I know what you’re thinking. “Mickey Mouse? Really, Pike? Really?”
Yes, really. This is Capcom platforming at its best. Basically they took a Mega Man game and replaced Mega Man with Mickey Mouse. It sounds lame, but the awesome gameplay is still there, regardless of whether your character is a robot or a rodent.
You play as the Mouse himself as you travel through various worlds to find and rescue Pluto. Yes, your ubiquitous Fire World and Ice World are here, but there’s also a climbing-mountain world and a magical forest world that I found to be unique and memorable. That magical forest world had great music, too:
True to form with Capcom, you get to don a variety of outfits that change your fighting style… in this case, you can have a Wizard suit, a Firefighter suit, or a Climbing outfit. Of these three, the climbing outfit is the most gimmicky, but the other two are great (albeit fairly similar to each other). You can change the outfits whenever you want, including mid-fight… it’s kind of like Fisher-Price’s My First Mega Man.
Combine this with solid controls, hidden item shops where you can buy upgrades, and giant rolling tomatoes, and you’ve got a winner, Disney license or not.
So yeah. At first glance you might think this game has “Generic kiddie platformer” written all over it but really, it’s solid and comes with some great things that make it unique. When Nintendo Power released its first list of “100 Greatest Nintendo Games” back in 1998 or whenever that was, this game was on the list. You know, alongside stuff like Chrono Trigger, Link to the Past, and Super Mario 64. Just sayin’.
P.S. yes, I have this game on Game Boy Advance. The final boss is hard.
I LOVED this game! In particular the climbing outfit because you could swing and grapple things. It was like Bionic Commando, that terrific NES game. I went YEARS longing for a similar grapple/swing mechanic and only recently did games start bringing that back. Definite fond childhood memory.
You know, I vaguely remember playing this I vaguely remember not being able to figure it out. It’s like I couldn’t figure out how to switch the outfits or something…I don’t remember, but I had totally forgotten about it until now. Maybe I will look it up.
thx Pike!