Disney Epic Mickey - Nintendo Wii

Epic Mickey Review

2010-11-29T22:00:00Z

Epic Mickey is Junction Point’s thank you letter to Walt Disney. The life’s work of this legendary creator is on display throughout the game’s museum-like worlds. As Mickey’s adventure unfolds, he bounds through the black and white cartoons that put both him and Walt on the map, explores Disneyland’s most recognizable landmarks, and even takes a second to gaze wide-eyed at a bronze statue of Walt.

As a tribute, Epic Mickey hits most of the right notes. After soaking up the nostalgic sights and sounds, I tracked down and watched old Mickey cartoons. Thanks to this game, I’ve developed an appreciation for Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit. For those of you not up to speed on Disney trivia, Oswald is the first character created by Walt. Due to copyright issues, he was shelved and forgotten until his revival in Epic Mickey.

Watching Mickey and Oswald interact is one of the game’s most surprising allures. Mickey is mischievous, yet ultimately innocent. Oswald is the exact opposite. He’s bullheaded, and most of his dialogue expresses a harsh cynicism. Though they only share the screen mostly toward the end of the adventure, it’s worth the journey for Disney devotees.

The game begins with Mickey sneaking into a wizard’s workshop and accidentally spilling paint thinner on a miniature world. As the thinner spreads, Mickey is pulled into this peculiar land. He sees that it has been turned into a wasteland, sapped of its life and color. After spending a few minutes here, Mickey realizes that he’s standing in a twisted version of Walt’s greatest creation, the Magic Kingdom. The residents of Main Street are miserable, the rides in Tomorrowland are malfunctioning, and Mickey’s accident is to blame. He has to clean up the mess, and the task won’t be easy. The thinner has taken on physical form, and continues to corrupt the land.

Epic Mickey clings tightly to one cool gameplay gimmick – Mickey’s ability to apply paint and thinner to the environment. Channeling a little magic like he did in Fantasia, Mickey wields a magic brush that can spray mighty streams of both paint and thinner. Paint revitalizes objects. Thinner removes them from the world. With one flick of his wrist, Mickey can transform a dilapidated house on the verge of collapse into a pristine work of art that shines with life. He will also be forced to temporarily remove objects from the world to gain access to areas that will help with the repair. For instance, spraying thinner on a rooftop will give him access the interior of the building. When his task is completed, he can restore the building with a blast of paint.

Junction Point uses this paint and thinner mechanic to create a variety of clever puzzles and combat scenarios. Objectives are rarely clearly telegraphed, which leads to paint and thinner being tossed around liberally. The hunt for solutions is the heart of Epic Mickey’s gameplay. One spray of thinner could reveal a secret area, and a blast of paint could reanimate a machine that changes the complexity of the entire level.

While combat encounters are few in number, most of the foes Mickey squares off against demand different attack strategies. Blotlings, creatures infected and/or created by Mickey’s thinner disaster, melt into a puddle if you pour thinner on them or become docile if you splatter them with excessive amounts of paint. Beetleworx enemies require thinner to expose their weakness, but can only be finished off with a spin attack by Mickey. Some enemies roll at you, forcing Mickey to leap into the air, and quickly spin around to establish another steady stream of thinner. No matter what creature I was squaring off against, the battles proved to be exciting tests of skill and precision.

All of this spray functionality is handled beautifully on the Wii remote – just aim and shoot. Fans of Super Mario Sunshine should feel right at home.

While offering exciting propositions for both combat and exploration, the entire experience is plagued by an uncooperative camera. As Mickey strafes around an enemy, the camera could catch on a wall, causing it to lose frame of the action, or freak out to the point that it’s impossible to gauge what is going on. The platforming segments, which send Mickey up perilous towers and across moving contraptions, are marred by the camera tracking, sometimes locking in a position that blinds you for the next jump. The camera can be realigned and the player can also zoom into first person, but sometimes the game just won’t let you alter the angle. Frustration abounds in almost every world. This is a shame, as the worlds are teeming with well-hidden secrets, such as body parts to construct bizarro versions of Donald, Goofy, and Daisy. With the camera working against me, I often felt the secret wasn’t worth the effort. Death often means you have to start an entire level over again.

As much as I loved the artistry in the worlds and the general vibe of the game, many of the missions Mickey is sent on are the very definition of mundane. Miserable talk-intensive fetch quests periodically rear their ugly heads, and challenges like “shoot the glowy bits on seven passive thinner tentacles” do little to get the blood pumping. As imaginative as the worlds are, the quests feel tacked on, and sometimes come across as time sinks to extend the length of the adventure. The end result is a game that offers fun gameplay mechanics that are sapped of life due to the mind-numbingly boring nature of the quests.

The power to restore or destroy directly affects the land and slivers of the story. Within almost every mission, Mickey's actions can have a positive or negative effect on the kingdom. Both choices bring different results, much in the same vein as the Fable series. If Mickey is heroic in his crusade, his physical appearance becomes that of a stalwart knight. If he does everything he can to darken the world, the thinner corrupts his body to the point that the color from his skin drips off of him like a leaky faucet.

Unfortunately, most of the choices don’t hold much emotional resonance. This is largely due to the limited amount of time given to the characters and world. Sorry, cow lady, I know I ruined your garden, but you look just like everyone else in this world, and your five word plea wasn’t enough to convince me otherwise.

I got a kick out of the side-scrolling levels, which turn Mickey’s oldest and most memorable cartoons into fun (albeit challenge-free) platforming sequences, but getting to them meant slogging through the larger worlds. Epic Mickey goes out of its way to show gamers Walt Disney’s body of work, but rarely fires on a level that turns this beloved content into exciting gameplay.

10 Things You Should Know About Epic Mickey

2010-11-20T00:50:00Z

Disney Epic Mickey is only a few weeks away from release, and it's time to get equipped with the biggest features that shape the upcoming Wii-exclusive. We've gathered together ten central ideas that lie at the core of the game. Put on your mouse ears, and dive in.

Oswald
Did you know Walt Disney created another little animal hero long before he dreamed up Mickey Mouse? Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Walt Disney's first cartoon superstar, but few remember the character in the wake of Mickey's great success. Epic Mickey is the first time these two characters are together in an adventure.

Side-Scrolling In Style
Many of Mickey's classic cartoons are incorporated into Epic Mickey as side-scrolling mini-levels that connect the game's larger 3D worlds. These stages almost come across as a love letter to Mickey Mouse and his creator Walt Disney. Of the cartoons featured, you'll run into stylish side-scrolling recreations of Steamboat Willie, The Mad Doctor, and many others. Along with E-Tickets, you'll find a cartoon reel hidden in each of these levels.

E-Tickets Can Buy You Goods
Anyone who went to Disneyland before 1982 will recall E-tickets. The coveted tickets offered access to the best attractions in the park. In the Wasteland world of Epic Mickey, E-tickets are a collectible resource that can be used to purchase any number of things around the world. There are shops in the main hub town of Mean Streets. There you'll be able to increase your maximum health or buy other collectibles that you missed along the way through the action levels. Alternately, E-tickets can buy your way through missions that are too time-consuming or challenging. Many missions offer a "buy-out" from an NPC in the world that lets you bypass the challenge and keep going with the game.

Are You Good Or Evil?
More than almost any character action/platform game that has come before it, Epic Mickey offers the ability to shape the experience to your style of play. Do you want to save those cute little gremlins? Or do you want to catapult them into the sky in exchange for some money? Paint in the world to fill it with color and life, or drain it with thinner? Missions offer definite good and bad paths. More than that, being a good guy is usually a lot harder than taking the easy way out. Want to play the game on "Hard" mode? Try being a nice guy the whole way through.

Know Your Enemy
Blotlings are made of paint and thinner and can be fought with those same liquids. If you pour excessive amounts of thinner on a blotling, it will melt and die. if you pour on the paint, the creature will become friendly, and will no longer engage you. Another enemy type called the beetleworx are animatronics, much like the robots found in many of Disneyland's rides. To defeat these foes, you'll need to use thinner to melt away their armor, then use a spin attack to damage them.

Unlockable Cartoons
One of the coolest extras we've seen in a long time is the ability to unlock classic, often rare, Disney cartoons to watch in their entirety. Lots of people have seen the Steamboat Willie cartoon that saw the premiere of Mickey Mouse. But have you seen any of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's incredibly rare early films? They're here for you to check out, offering a glimpse of why Disney animation was the gold standard throughout the 20th century.

The Entire World is a Warped Version of Disneyland
Keen eyed observers will note that the Wasteland through which Mickey must travel is almost entirely a twisted recreation of Disneyland. From It's a Small World to Splash Mountain to Sleeping Beauty's Castle, the Wasteland is filled with homages to the original Disney theme park. Layered on top of the park environments is a constant flow of cartoon iconography and Disney memorabilia. Taken together, the game is a virtual smorgasbord for Disney fans hungry to see their favorite characters and places in a new light.

Paint & Thinner
If there's one thing that sets the gameplay of Epic Mickey apart from other games in the genre, it's the paint and thinner element of gameplay. The magic paint brush that Mickey wields lets him be good or bad, as we mentioned before. But it's also a fundamental tool for moving through the world and interacting with its characters. A bridge may cross to a far away platform, but you'll need to paint it in before you can progress. A gear may keep a platform spinning, but you can thin it out to make the platform a stable place onto which you may jump. By aiming the Wii remote at the screen, players are able to change entire elements of the game world, or attack enemies that stand in their way.

Reconstructing Mickey's Friends
As Mickey explores a twisted version of Disneyland, he'll run into dismantled animatronic versions of his friends, Donald, Goofy, and Daisy. When Mickey first runs into them, they are all just heads on pedestals. One of his quests is to find their body parts, which are hidden within the game's many worlds.

The World
Epic Mickey's world is divided into hub towns and theme-based environments consisting of multiple zones. In the towns, Mickey can enter shops, converse with village folk, and take on a number of optional side quests. The theme-based environments will be recognizable to Disney fans, and many of the sights and sounds on display are inspired by the parks rides and iconic characters.

An Interview With Warren Spector

2009-10-23T23:33:00Z

Upon our visit to Junction Point to learn about Epic Mickey, we had the opportunity to sit down for an extended conversation with Warren Spector. We tapped his expertise on Disney and Mickey Mouse, asked him all about his new game, found out what he thinks it will take to revitalize the character of Mickey Mouse, why he chose the Wii, and even what other Disney dream project he’d like to tackle. If you’ve been following our coverage of the game, you’ll recognize some of his words from other articles. To get the full scoop, read ahead for our complete interview.

GI: What do you think the significance of the Mickey Mouse character is in relation to film history and animation history?

Warren Spector: Mickey is critical to both animation history and film history. He was absolutely and demonstrably the most recognizable and popular film star in the world for about three or four years in the early ‘30s. He was huge at the box office. It’s not an overstatement to say that he gave hope to an entire generation of people living through the Depression. He was a little ray of sunshine. He seems kind of sweet and innocent, and his films don’t seem as anarchic and crazy and maybe relevant as today’s films do, but at the time it was exactly what the country needed, what the world needed. So he was there to provide it.

Just in terms of animation, he also represents a push for quality and for characterization and for story over gags – that was entirely new to cartoons. No one had ever really done that before. It’s actually not that completely accurate to say that he was the first sound cartoon character, but he’s the one that got in peoples’ heads first, and that means he’s the most important star of the talking pictures. You can argue that in 1928 when Steamboat Willie came out as the first sound synched cartoon that people were really aware of, Al Jolson was making the Singing Fool, which was a crummy old silent film style – and I mean, I love Al Jolson, and I love that movie, and there are probably five fans out there that are going to be offended now, but – he showed that sound film could be an art form in the same way that silent films were. Huge, hugely important.

GI: What made those early Disney cartoons stand apart from the crowd? Animation was growing big at that point in general. What made Disney’s stuff work and take on that status that you’re talking about?

WS: The thing that I think set Disney apart more than anything else was his unwavering commitment to quality. He would not cheap out on anything. Animation at that point was this little backwater. No one cared about it. There were Felix the Cat cartoons, and some others. There were some cartoon characters who had some popularity back then, but they were really quickly thrown together, kind of haphazardly, slapdash things that nobody cared about. Disney really paid attention. He focused on quality.

He lost Oswald because he refused to compromise on budget. That was the fundamental issue. He wanted more money to make better cartoons, and his distributor wouldn’t give it to him. So they fired him, found somebody who would do it cheaper, and guess what? Nobody remembers Oswald after Disney stopped doing him. So unwavering commitment to quality, that’s number one.

Number two was he moved beyond just gag, gag, gag, which is what the earlier cartoon shorts were. It’s not that Disney skimped on the gags. I mean, he paid his animators by the gag. It’s not like he wasn’t thinking about that stuff, but he really brought a level of character and story to short cartoons that no one had ever seen.

GI: How do you see the character of Mickey Mouse having changed over the years? Were there particular eras that you identify in the character’s life?

WS: Yeah, there were definitely distinct periods in Mickey’s life. There’s a wonderful poster of all of the different major eras of Mickey. We’ve got it up on the wall, actually. I don’t know who owns the rights to that. It’s a great poster.

There’s that early phase where he was a rat. There’s just no two ways about it. He was a guy who smoked and drank and shot guns and skewered people with swords and threw Minnie Mouse out of a plane when she wouldn’t kiss him and abused farm animals. He was a badly behaved little guy. As he became more popular, I think Walt started saying, “Let’s make this guy more realistic. Oh, we don’t want to do things with this guy that the world isn’t going to like,” so they started taming him and taking different parts of his personality. I’m about to get really pretentious – he was like this fully individuated ego. Jung would have loved Mickey Mouse.

But at some point they fractured his personality. They took his mischievousness and his anger and need for revenge and gave it to Donald. At some point they took his naïve simplicity and gave it to Goofy. They took his loyalty and infinite affection and gave it to Pluto, of all things. They took his character and just shattered it, and all of a sudden he’s kind of a straight man for the gang. So there’s that middle period where they kind of lost some of what made him special. He stopped being Douglas Fairbanks the adventurer or even Charlie Chaplin the humor guy, and they turned him into just the straight guy.

GI: When was this period? When do you see this change first happening?

WS: I think you start to see it by the early ‘30s. By 1932, that was well under way. He was created in 1928, and he had a three or four year run of being this amazing character that I think even if kids watched that cartoon, if they could stand to watch something in black-and-white, I think they’d really get a kick out of it and be amazed at how badly behaved Mickey was.

But by the early ‘30s, though he was no less popular – I mean, he was absolutely beloved in ’32, ’33; that was his peak right there – but by that point he had kind of become the straight man. And then toward the end of the ‘30s, it looks to me from the outside that they were trying to bring back some of the adventurous spirit that he had. By the ‘40s, they were doing things like Brave Little Tailor and that kind of stuff. They tried to get it back, but they just couldn’t take any risks with the guy. He was so successful and so popular that taking any risks with him risked the entire future of the company. Who’d be crazy enough to do that? Wait, other than me. No one’s nutty enough to do that.

By the ‘40s, he was already kind of on the wane. If you look at it, Donald Duck was way more successful by the ‘40s. There were lots more Donald cartoons. By the ‘40s, Mickey was appearing as a secondary character in Pluto cartoons for the most part. Goofy and Donald were doing their solo thing. I think in 1952 they did “The Simple Life.” That was Mickey’s last cartoon for about 35 years. It was kind of over. He was an icon on a watch, on a t-shirt.

There have been attempts to bring him back. “Run-Away Brain” in 1995 – I loved that cartoon. I don’t understand why people at Disney don’t like it. I think it’s brilliant. It’s a fantastic cartoon. But other than that, there’s “The Three Musketeers.” I dunno. “The Christmas Carol.” Eh. They didn’t know what to do with him anymore. He’s kind of been laying fallow, which is a great opportunity for us.

Rise of an Icon: A Pictorial History of Mickey Mouse

2009-10-09T20:46:00Z

Most of the gaming generation grew up with Disney’s most famous character. Whether through viewing old cartoons, carrying a lunchbox with the iconic mouse ears, or playing one of his many video game incarnations, it’s hard to slip through childhood without some knowledge of Mickey Mouse. However, Mickey’s legacy extends several generations before the gaming world rose to prominence; the character has been an enduring cultural icon since the early 20th century.

In the coming days, Game Informer readers will learn all there is to know about Mickey’s triumphant return to video games. Disney Epic Mickey is firmly entrenched in the rich history of the character, so we thought it appropriate to look back at the long history of the Mickey’s life, both as a reminder of his presence in our culture over the years, and as a sneak peek at some of the characters and settings that show up in Warren Spector and Junction Point’s dramatic reinvention. To help illustrate our trip back in time, we went straight to the Disney Archives and Photo Library to find rarely seen photos, sketches, animation stills, and other illustrations from Mickey’s history. In addition, we asked Warren Spector, a Disney expert himself, to share his thoughts on the character.

Birth of an Icon

Mickey might never have been born were it not for another character that emerged from the early work of Walt Disney and his animation studio: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. If you’ve never heard of him, you’re not alone. Few remember Walt Disney’s original cartoon star. Oswald appeared in several silent black and white films in the 1920s, only some of which have survived to the present day. This rabbit, not the now-famous mouse, might have taken the road to stardom were it not for a dispute between Walt Disney and his film financier.

In the cold winter of 1928, Walt Disney was in New York trying to get a small raise from his distributor, Charles Mintz, so that the Oswald cartoons could continue production. Disney hoped to increase the price per cartoon from $2,250 to $2,500. Mintz would have none of it – instead chopping the production budget down to $1,800 and demanding that Disney continue work or the character (who technically belonged to Mintz) would be taken away. Prior to this brutal ultimatum, Charles Mintz had even stolen away several of Disney’s key artists and animators.

“[Disney] lost Oswald because he refused to compromise on budget. So they fired him, found somebody who would do it cheaper, and guess what? Nobody remembers Oswald after Disney stopped doing him.”
-Warren Spector

Walt Disney wouldn’t be bullied, so this bitter negotiation signaled the end of Disney’s involvement with his beloved cartoon rabbit. It’s not clear exactly where and when Mickey Mouse came in to the picture, but the common story relayed by Walt Disney was that the idea of a mouse came to him on the train ride home to California after the disastrous meeting in New York. Disney collaborator Ub Iwerks had at least as much to do with the creation of the character as Disney himself. While much of the acclaim in later years would be heaped on Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks is the artist who gave form to the character. Most accounts relay that Disney first named the little guy Mortimer Mouse, but his wife declared that a terrible idea, and suggested Mickey instead. A star was born.

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The Early Years

Mickey Mouse came into the public eye for the first time in Steamboat Willie, which premiered in New York in late 1928, only months after Disney’s loss of Oswald. The well-remembered cartoon was significant not only because it was the first appearance of one of the world’s most familiar fictional characters, but also because it had synchronized sound – a first for cartoons and a revelation for American audiences.

What many people don’t know is that Mickey actually had two cartoons that predated Steamboat Willie. Both Plane Crazy (1928) and Gallopin’ Gaucho (1928) debuted first, though they didn’t see wide public release at the time. Without sound, neither was deemed exciting enough to draw in the crowds. Both would later release with sound added in.

“The thing that I think set Disney apart more than anything else was his unwavering commitment to quality. He would not cheap out on anything. Animation at that point was this little backwater. No one cared about it. Disney really paid attention.”
-Warren Spector

Mickey’s first few cartoons, and those that followed in the early 1930s, reveal a dramatically different Mickey Mouse from the one we’ve become familiar with in recent years. Mickey was originally mischievous, petulant, and misbehaved. It’s an aspect of the character that has lain dormant for years, which begs the question: Why has this funny and scrappy version of the character been abandoned? “He was a guy who smoked and drank and shot guns, skewered people with swords, threw Minnie Mouse out of a plane when she wouldn’t kiss him, and abused farm animals,” Spector explains. “He was a badly behaved little guy. As he became more popular, I think Walt started saying, ‘Let’s make this guy more realistic. We don’t want to do things with this guy that the world isn’t going to like,’ so they started taming him and taking different parts of his personality.”

“Mickey is critical to both animation history and film history,” Spector continues. “He was absolutely and demonstrably the most recognizable and popular film star in the world for about three or four years in the early ‘30s. He was huge at the box office. It’s not an overstatement to say that he gave hope to an entire generation of people living through the Depression. He was a little ray of sunshine. He seems kind of sweet and innocent, and his films don’t seem as anarchic and crazy and maybe relevant as today’s films do, but at the time it was exactly what the country needed, what the world needed. So he was there to provide it.”

The early 1930s saw an explosion of adoration for Mickey Mouse, both through his cartoon shorts and a long-lived comic strip. Though the comic strips started out playing on sight gags, the serialized format of the newspaper allowed for more complex stories, sometimes across months and dozens of individual strips. The comics were originally drawn by Ub Iwerks, though Floyd Gottfredson eventually became the chief creative voice behind the strip. After ostensibly taking over as a temporary replacement, Gottfredson ended up crafting the comic for the next 45 years.

By 1932, only a few years after his initial appearance, the world was in love with Mickey Mouse. The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences even awarded Walt Disney a special Oscar that year for his creation of the adored mouse. Mickey Mouse was also one of the earliest fictional characters to hit it big with merchandising. Watches, stuffed toys, bedside lamps, phones – Mickey Mouse branded items became unavoidable, a rarity during the dark days of the Great Depression.

The 1930s represent the height of popularity for the character. Disney’s studio pumped out 18 cartoons per year on average, and the character garnered international acclaim. By the middle of the decade, Mickey had his own magazine, comics, toys, movies, and regular coverage in newspapers and other media.

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All Grown Up

Mickey Mouse’s rascally and rambunctious behavior became a victim of his success. With such broad appeal across the world, Disney inevitably chose to scale back Mickey’s more mischievous activities in favor of more friendly behavior. Many of Mickey’s more dangerous and questionable activities were either eliminated or shunted off to his many cartoon buddies. Spector elaborates: “They took his mischievousness and his anger and need for revenge and gave it to Donald. At some point they took his naïve simplicity and gave it to Goofy. They took his loyalty and infinite affection and gave it to Pluto of all things. They took his character and just shattered it, and all of a sudden he’s kind of a straight man for the gang.” Interestingly, during this transition in the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Donald Duck began his rise to popularity, which in many ways eclipsed Mickey in the following years.

The later 1930s still saw a wealth of great cartoons for Mickey – now mostly presented in color. One of the best was Brave Little Tailor (1938), which garnered an Academy Award nomination. Interestingly, it lost the award to another Disney film called Ferdinand the Bull (1938). Brave Little Tailor was one of the last shorts that depicted Mickey Mouse in his original, simplistic design.

With the release of The Pointer (1939) and Fantasia (1940), Mickey Mouse’s look evolved into his familiar modern appearance. Most notably, his eyes developed pupils and changed in shape and size. His body also grew less rat-like; his head grew larger, and his limbs slightly pudgy. In many ways, Mickey Mouse was made more overtly childlike in appearance.

The 1940s started off big for Mickey, with his appearance in the feature film Fantasia. For many, his role as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an overwhelming favorite. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” saw hints of the troublemaking personality that the character first had, but it was the scope and grandeur of the feature film that amazed audiences. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” had originally been planned as a short, but the incredible expense involved in its production led to an expansion of the original ambitions for the project, and other pieces of music and animation were added to create Fantasia in its final form. Though the film did not do particularly well at the box office upon its initial release, Fantasia continued to garner more and more affection as the years passed, especially for its stylish integration of music and animation. Today, Fantasia is regarded as one of Disney’s (and Mickey’s) greatest triumphs.

Much of the world’s attention in the early 1940s turned towards the momentous and terrible events of World War II. Mickey showed up in propaganda shots and other imagery supportive of the American war effort, and his presence in the cultural landscape of the war was apparent. Famously, the Allied command word on D-Day was “Mickey Mouse.” On the other side, a well-circulated German newspaper quote from the 1930s declared: “Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed... The dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom cannot be the ideal type of animal. Down with Mickey Mouse!” Harsh words for such a beloved American icon.

“By the ‘40s, he was so successful and so popular that taking any risks with him threatened the entire future of the company. Who’d be crazy enough to do that? Wait, other than me. No one’s nutty enough to do that.”
-Warren Spector

Mickey’s appearances in comics and film outside of the war effort in the 1940s depicted an increasingly suburban Mickey Mouse – playing golf and polo, coming home from work to toss his hat onto the stand by the door, and enjoying the occasional date with longtime sweetheart Minnie. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of these ideas and life experiences reflected those of creator Walt Disney at the time.

Great cartoons like Lend a Paw (1941) and The Nifty Nineties (1941) were highlights among Mickey’s increasingly sparse roles of the period. Mickey showed up in six cartoons in 1941, three in 1942, but only eight more throughout the rest of the decade. By the early 1950s, his film career was mostly non-existent. [PageBreak]
Aging Gracefully

Though Mickey’s film stardom was on the wane, the character was far too recognizable and beloved to disappear from popular culture. The 1950s saw two major new steps for the mouse, each of which helped set the stage for the way following generations would meet him.

The first was The Mickey Mouse Club, which first aired in 1955. Filled with musical numbers and cartoons culled from Mickey’s vast catalogue of shorts, the show was a tremendous success, and expanded Mickey’s media presence to make him a television mainstay until 1959. The cast of talented young actors and singers would tackle special themed days, like Guest Star Day, Circus Day, Talent Roundup Day, and the always popular Anything Can Happen Day. The variety show for children, with its familiar theme song and joyous celebration of all things Disney, spawned a follow up series decades later in the form of The All New Mickey Mouse Club, which premiered in the 1970s.

The 1980s and early 1990s saw yet another attempt at bringing the property back to life with the MMC. This popular Disney Channel program is most notable for being the starting place for many current pop culture icons. Cast members included Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell, JC Chasez, and Ryan Gosling, among others.

Back in the 1950s, the second major new project for Mickey Mouse was Disneyland. The California theme park featured Mickey in its many attractions, most notably as park visitors were able to interact with a costumed Mickey character. The park was the first of many – Walt Disney World opened in 1971, five years after the death of Walt Disney in 1966. More parks across the world, notably in Europe and Japan, released in later years.

Mickey’s presence in the media continued to scale back, but occasional cartoons have released over the years. The year 1983 found him in the role of Bob Cratchit in a remake of the Dickens’ classic entitled Mickey’s Christmas Carol. The Prince and the Pauper debuted in 1990, based on the 1882 Mark Twain story, where Mickey plays double duty as both the royal prince and his poorer look-alike. Finally, Runaway Brain (1995) explores a strange Frankenstein-inspired story where Mickey’s mind is exchanged with a monster named Julius.

Around the same time, Mickey found a home in a brand new medium: video games. Though the many games bearing his name vacillated wildly in quality, they succeeded in bringing Mickey Mouse to a new generation. The early Nintendo release Mickey Mousecapade (1988) helped to begin a long line of Capcom-published Disney adventures. Around the same time, Sega enjoyed great success with Castle of Illusion (1990) and its sequels. More recently, Mickey made memorable guest appearances in the Kingdom Hearts series.

The 21st century has seen little of Disney’s once-ubiquitous mouse, which is on the threshold of changing in some dramatic ways. Warren Spector has taken the reins of the classic character, and is targeting a new game for release on the most widely owned system of this hardware generation: the Wii. Disney Epic Mickey reveals a major new direction for the character, but one that is rooted in his earliest birth and history. “The irony is I think the best way to rejuvenate or revitalize the character, whether in a game or in a movie or anywhere else, is to return him to his roots,” Spector says. “Mickey used to be a character who about whom kids could say, ‘He’s acting out for me,’ and I think he could do that again.” For the full story on the new game, read this month’s issue of Game Informer, and then check back here after throughout the month for expanded articles, videos, interviews, and details on what might be the biggest and most ambitious third-party Wii game yet created.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of Walt Disney, his animation studio, and Mickey Mouse, then you’ll love the following books. The meticulous research found in each was invaluable to this article.

Disney’s Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast; by Bob Thomas
Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters; by John Grant
Mickey Mouse: Fifty Happy Years; edited by David Bain and Bruce Harris
Mickey Mouse: My Life In Pictures; by Russell Schroeder