Mickey Mania (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
773A playthrough of Sony Imagesoft's 1994 license-based platformer for the Super Nintendo, Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse, developed by Traveller's Tales (better known for Toy Story, Sonic 3D Blast, and Sonic R) and Psygnosis, pays homage to Mickey's history by basing its stages on some of the more iconic roles the mouse has starred in over the years.
Beginning with the 1928 short "Steamboat Willy" and finishing with the 1990 film "The Prince and the Pauper," the game features six distinct Mickey works as stage themes, and the graphics in each stage directly mimics the look and feel of cartoon it was based on.
The presentation is gorgeous throughout. It reminds me of the Shiny-produced Aladdin game on the Genesis with it smooth animation and its sprites that look like they were traced directly from hand-painted animation cells. Everyone and everything - not just Mickey - is expressive in how they look and move: I especially love how the skeletons' mouths gape in surprise as you roll up on them. The backgrounds are true to the original works, and the rich use of soft color throughout gives the whole thing a true "fairy tale" sort of feel.
The gameplay is basic platforming 101: you run about collecting items, dodging obstacles, throwing marbles at bad guys to kill them, and solving the occasional environment-based puzzle. The controls are simple and responsive, and everything flows well, with one caveat: it's far more difficult than any console Mickey game that came before it. Well, unless you count the God-awful Fantasia on the Genesis. You're better off ignoring that one altogether.
The challenges are simple, buy they require a surprising amount of memorization and skill to pass when you consider that this game woruld most likely to appeal to small kids. The enemy placement can be ruthless, and projectile attacks fly at you from every which direction. It's also somewhat surprising that the Mad Doctor stage, which is only the second area of the game, ends up being one of the hardest of the entire game. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of people that played it way back never got to stage three.
If you can handle the challenge, though, Mickey Mania is a great game. The SNES isn't really the ideal version of it - even though the color and the music is a good improvement over the Sega Genesis version, the game lacks some content from the other versions and the loading times can be a bit intrusive. If you want the best way to play it, I'd recommend the PAL-only PlayStation port (renamed "Mickey's Wild Adventure")
If you're interested, you can check out my playthrough of Mickey's Wild Adventure here: https://youtu.be/A8mTeCE2kVs
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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