October 30 3:25 P.M.
He’s arguably the world’s best-known character, but Mickey Mouse has gotten pretty boring over the years.
While he was something of a scamp in early cartoons like “Steamboat Willie” and “The Brave Little Tailor,” today’s Mickey is far tamer, ultimately coming across as a straight man to the characters that surround him. A kindly uncle, if you will.
Disney knows this -- and knows that if Mickey is going to make it in the video game world, he needs to change -- so they’re taking him back to his mischievous roots.
Who's the leader of this club?
“Epic Mickey,” a Wii-exclusive game scheduled for a late 2010 release, will reintroduce a much feistier Mickey to the world. He’ll cause problems, get into fights and literally erase characters that get in his way, although he'll still wind up playing the hero.
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It could be a bit jarring to people who only know the character from “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” or the smiling face and moving arms on their watch, but creators feel the changes are critical.
“If we’re going to bring Mickey to an audience that hasn’t thought of him as a hero for a while, we can’t just give people Cinderella’s Castle and ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’,” says Warren Spector, Vice President and Creative Director of Junction Point Studios, the Disney division creating the game. “We need to give people a new twist on things...we wanted to give them a little bit of a dark edge.”
The game opens with a six-minute cartoon that shows Mickey being kidnapped into the Cartoon Wasteland, a world that’s home to all of Disney’s rejected creativity. Strapped to a table facing a variety of threats, he’s soon freed by a cartoon rabbit who quickly runs away.
That rabbit, Oswald, was actually Walt Disney’s first cartoon creation -- one he lost the rights to in 1928, when the financier and distributor of his films fired him. (Disney recently reacquired those rights, in part because of the pivotal role Oswald plays in this game.)
Armed with a paintbrush and paint thinner, Mickey will have to find his way out of the Wasteland and reconnect with his bitter cartoon brother. As Mickey, players can opt to play as the quintessential hero, helping all the characters he encounters, or as a loner, getting into trouble and shunning the greater good for his own needs.
“There has been a conscious effort through the years to make Mickey more real, more grounded,” says Spector. “What I wanted to do was take him back to the days when he was a cartoony little rat.”
Making a title that aims for a noticeably younger audience is a bit surprising for a designer like Spector, who is best known for mature, critically-acclaimed hits like “Deus Ex” and “Thief.” However, Spector says that reaching out to a new, wider audience was a big part of the appeal of this game to him.
Another was the chance to dig through the extensive Disney archives as he researched the game. Along the way, he found sketches for Gremlins, characters Disney created with Roald Dahl for a movie in the 1940s that ultimately never got made. (The characters are some of the first residents of the Wasteland you’ll meet.)
Mickey Mouse, darker than you've ever seen him before.
The Wasteland is also home to Maleficent, the "Sleeping Beauty" antagonist who famously transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, and some sort of gameplay mechanic that incorporates the old A, B, C, D, and E tickets the theme parks used to rely upon. Spector is withholding the specifics of the ticket system for now, though.
While there’s certainly some risk in making any changes to such a beloved, iconic character, Spector (and his Disney bosses) say they’re not worried.
“I think we’ve got a great concept and I think we’ve got a great character,” he says. “Our goal is not to lose the hardcore gamers, but to make Mickey appealing and popular with the broad audience he used to have back in his early days – when he did appeal to every one of all ages.”
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Posted: 30 Oct 2009
