god for this thread, as it reveals that I didn't just suck, it really was that impossibly hard.

FUCK THE SKELETONS.

I learned those guys' pattern eventually.

Was annoying but I did so.

Can I take it most people here don't respond to my derision at the Prince and the Pauper level because they never got that far ?

[Malev]

Oct 30, 2013 13:48:31 GMT -5 apachacha said:

Can I take it most people here don't respond to my derision at the Prince and the Pauper level because they never got that far ?

Having owned the Sega CD game, I believe a lot of the time I had to stage select to reach most of the P&P levels.


I'll probably post minor tinkering to remove the US PSN release mention and add a sentence about the Marble weapons.

[Ace Whatever]

I finished the Genesis version start to finish and yeah, those P&P levels were a pain in the ass. IIRC you couldn't actually kill the weasel guards by jumping on them on those swinging chandeliers took forever to get moving.

[-Mirthbound-]

I actually juuuuuust got a Japanese SFC copy of this because it had the Capcom logo on it (I thought it was another Capcom-made Disney game, boy was I wrong). I never knew until a week ago that Capcom published this in Japan. Although they did publish the Pinocchio game there too. This game just isn't very good on the SFC IMO. Heard there was a PSX and a Genesis version. Never saw either of those in person. Animation is awesome, but as said before, controls are very shoddy.

[Malev]

Here's the fixes to the article, highlighted in Bold in relation to their placement:

The gameplay closely resembles that of Sega's Illusion series of Disney titles, particularly from Castle of Illusion. Mickey's ways of dealing opposition is the tried-and-true platformer bop from above and from flinging marbles collected in the stage. What sets Mania apart is the more fluid sprite animation thanks in part with the talent of Walt Disney's own Florida-based animation studio. This smoothness and level of movement puts the motion and framework in line with Virgin Interactive's Aladdin and Shiny's Earthworm Jim, essentially "drawing" from the ink-and-paint style Mickey was birthed from.

Unfortunately, both sections have severe fog added to help visually show how close the dangerous threat is in relation with Mickey, but it's almost at Silent Hill / Turok level of pea soup impenetrable wall of cloud. The added hazards do make these sequences even more difficult to further push the Nintendo Hard factor of the game that much higher. In Spring of 2012, Europe and Australia's PSN store added Mickey's Wild Adventure to the download service, making it the cheapest and easiest route to obtain and play the game in those regions.

[TΛPETRVE]

It's a pretty game, but similarly to Capcom's Magical Quest series I always found it to be very sterile design-wise; it just never reaches the dense atmosphere of SEGA's World of Illusion, which almost feels like a product conceived in the glory days of Disney himself to me, whereas Mickey Mania as well as Capcom's efforts have more the touch of contemporary TV specials trying emulating the old style.

[Discoalucard]

Speaking of old Mickey Mouse games, I remember renting Fantasia for the Genesis because it got high marks in the magazine I subscribed to, VG&CE. I also remember it being quite bad. Tonight I dug out the cartridge, put it on and found out why - it was developed by a European company, Infogrames in this case, much like Mickey Mania was developed by Travelers Tales, instead of one of the Japanese development team. It definitely shows as far as weak mechanics and level design, though it is quite nice looking.

[TΛPETRVE]

Yeah, back in the early 90s European (and generally western) companies weren't exactly up to snuff when it came to console games. Many developed for home computers and we all know how many mediocre to downright terrible platformers and other arcade-style games were on the Amiga and consorts, the odd gems notwithstanding.

[Snarboo]

I wouldn't say European games weren't up to snuff or bad exactly, they were just different. If you come in expecting a Japanese style platformer or action game, you're going to be very confused and disappointed.

That said, they did love their cheap bullshit.

[bakudon]

I think many European (and American) action games usually had trouble with level design – when Japanese games usually had tightly designed and thought-out levels, in many western platformers the levels were just kinda thrown together, with little features or points of interest but often with blind jumps and stuff like that.

[TΛPETRVE]

Sadly the interesting titles from Europe as usual were overlooked in favour of the technically impressive or "edgy" ones; that is not a feat exclusive to the Call of Duty generation. Just look at Psygnosis: Shadow of the Beast was utter filth and yet it was successful as fuck (and granted, it definitely had atmosphere in abundance). Who on the other hand remembers Wiz 'n' Liz or Puggsy?

[Discoalucard]

Beyond just the typically haphazard level design, there are numerous other things that just feel off if you've played lots of Japanese platformers, particularly things like the viewpoint not following the characters correctly or not being smooth, or the priority of animation over snappy controls. Some games had these problems but still ended up being pretty okay - the Dave Perry games (Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, Aladdin, the Earthworm Jims) were decent, as were the later Turricans. But in general, the Japanese were generally just much better at producing platformers back in this era.

[Joseph Joestar]

Nov 4, 2013 10:39:30 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

Beyond just the typically haphazard level design, there are numerous other things that just feel off if you've played lots of Japanese platformers, particularly things like the viewpoint not following the characters correctly or not being smooth, or the priority of animation over snappy controls. Some games had these problems but still ended up being pretty okay - the Dave Perry games (Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, Aladdin, the Earthworm Jims) were decent, as were the later Turricans. But in general, the Japanese were generally just much better at producing platformers back in this era.

GameFan was really riding Dave Perry's junk the whole way.  They overhyped shit all the time but when it came to Shiny, damn...

[Weasel]

Puggsy was pretty impressive, I got to admit.