Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

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.

What a douchebag!
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.

Meet EVERY boss.
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.

Two of the four forms of Mickey Mouse
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.

Hey! A little privacy here?
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.

And in the end, you just get eaten. Wait, why would I walk in there?
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.

Mega Man

Mega Man

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Consoles: Nintendo Entertainment System

We start off October with not just a classic title, but the title that started what would become a classic series with several spin-off series. Mega Man has over 90 titles in its library, from its Classic series to the X series, as well as the Zero series, the Battle Network series, the ZX series, the Star Force series, and the Legends series, the last of which was just recently announced to finally get a sequel after over a decade. Mega Man has starred in not just his own games, but also in several titles in the Versus series, and has shown up in one way or another in Onimusha Blade Warriors, Cannon Spike, SnK vs Capcom Card Fighters, Gem Fighters, Dead Rising, Boktai 2, and several others.

So what made Mega Man so big? Well, for those of you that have been living under a rock or just never cared about the series, I'll fill you in; the game is about two scientists, Dr. Light (though in the first game in the series he's called "Dr. Wright") and Dr. Wily, who create Mega Man, as well as six other robots. Cut Man, Elec Man, Guts Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, and Ice Man were all created to help mankind with demolition, logging, construction, electrical operations, and work in extreme heat or cold, until Dr. Wily turns against his partner. The scientist turns into a mad man, reprogramming the six robots to aid him in trying to rule the world. Light sends Mega Man to stop Wily and the Master Robots and to save mankind, and so on and so forth.

"Let's see how you do against... KUNG FU CUTMAN!"
But that doesn't really explain what made the game into the multi-series franchise that it is today. It brought in something new to the field at the time; once you defeat a Robot Master, you get to keep their power to use as your own. So if Mega Man were to beat Bomb Man, he'd have the power to throw bombs. If he were to beat Elec Man, he'd be able to shoot electrical shots in three directions. As if this new way to destroy your enemies weren't enough, each of the bosses had their own weakness against another Robot Master's power.

A word to the wise: if you haven't played many side-scrollers outside of Mario, you WILL get frustrated with this game. The difficulty of the games in the classic series is near legendary. These games aren't the hardest games made, but for a first timer, it certainly feels like it. And many of the games continue to get harder, including the newer Mega Man 9 and 10, each of which were made after the original design of the first games in the series.

Ugh, Yellow Devil is a bitch until you figure out his pattern...
As for this game in particular, my honest opinion is that it is challenging, but the powers you get from the Robot Masters are rarely worth it. Fire Man and Ice Man have similar elemental styled bullet attacks. Bomb Man's bombs take too long to explode. Cut Man's boomerangs don't do enough damage. And Guts Man is literally like the worst power of all time - he can throw chunks of wall or large blocks. But they rarely show up, and can simply be destroyed by Elec Man's power anyway. Elec Man literally has the best power in this game, and is the only thing more useful than the regular buster cannon.

Like many others, while this title is fun, and brings a beginning to the epic franchise that is Mega Man, later games in the series definitely perfected what this game started. The difficulty of this game (as well as many of them in the series) is high enough that once you finally conquer the game, you're proud of yourself. Recently I've beaten the first two Mega Man games, as well as 10 (which was my first time defeating ol' Doc Wily), and I assure you they were no easy task, especially the second one. We'll get into that later, though.

The PSP recently got the original game in a whole new style.
If you're interested in "story" or wanna be a Classic series perfectionist, start with the first game. If you're simply looking for a fun side-scroller with a high challenging difficulty, you might wanna start with one of the most famous 2D titles ever, Mega Man II.