Mickey Mouse is a character that I’m sure we can all recognize instantly when even just getting a faint glimpse of him. Despite being the mascot for an evil corporation that thrives on pumping out terrible pieces of media and profiting off of nostalgia and pandering, there is something about him that is just so endearing, hence why he has lasted for almost 100 years, and still remains as iconic and likable as ever. And as such, Mickey Mouse has been the face of many different products from Disney over the years, including plenty of video games, most of them not really being all that special, but a good chunk of them actually being fondly remembered and holding some certain level of quality, such as with the Illusion series for the Sega Genesis, and even the Epic Mickey games, which I remember playing and loving as a kid. Despite that though, like I said, there are plenty of Mickey Mouse games that aren’t really all that great, with one prime example of this being with the heavily flawed Mickey Mousecapade.

I have known about this game for a while now, and before you ask, yes, it is solely because of the Game Grumps episode on it, which is still hilarious to watch, but nonetheless, I have wanted to try it out for a little bit. So, I finally decided to check it out, and OH NO, it’s not that good at all! Come on, Capcom, I know you can make good Disney games, so wha-... wait a minute, Capcom just published this, so who developed it? Hudson Soft? Ohhhhhhhh, ok, that makes a lot more sense. Well, anyway, no matter who developed or published it, despite seeming like it could be somewhat fun, this game just ends up being mediocre and frustrating more than anything else.

The story is yet another “save girl” plot, except this time you are saving Alice from Alice in Wonderland from Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, so that means it must be good with such iconic characters behind it (average Disney thought process), the graphics aren’t really all that great, although you can at least tell you are playing as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, so they got that right at least, the music is good, although not too memorable, the control is good enough, although sometimes your jumps and movement can be a little floaty, and the gameplay is what you would expect from a licensed NES game, with a little extra thrown in to make it seem somewhat original.

The game is primarily a 2D platformer, where you take control of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, go through various stages, take out plenty of enemies with… stars (ah yes, the traditional Mickey Mouse weapon), find health items and powerups to help you out along the way, and fight several bosses as well, some being original, and some being characters from other pieces of Disney media. It is all pretty typical, and it works well enough for what we have here, but it is extremely basic, with only a few things like hidden treasures and a maze level being the things to make it somehow stand out, and even then, those treasures aren't hard to find at all, and the maze level isn't all that hard to figure out if you just shoot all over the place. Sure, there isn't anything majorly wrong with the basic gameplay itself, but when there is nothing substantial to really keep your attention for that long, then that kind of becomes a problem.

And speaking of problems, there are a couple of problems, and one of the biggest problems is named Minnie Mouse. She accompanies you throughout the game, and she is required to beating the entire game. What I mean by that is that, throughout the game, you will have to rescue her when she gets kidnapped, and she basically counts as a separate life bar for the player. What this leads to is, whenever she falls into a pit, that means that you end up dying as a result, which doesn’t sound that bad, but believe me, this happened to me several times throughout the game, and it is pretty annoying when it does happen. This has the same energy as in Battletoads, where if one of the two players loses all their lives, it’s game over for both of you, and when you inspire a feature like that for Battletoads, that’s how you know you messed up.

The second main problem that I have with this game is named Pete. He is one of the later bosses of the game, and he is without a doubt the hardest fight of the game, and not in a fun way. For most of the bosses in the game, they aren’t all that bad. They shoot a bunch of projectiles at you, and you just have to shoot stars at them until they die, which is usually pretty easy to do. However, whenever you get to Pete, he takes this method of attack and cranks it up to the “Impossible” setting. The amount of knives he throws in your direction is ridiculous, and there is little to no room to maneuver in without getting hit. Yes, there is an easy way of beating this boss if you get the star powerup for Minnie, but in case you make it to this boss without that powerup (AKA, me), it makes fighting him an absolutely miserable experience.

Overall, while having nothing really wrong with the main gameplay elements, and having a few elements that bring it down somewhat, Mickey Mousecapade is just a very mediocre licensed game that has no real room to stand out in comparison to other similar games, like DuckTales and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers. I can’t really recommend it to anyone, because not only is the game not fun, but it isn’t hilariously awful either, so you will practically get nothing out of it if you experience it for yourself. So, Mickey Mousecapade, you are going to join Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, as one of the most mid games involving Disney characters of all time.

Game #264

As the first Capcom/Disney game ever made, this game is a whole lot of nothing, but look, everyone's gotta start somewhere. Consider this the rough draft before they would go on to make Ducktales NES two years later.

The most interesting thing about this game (which is dull and forgettable otherwise) are the regional differences in the sprites. To quote the funniest part of this game's Wikipedia entry, "In the Japanese version, Mickey could refill his life bar by picking up Donald Duck's head but this item was replaced in the American conversion by a simple diamond." SMH video game censorship strikes again.