They Could Have Renamed "Mickeyjunk Mountain," Though

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Epic Mickey was excellent.

I am sort of surprised. I didn’t expect to be half so thrilled with it as I was. But damn—the game was gorgeous, and I have to admit I am totally in love with Oswald the Lucky But Sort Of Bitter Rabbit.* The sibling rivalry aspect got pretty in-depth, too. There was a real sense of the pathos of small, forgotten gods permeating the game.**

Plus, I get a huge kick out of spraying a bit of paint and watching a whole wall splash to life.

My brother and I were laughing about the fact that we are too damn nice in video games—in Knights of the Old Republic the baddest he could get was what we termed Light Bastard Jedi, and in Myst 3 I never could bring myself to do the douchebag ending where you strand Brad Dourif forever, even though he did kill me with a hammer once before. So needless to say, I wound up doing things more with paint (the “good” stuff) rather than paint thinner (the “evil” stuff, which also rather too closely resembled the Dip in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a movie which can still traumatize me). So I may never know if there’s an alternate Mickey Is An Asshole ending, but that’s fine with me, because the ending I did get had me squeaking with delight.

There were a few things I wasn't thrilled with—you can't go back to some places, and the camera is contrary at times—but I'll forgive a lot for a damn good story.

I read a review floating somewhere on the internet that summed it up nicely. To paraphrase, it said it’s been too long since Mickey’s been treated as a character instead of simply a corporate mascot. Since I always loved the character of Mickey,*** I am all for giving him a nice saga, and this was a good one.


*Backstory: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was created by Disney before Mickey Mouse. He looked a lot like Mickey, right down to the silly pants, but Universal owned the rights to him, so Disney had to create a new character when he split. Disney just got the rights to Oswald back in 2006. They traded a sportscaster for him. No, really.

**I honestly feel that cartoon characters and superheroes can be types of gods. They seem to hold a similar place in the psyche—malleable, liminal, and doing bizarre things that can’t be done in the real world.

***Although Donald Duck still wins my heart. I never realized what an optimist Donald was as a kid. He always starts out totally cheerful and positive that nothing will go wrong today. And he can entertain himself like no one else I know.

Comments

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

I haven't played it yet, but I'm slightly sad that the game has made Oswald more common knowledge. That was a fun piece of trivia to pull out. Also, people never knew why the hell I demanded that black rabbits MUST be named Oswald.

On the other hand, MOAR BUNNIES.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid I was annoyed at Oswald when I read about him in a Disney biography. I thought he made Mickey look bad or tired to usurp Disney or that we were all being fed LIES or something. I got over it, but it means I like how they ran with the idea that Mickey DID steal his thunder.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

The Dip was freaky! I used to have an easier time sitting through Gremlins 2.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right? Is it any wonder I don't like using the bright green paint thinner in Epic Mickey? (Admittedly, when I first saw the trailer for the game I may have been heard to scream "OH MY GOD IT'S DIP!" a la Kathleen Turner.)

Hell, I can sit through things like Alien Resurrection easier than I can Roger Rabbit. The latter's a lot more like some of the creepier nightmares I've had.

[michellerz.livejournal.com]

when I first saw the trailer for the game I may have been heard to scream "OH MY GOD IT'S DIP!" a la Kathleen Turner.
DITTO. COMPLETELY.
For like the first few levels of the game, I really had to resist the urge to scream it every time I had to jump over a pool of thinner. XD

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

What's scary about 2? Gremlins 1 was the scary one.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Judge Doom picking himself up after being run over by the steamroller gave me nightmares for weeks when I was a kid. Years later I went to an Industrial Light & Magic show at the Marin County Fair, and they had a glass case with the stop-motion figure they used for that scene. I slid along the wall, as far from it as possible, to get by.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

What the hell, they just decided to toss in the Carnival of Horrors in the middle of the fair there? Because I gotta say, a display of the stop-motion figure would probably scare me even more because I'd have time to look at it--onscreen it's scary, but then it's over. The thing that terrified me was when he started with the high squeaky voice and the buggy eyes. But for all that, it's still not the worst bit--that would be when he melts the happy little shoe. I refuse to watch that part--sets me off every time like Homestar with Li'l Brudder.

[sphynxle.livejournal.com]

I haven't played Epic Mickey, but I watched my step father play it :D I also was slightly amused at the fact I was in the other room and heard the Steamboat Willie music and came running.

I love me some Steamboat Willie.

I can't wait to play this myself :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

You can distract bad guys with Steamboat Willie, too! If you use a TV in the game everyone goes running over to watch it--and guess what's playing. EVERYONE comes running for Steamboat Willie!

[daiq.livejournal.com]

1) Is this on Wii? I have seen it advertised and am thinking of getting it but wonder what the play is like with a Wii

2) Please tell me you have played Kingdom Hearts (2 is the one i am addicted too), donald-o-rama and King Mickey to save the day!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

It is on Wii. You have to use the sensor bar to aim your paint and thinner, but that's not too terrible an issue. The biggest problem I have is that it takes a bit of effort to reach the pause button. And the camera could use some work, but that's not so much Wii-specific as just a general complaint.

I want to play Kingdom Hearts, but last time I checked I had all the wrong consoles. Maybe that's changed ...

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I have played KH2 on PS2, and i know my little brother used to play KH1 on the same machine when it belonged to him.

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

Okay, so having spent most of my childhood in Germany where I was addicted to the comic books, to me Mickey as a character generally equates to a private detective of sorts working to defeat bad guys. Having limited exposure to Epic Mickey and not being fully aware of what the American view of Mickey as a character might be, I'm curious to hear what types of things you loved about him as a character, both in the past and in Epic Mickey. What makes the character for you? Is there any particular work that your internal view of him is based off of? What are you feeling nostalgic for when you say that you always loved the character of Mickey (or Donald, for that matter)?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Huh. I always thought of him as a nice little guy who wanted to do right but sometimes got carried away by his own enthusiasm. I think it's his propensity to get into trouble and then try his darndest to fix things that I like, which is why this game appeals to me--although he's also just a dude trying to survive, which is also appealing. He also seemed rather zen somehow.

Donald is really identifiable with his rotten luck and temper. He can be more of a deliberate jerk than Mickey, but he's also got a reason: the entire universe is trying to inconvenience him, steal from him, or kill him. And yet he remains optimistic. Plus, he's a serious renaissance man--he's got more hobbies than I do.

I read very few comics, so I wind up getting most of my impressions of the characters from the classic shorts. Add to that a few movies and the mystical power of Cultural Osmosis and you've got most of my sources.

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as far as I can tell the comics were more of a German thing than an American thing. I've never been able to find them in the US but they're all over the place in Germany. That's why I wasn't sure how American cultural osmosis compared to the German variety despite having lived in America for the past 16 years now. Mickey and Donald don't seem to show up in much of anything as distinct characters around here as far as I can tell, so I'd no idea what a kid growing up without those comic books would think of them.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

The comics were definitely in the US too. They're just quite old and don't get reprinted often (especially since Disney dropped their Gladstone Comics publishing arm decades ago). I have a couple of Christmas compilations that include short features with Mickey in detective mode.

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

Whereas Germany still has an active weekly Mickey Maus Magazin (I'm sure you were able to parse that, but just in case - Mickey Mouse Magazine) as well as monthly Lustige Taschenbuecher (funny pocketbooks - essentially a paperback book with a bunch of short stories in comic form) that still come out regularly and have new material every month. I'm not saying that America didn't have comics back in the day, just that they were (and still are) a lot bigger in Germany than in the US as far as I can tell.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

Speaking of cartoon characters being sort of god-like - I bought volume 1 of Batman - The Animated Series yesterday. And it's all your fault, as I haven't actually seen any of it, and usually don't buy dvds without first making sure they're worth the price. But it was cheap, so I figured why not. :D

By the way, have you ever read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa? It's one of my all-time favourite comics, to the point where I'm more or less seriously considering getting a Scrooge McDuck tattoo someday.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

DuckTales was strongly influenced by Don Rosa's Scrooge comics (some eps are almost direct adaptations of parts of Life and Times), more so than Carl Barks's comics. Rosa was more adventure-oriented.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I have not ... I keep seeing it at work, but I am not actually very good at reading comics. As in, they do not compute very well in my brain. Or something. But I do love the hell out of DuckTales ...