Where Warren’s going wrong with Epic Mickey.

So I recently read an interview with Warren Spector in which he discusses a few things about Epic Mickey 2. Amongst all the usual stuff, I found it very interesting that he claimed not to have played any of the old Mickey Mouse games. I think his reasoning was that he didn’t want those games to taint his design in any way.

Now, first of all, I have no beef with Mr Spector – he seems a great guy who has made some great games in the past and I’d even guess that he’s a pretty cool boss to work for due to his enthusiasm and love for what he’s doing. But I find this comment surprising. My initial thoughts are that he’s lying – he doesn’t want to get into any possible legal problems with any of the publishers or developers of those older games who could cry ‘thief’ (ironically) at him.

If however, it is true and Mr Spector really hasn’t played any other Mickey Mouse games, then that could possibly be one of the reasons why Epic Mickey was not the game it should have been.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there haven’t exactly been a wealth of great Mickey Mouse games. If anything, it’s been a mixed bag - ‘The Timeless Adventures of’, ‘Magical Quest’ and ‘World of Illusion’ on the old SNES and Megadrive platforms were pretty decent - but not great. So the vast majority have been quite poor – everything from ‘Fantasia’ right up to ‘Magical Mirror’ on the Gamecube. In my opinion, ‘Epic Mickey’ falls about half way between that list – it was neither truly great, nor terribly poor. For me, the term ‘flawed classic’ which has been used to refer to it by others, is as apt a term as any.

Epic Mickey is very pretty in the looks dept. It has some excellent ideas, an interesting world and great characters. But ultimately, it failed in the single most important area that any video game must not fail in – it wasn’t very playable. A combination of a poor control system and a god awful camera (Sorry Warren - you must be so sick and tired of people telling you that) turned the game from a great one, to a ‘What a shame, it came so close but chuck it in the bargain bin’ one.

We’ll discuss Epic Mickey in further detail later on, but in the meantime, I would like to bring to both your and Mr Spector’s attention to one other Mickey Mouse game that can hold its head above any precipice and stake a claim to be not only a genuine classic, but also, one of the best 2D platform games on any platform.

You know what game I’m about to name check – ‘Mickey Mouse and Castle of Illusion’ - specifically the Megadrive version.

If Mr Spector genuinely hasn’t played Castle of Illusion, then I strongly recommend he does so. Now. If none of his team of designers have played it, then again, they need to – right now. Right this very instant!

Castle of illusion, despite being a ‘Mickey Mouse’ game, is sublime on almost every front. Graphics were beautiful (and still hold their own today relatively speaking), but where it really excels is exactly that one place where Epic Mickey failed – game play. It played like a dream! And more than that; playing it today – it still plays like a dream.

So why on earth would anyone developing a Mickey Mouse game not look at the single best Mickey Mouse game ever made that also happens to be one of the best platform games ever made? Doesn’t make sense does it? I reckon Warren’s telling porkies myself.

So this leads me to a few questions:

-          Just what is so bloody good about Castle of Illusion?
-          Where exactly did Epic Mickey go wrong? (and it was more than just that dodgy camera)
-          Is Warren going to continue to get it wrong with Epic Mickey 2?

I don’t want this to turn into an epic (pun intended) blog post, so I thought I’d separate it out into two or three posts – the next one will be answering the first question above and showing my man love for that game.

Cheers for now,

GigiFusc