"Mickey Mediocrity"

There have been a number of games where Mickey Mouse has been on a sidescrolling quest against evil, where he ran through random levels and faced even more random enemies. Mickey Mouscepade, Castle of Illusion, and even World of Illusion. Despite the premise of having a game where Mickey travels through his entire rich cinema career, the only real difference is that it's prettier than the other games.

So Mickey Mouse is, somehow and for some reason, traveling through time and his various cartoons, meeting previous versions of himself and moving from the past to the present to show you where all his career has taken him since the Steamboat Willy days. So there is no story to this game.

At least, overall. In one level Mickey is trying to save Steamboat Willy from some cranes (I'm serious), and in another he follows Pluto into a mad scientist's haunted mansion (yes it has not only a mad scientist in it, but ghosts too). Each level sort of has its own individual story. I wish they would've tied this game together better to explain how Mickey is meeting himself in every board.

Graphics-8/10
Since this is a game covering nearly fifty years of animation history, this is where you would expect it to really stand out, and it does. The different levels are nicely representative of the periods in Mickey's history they were modeled after.

Sound-6/10
Average.

Gameplay-5/10
I could see practically no difference between this and Castle of Illusion, from a much earlier period in game advancement. Mickey runs and jumps and avoids traps and his deadly weapon of choice in this game is--marbles! Yes, marbles can kill people, apparently. Mickey's pretty delicate too, getting a little smoke in the face during the Steamboat Willy level and automatically going down. And after all those times we saw Donald get smashed and recover instantly.

False advertising-9/10
I remember the commercials for this game, with buzz saws and some guy saying in a menacing voice, ''No Minnie, no Goofy, no mercy.'' Dude, Mickey Mouse is many things. A timeless icon of cartoons, the mascot of one of the largest entertainment corporations in the world, but it would take some serious effort to add ''bad ass'' to that list of credentials. Kingdom Hearts 2 had Ninja Mickey and they didn't pull it off, this game certainly fares no better.

Overall-6/10
What we have here is not a bad game, just an average one. Maybe if they hadn't pretended this was something scary and threatening, it would've gotten a higher rating.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/02/04, Updated 01/29/07