Mickey Mousecapade

 

Genre: Platformer

Publisher: Capcom

Total time played: 2 hours

Short review:  Not one of Capcom’s stronger NES titles.  The game controls pretty good but suffers from horrible slow down, flashing and invisible characters and mediocre game play.  The music is pretty decent though.

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Interesting links related to Mickey Mousecapade

• Speedrun (8min 11sec)
• Soundtrack
• Video Review (Game Dude Archives)

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This is one of those games I would rent at the video store over and over again.  It wasn’t because I liked the game so much, it is because there was nothing else to rent.  It was one of the fall back games I knew would always be in stock (because no one else wanted it).

Capcom makes some of the best games on the NES including Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Duck Tales, and Rescue Rangers, Mickey Mousecapade will not be joining the club of Capcom classics.  Although there is nothing really wrong with the game it suffers from a few flaws.

Mickey Mousecapade is not an easy game.  It looks easy with its simple graphics and controls and short levels.  But, there isn’t much to the gameplay so it gets old pretty fast.  The dynamic that tries to set the game apart from other platform games on the NES is the thing that really holds it back from being a better game.  That thing is Minnie Mouse.  You control Mickey and Minnie follows you and copies your every move.  Minnie is invincible from enemy attacks but if she falls in a hole you lose a life and if you try to walk from one screen to another and she isn’t right behind you then you are stuck until she catches up.  There is no reason to have Minnie tagging along and the game developers knew it would hinder the player, just look at this cut scene where Minnie is falling behind and Mickey has to call for her.

Even the cutscenes between stages show that Minnie is holding up progress.

Stage 1: A fun house where you must find a key, gain the ability to shoot stars and fight a boss.  There is quite a bit of navigation that you will have to do in this level to survive.  There are hidden items sprinkled throughout the level that can include health, a fairy (makes you invincible for a short time) or a monster that steals Minnie.  If Minnie is stolen you must wander the level and find another hidden item that takes you into a room with 4 identical Minnie sculptures.  One is the real Minnie, the other 3 take you back to the stage where you must hunt for the entrance to the moving secret room.  This is one of the most annoying things in the game.  When Minnie was stolen it took me about 5 minutes to get her back.  I had to go into the hidden room 4 times because of course the very last sculpture I chose had the real Minnie.

Which one is the real Minnie?

Thanks to http://www.videogamemaps.net for the map

Stage 2: Plays like stage 2 in Adventure Island where you jump between islands while trying to not fall in the water.  You must jump over fish and rogue waves.  The stage is pretty short and you get to fight an Alligator at the end.

Thanks to http://www.videogamemaps.net for the map

Stage 3: The stage I could never complete as a kid.  It is a side scrolling stage where Mickey and Minnie must travel through a forest.  Some trees have hidden doors.  In order to beat the stage you must travel through all 4 seasons. You must find a hidden door in a tree that takes you to a different season where you find a hidden tree that takes you to yet another season where you find a hidden tree that takes you to what looks like a garden.  This is the most frustrating level in the game as there is no indication of which tree is the right tree to walk into.  If you choose the wrong tree it takes you back to the beginning of the stage.  This level took me longer to beat than all of the other levels combined.  You do have to fight a cut little snake at the end which was fun-ish.

Thanks to www.videogamemaps.net for the map

Stage 4: By far the shortest level in the game.  Mickey and Minnie must walk across the smallest pirate ship imaginable and fight a boss.  The boss is tough.  I used the brute force method of just firing my stars until he died without bothering to dodge the knives he threw at me.  It took several tries.

Thanks to http://www.videogamemaps.net for the map

Stage 5: The longest and most difficult stage in the game.  My issue with this stage was trying to get Minnie to make all of the jumps with me.  I had to really focus to navigate the stage.  It would have been a piece of cake if it was just Mickey.  This stage plays much like stage 1 where you must find a key to open a door and fight a boss.  The final boss of the game is Maleficent.  She is tough, but mainly because I never had a lot of health left once I got to her.  I got extremely lucky and on my fourth or fifth try of fighting her I jumped over her and ended up standing behind her.  She never turned around so I just shot her with my stars until she died.  I don’t think it was a game glitch but it was definitely an exploit that allowed me to win much easier.

Thanks to http://www.videogamemaps.net for the map

Mickey Mousecapade is another game that falls into the nostalgic realm for me.  I have a lot of memories playing this game.  If it weren’t for those memories I would probably have really hated playing this for the first time as an adult.  This is one of Capcom’s worst games on the NES.  The game just didn’t really feel polished to me.

* There was a lot of slow down when too many enemies were on screen.

*The enemies as well as Minnie and Mickey would flicker a lot becoming invisible at the worst possible times.

* Minnie’s AI was very clunky.

I feel like if all three of those issues were fixed and a couple of more levels were added this game could have been much better.

One final thought: After beating Maleficent I rescued Alice from Alice in Wonderland.  I don’t know much about Mickey Mouse or Alice in Wonderland but I was fairly certain they did not live in the same universe.  What an unexpected ending.