Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse (Super NES and Sega CD Review)

Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega CD
Released October 26, 1994
Developed by Traveller’s Tales
Published by Sony Imagesoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Mickey Mania released a month before Donkey Kong Country, but it’s cut from the same cloth. Donkey Kong Country was promising next generation rendered graphics on a 16-bit platform. Mickey Mania’s promise is a game where, for the first time, you’re playing an actual cartoon. Just pretend Rabbit Rampage didn’t happen (and that game isn’t very good anyway). This isn’t Dragon’s Lair where you’re doing button prompts. Oh no. You’re inside worlds that closely match the art style of six famous Mickey shorts: Steamboat Willie, The Mad Doctor, Moose Hunters, Lonesome Ghosts, Mickey and the Beanstalk, and The Prince and the Pauper. Some do a better job than others, but as far as matching the sprites go, yea, these look the part. Okay, so the Mad Doctor cartoon is black & white and the level in the game isn’t, but that’s no big deal. Do you know what’s REALLY remarkable? The Sega CD version isn’t a major graphical downgrade from the SNES version. David Jaffe confirmed the Genesis build was the “core” version that the SNES port was then built off of, so that makes some sense. Regardless, Mickey Mania is a seriously gorgeous game.

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The problem with Mickey Mania is the action has very little to do with the cartoons themselves. You fight enemies either by hopping on their heads or, more commonly, by throwing shiny gold rocks at them. Actual gags based around the cartoons are limited to the enemy sprites, but not necessarily their behavior. Some are closer to the source material than others. The skeletons (including the skeleton spiders), falling knives, and bats are all from the Mad Doctor short. But a lot of gags that would have lent themselves perfectly to video games are also missing, like a part where Mickey crawls through a tunnel with falling bricks that feels like it perfectly predicts the type of set piece you would expect in a video game nearly five decades before they were around.

I actually found myself giggling out how video game-like Mad Doctor is. It was made in 1933, mind you. Look at that! How did they miss putting that in the game? If that ain’t a perfect Mode 7 set piece, what is?

The game couldn’t do anything that complex. The most complicated it gets is, at the end of the second level, you have to create a bomb by pushing a beaker across a table and mixing three different chemicals, then place them over a Bunsen burner. Or maybe later on you have to push a flower pot under a water drip. That’s it. That’s as “interactive” as it gets, and stuff like that is extremely rare in Mickey Mania anyway. Everything impressive about the game is limited to the presentation. Strip that away and this would be a fairly simple platformer by this era’s standards. There’s no complex movement. There’s no double jumping or wall jumping. It’s just jump, push, and throw as you make your way from point A to point B. Hell, there’s rarely even pomp and circumstance when you meet your goals. Some of the cooler stages just sort of stop.

Lonesome Ghosts’ gag with the stairs actually isn’t even a gag from that cartoon, though I could have sworn it was. Come to think of it,

For example, the level based on Lonesome Ghosts has no climatic moment. In the cartoon, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey get covered in molasses and flour. When the ghosts go to torment them more, they get scared away by three stars of the short looking like ghosts. That’s the whole punchline for the episode. That’s not even hinted upon in the game. An even bigger offender is Mickey and the Beanstalk doesn’t have the giant at all, unless you’re playing the EU exclusive PlayStation build. For everyone else, he’s not even hinted at besides hopping around its buffet table, and his iconic “fe fi fo fum” line isn’t represented at all in the game. These things aren’t even in cutscenes. There really are no cutscenes. What’s the point of doing these cartoons if you leave out over half the gags and all the punchlines? The charm of “playing the cartoons” is lost when the levels don’t have the structure of the cartoons or specially the payoff to all the whimsical characters and settings they’re trying to invoke.

They didn’t even get a cutscene showing this. Hell, static screens would have been better than nothing. One of the biggest things that hurts Mickey Mania is a complete lack of pizazz.

Mickey Mania is actually a victim of the time period. The concept was great. The developers all had a proven pedigree. The heart was there. The technology simply wasn’t ready yet. This was a 2000s concept produced in the 90s. In another decade, they could have done a cel-shaded platformer with cutting edge animation that could directly mimic scenes from the shorts. In 1994, all you could do was give a generic platformer a series of facades that resemble those beloved Mickey Mouse cartoons. Now, having said that, the game is actually okay and holds up relatively well, but this is where I have to split the review apart. But, before I do, I want to say that I wouldn’t want a re-release of Mickey Mania, nor would I want a remaster that just beefs up the graphics. I’d prefer a remake that, at times, retains the core level design, but adds in context-sensitive actions like being able to turn Mickey/Donald/Goofy into ghosts. And yea, they should have had Mickey fight a giant for everyone and not ONLY in the PlayStation build. Is Mickey Mania the first game that gated stuff out from platform to platform to this degree? Not exactly a contribution to gaming to be celebrated.

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SPLIT DECISION: SUPER NES

Well, this is strange: I found out right before publication that EASY on the SNES is NORMAL on Sega CD. Huh? Seriously? I’ve never been so f*cking pissed off about a game’s adjustable difficulty in my life. Well, I’m mostly pissed at myself for not checking first. I just threw the game on to see if Mickey Mania blocks later levels on EASY. It doesn’t. So really, the only major difference between the two versions is collision detection. While it’s not perfect on the Sega CD, it’s MUCH closer to being sprite-accurate, whereas your box is provably much bigger than your character on the SNES. Take a look at the above slideshow, where I got Mickey on the same spot of the elevator and ducked. On the Sega CD build, I’m not taking damage, and on the SNES version, I am. On Sega CD, I have to get directly next to the skeleton for it to damage me while ducking. On the SNES, you literally cannot use your sprite to judge what’s safe and what’s not. It doesn’t match the Sega CD build, and hell, it doesn’t match the game’s objective reality of where the things damaging you are on the screen. This collision is historically awful.

See, even situated further over, it’s still lethal (the screen is faded because it’s literally fading to black), whereas I’m safe on the Sega CD port anywhere but next to it. But look at that sh*t. Our two sprites couldn’t be further apart, and I know they’re capable of better because this doesn’t happen on Sega CD.

Not only is the collision worse, but there’s just more of everything on the SNES. It first becomes noticeable in level two, when skeletons are introduced that, once defeated, shower the screen with their still-lethal bones. The ones on the SNES explode into ten bones on NORMAL. Even on HARD, Sega CD’s skeletons only burst in six, and the pattern they come down on is more reasonable to dodge. On the elevator part of that level, skeletons will perch on top of the carriage and self-destruct, raining bones down on players. The Sega CD’s bones have a pattern with an intuitive dodging area. The SNES bones cover the screen in a different, harder to judge pattern AND that’s before you factor-in that the collision is a lot less accurate. Consequently, dodging is never intuitive on the SNES, since there’s no way to logic-out safe buffers between you and what you’re trying to avoid. On Sega CD, ducking is fairly perfect and reliable. On the SNES, all the problems that happen when you’re standing carry over. Again, the Sega CD’s collision isn’t 100% flawless, but I never had to rewind the game just to figure out what exactly damaged me. On the SNES, I lost count of how many times I said “wait, I took a hit back there? FROM WHAT?”

The SNES is missing half the final boss fight too. This is the end of that game. There’s an entire different fight with Pete right before this on the Sega CD.

I assumed the SNES game was beefed-up to “rental-proof” it. That was a common practice during this era. Publishers were annoyed that a child could pay a couple bucks to rent a game and finish it in a single day. It’s either that, or stuff had to be toned-back on the Sega CD version to accommodate the less powerful hardware. Either way, I found the SNES game to be too unforgiving with the damage. Mickey Mouse is, and always has been, a children’s property, and it shouldn’t be subject to typical buffing of difficulty. I don’t mind the content that was cut. The missing section of the final boss fight with Pete is really just back-and-forth busy work, and the “The Band Concert” is little more than a glorified bonus mini-game that doesn’t feel remotely connected to the short that it’s named after. While most of the game is, more or less, identical to the Sega CD version, Mickey Mania on the SNES is too frustrating for its own good. Easy mode does help, but I think even children would get mad at taking damage from things that aren’t really touching you.
SNES Verdict: NO!

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SPLIT DECISION: SEGA CD

Fun fact: originally, I only chose the Sega CD version as the primary subject of this review because I read on the game’s Wikipedia page that a level based on the Band Concert was cut from the SNES port. It was one of my favorite Mickey Mouse shorts as a child. Then, I beat the Sega CD version the first time without finding it. Gosh darn it. I got it the second time around, and boy, was it a let-down. It really is just a glorified bonus stage where you jump up a series of floating boxes. It lasts maybe a minute. But, god bless it, because I actually had a lot of fun playing Mickey Mania on the Sega CD. There’s a LOT less cheap shots. There’s a LOT less projectiles that just fly in from off-screen. It’s just plain more enjoyable. There’s some pretty dang decent level design in this. Again, it never truly accomplishes the sensation of playing a cartoon. There’s just not enough interactive gags to do that. I’m sorry but you’re going to have to do a lot more than pushing a potted plant under a water drip. But, as a typical 90s mascot platformer? Mickey Mania ain’t half bad.

Another example of the Sega CD’s kinder, gentler nature: the Mad Doctor boss. On the SNES, he positively spams the screen with these bottles. They’re all over the screen, and thanks to the poor collision detection, knowing where is a “safe zone” and where isn’t is punishing trial and error that weirdly never feels consistent, either. That’s not the case at all in the Sega versions. The box isn’t accurate, but it’s much closer to your sprite. You can suss out where the damage is coming from.

I do wish the combat had been more than just throwing rocks or typical hop-‘n-bop action. What could have further sold the idea of “being inside the cartoons” was giving each level a unique weapon. For example, in the final stage, you’re fighting what looks to be the weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, only they’re wearing medieval cosplay. Wouldn’t it have been swell if Mickey had a sword to fight them? Or hell, if you want to keep the projectiles, why have generic rocks? Paint them as ink balls in Steamboat Willie, or crossbows in Prince and the Pauper. Everything involving immersion is limited to the background. Of course, that’s true of 99% of games from this era, but you can do little things to complement the facade, and Mickey Mania doesn’t. I feel bad for the designers because I know they had BIG plans that never made it off the drawing board thanks to an ironclad publishing deadline. Mickey Mania was mostly sold on having cutting-edge graphics, and that’s a risky business plan when you’re literally on the cusp of the next generation of consoles launching. If the Gaming Historian wanted to do a video on a famous game that could have been SO much better, this is it.

Oddly enough, the Moose chase doesn’t really benefit from Mode 7 as much as you’d think. The Sega CD version lasts longer than the SNES one and is the one and only part of the game that I felt was harder on Sega’s platforms than on Nintendo’s. But, both are still visually impressive.

I’ve never cared about audio/visual advantages, so having added voices or a full orchestral soundtrack wouldn’t have made the difference at all in my decision. Which is a good thing because we actually didn’t get the orchestral score working, and we’re not sure why. It worked for Power Rangers! The sound effects and voices were there. I don’t know why it was missing, but it sort of proves my point. Good graphics and a nice soundtrack are only nice to have if the game is fun to begin with. If Mickey Mania’s gameplay had been as punishing on Sega CD, my verdict would have been the same as the SNES version. Instead, the Sega CD’s more accurate collision detection allows me to more carefully examine the game’s other merits. I prefer Mickey Mania’s series of set-pieces to the type of zig-zaggy Disney platformer that Virgin Games was cranking out (see my review of their version of Aladdin). The levels in Mickey Mania never wear out their welcome, and there’s plenty of checkpoints. It’s also a game that benefits greatly from emulation tomfoolery. I had the children play the game this morning, and they all really enjoyed it. With Steamboat Willie recently in the news, they were all familiar with the short, and they were smiling ear-to-ear. That made this review worth it.

Weirdest difference between the two ports: on the SNES, I was constantly trying to jump off the ropes only to re-grab them as soon as I let go. I don’t remember this being an issue on Sega CD.

Okay, so maybe the combat doesn’t feel “true” to Mickey Mouse, and sometimes the enemies are too spongy, but I still enjoyed Mickey Mania as a platforming experience. It feels like a natural evolution of Castle of Illusion, even though the two games have no connection. While the set-pieces don’t feel as interactive as they should, the enemy sprites are top-notch and, yes, enemies are mostly fun to deal with. Mickey Mania might not be the most creative game, but as a slightly average, slightly pedestrian platformer with an amazing presentation, it’s still worth a look thirty years later. It might not feel like a cartoon, but the entire concept makes for a fun theme for a mascot platformer. I never got bored at any point during the two Sega CD runs I made, with the possible exception of the middle of Lonesome Ghosts. Otherwise, the stages are paced-out absolutely perfectly. Sure, I also never shook that feeling that a lot of ideas got cut for either time or hardware limitations. Mickey Mania was ten years ahead of its time, but this is one of those cases where the game is worse off for that.
Sega CD Verdict: YES!

This is the level select code. Just go to the sound test in the options menu, set the three effects to these, then hold LEFT on the exit until you hear a chime. On the SNES, it’s “Beanstalk 1” and “Extra Try”, then highlight EXIT and hold the L button for ten seconds.

And if you’re wondering where the PS1 version is, I watched this video and decided “why bother?”