Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Consoles: Super Nintendo
With Disney's Epic Mickey hitting shelves this November, it's safe to say Mickey got a good turn around. He's been in a lot of shitty games, many of which we don't remember or want to remember. However, Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse was an enjoyable 2D side-scrolling platformer during the 16-bit era, where it seemed little, possibly no, video game including Mickey Mouse or his Disney family could fail. It wasn't a remarkable game, but it was still enjoyable.
Let's start with the lame ass story - Mickey, Goofy, Donald (who you don't ever see except as a silhouette on the title screen), and Pluto all go to the park to play catch. Mickey sucks at it, so Pluto chases after the ball he let get away. Apparently leaving frame means a character gets lost, and after Goofy offers to help look, Mickey feels the Goofster may be too big of an incompetent fuck to do anything correctly and goes off to find his stupid-enough-to-get-lost-after-five-seconds dog.
In the first level, you meet a retarded looking wizard who tells you Pluto was kidnapped by--wait for it--Emperor Pete. His magic is apparently so strong that no one has ever been able to defeat it. Apparently, no one in this world has ever jumped, much less onto someone. Speaking of "this world," one moment the gang is playing in the park, the next Mickey is at the top of some enchanted treetops? Doesn't make much sense, but I guess it doesn't really need to.
Mickey has the ability to grab things and spin them. He can grab blocks and spin them into enemies, grab enemies and spin them into enemies, or, such as the case in the first level, grab fruit from the treetops' vines and spin it, causing the leaves to propeller upward, which Mickey can then grab again to reach heights he couldn't previously. It sounds dumb, but it's kinda neat. Grab an enemy once they're stunned and use him as a weapon. However, if you're holding them when they come to, you lose health, and the little bastard gets to parade about again.
Every boss in the game pretty much looks like Pete, with the exception of a bird boss later in the game. You find yourself fighting Pete-faced spiders, fire beasts, goblins, snakes, whatever. You get so sick of seeing them that you just wanna punch Pete in the face when you finally get to him. It's a bit absurdly overdone.
What really brings a neat aspect to the game is, starting in level 2, you're given a special suit that has a special ability. The first is a turban that turns Mickey into a magician; he can shoot a magical beam out of his fingertips and can fly on a magic carpet. The second suit he gets is a fire man's suit, which allows him to spray water from his hose, a very helpful power in the forest fire level. The last suit received is the climbing gear, not only making him look like Peter Pan or Robin Hood, but gives him all of his original abilities with the addition of a grappling hook. Switching back and forth between the outfits, while it freezes everything on screen as he does so, is interesting, and adds a few extra puzzles for each suit throughout the game.
When you finally get through it all and get to the end of Pete's Castle (which shows Mickey suddenly becoming a scared little bitch at the front gate), you meet Emperor Pete, one of the tallest incarnations of the fat fucker ever. It's a shame, though, because he's really quite easy for a final boss. Hit him in the face when his hands aren't raised. That's it. I had more trouble with the third level's mid-boss than against Emperor Pete.
I really enjoyed the game, but I did have a few gripes; first, it's that the game uses a cookie-cutter level design. In it's six levels, you have your forest level, your fire level, your air level (in the form of scaling a mountain, as well as in the first level), your ice level, and your evil last stage castle level. I'll forgive Mega Man for this - they can at least bullshit that a Robot Master caused ice or fire damage to an area they attacked, and you have to travel through it. But this stereotype of game levels is getting old. Even back then. The only levels it truly missed were the desert level and the water or ocean level.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!! ...like you fucking care, anyway...
The second complaint I had was its ending. It was a total fucking cop-out. He saves Pluto, and then wakes up in bed with Pluto licking his face. Donald, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE ENTIRE GAME, makes an appearance and tells these sleeping shitheads that they're gonna go play catch in the park and invites them along. You guessed it. It was a dream. A bullshit, shitty ending since Super Mario Bros. 2, I'm so sick of playing an entire game that was just a dream. I didn't save Pluto - I fucking helped Mickey WAKE UP FROM SLEEPING.
And that's it. Mickey wakes up in bed, Donald invites them to play catch, Mickey questions if he was dreaming, and then it shows the exact same animation from the title screen before panning up to the sky and delivering the credits. Nothing exciting, nothing fancy. Just Mickey in bed, and silhouettes in the park. God. Dammit.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the game. There's little perks here and there, like the level names being written in the classic Disney signature font (meaning all the D's looked like backwards G's), the art is well done as is the animation, and the game is fun to play. The water hose is interesting in the ice level, for example, and the magic carpet, while difficult to operate at first, is a fun little mechanic. In conclusion, the game is fun to play, just so long as you ignore the plot and don't mind playing the same levels you've played in nearly every other video game ever.
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