One night, a mischievous ghost traps a sleepwalking Mickey Mouse in a magical mirror. Returning to his bed won't be easy, though, because Mickey must first recover the broken mirror pieces that have been strewn about the house by the prankish poltergeist. Just as in a Mickey cartoon, you will have to outwit enemies and pull gags. You will also be able to uncover special souvenirs, such as Pluto's collar or Minnie's bow, which are all displayed in Mickey's room at the end of the game.
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I'm not even trying to be mean when I say this: I genuinely had no idea what was going on when I first tried this game. Next to nothing about your goal is explained in-game, at least in what little I played. I had to consult a Wikipedia page to make sense of things & even that has only gotten me so far. It's a point-and-click adventure with bizarrely poor telegraphing & an annoying amount of downtime where you simply wait for repetitive animations to play out. Disney/Capcom games are usually a slam dunk, but I can't recommend this one.
Resident Evil Mickey Moose
This game scared me so much as a kid.
It had this strange weird liminal feeling to it that's definitely by accident.
It's such a surreal experience.
It had this strange weird liminal feeling to it that's definitely by accident.
It's such a surreal experience.
A Guantanamo Bay torture device disguised as a game.
Highly recommend making a friend play this.
Highly recommend making a friend play this.
Um Point-Click esquisito, tem uma ambientação e vibe medonha, é extremamente lento.
Last year I began revisiting childhood games, finishing the ones I liked well enough and publishing some rough thoughts. Bringing attention to far off memories was wondrous, even when the games held up less-than-excellently. It’s as if I had the power to pluck unfinished dreams from my mind and play them to their conclusion. Finding new ways to appreciate what I once loved, and beating games I never had the patience or skill to, was magical. Writing about them was equally important, as I wouldn’t want them to turn into a loose memory again.
But I’ve been slacking lately, so here’s the next game :)
Disney’s Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse is an absurdly long name. I don’t think I ever knew it was called that. The front cover doesn’t particularly help, as “Magical Mirror” and “Mickey Mouse” are so prominent, especially being the only words in color. Kiddo me called it Magical Mirror so that’s what I will refer to it as in this review.
Anyway, Magical Mirror is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the “Thru The Mirror” Mickey Mouse short from 1936. It involves interacting with environments seen through fixed cameras, collecting key items, and figuring out how to progress through a collection of bizarrely laid out rooms inside a massive castle.
It’s also a joint project between Capcom and Nintendo, which is bewildering; you’d think sticking those two studios in a room during the GameCube Era would result in an absolute classic, but this got dismal reception. IGN gave it a 4.8/10 and it has a 50/100 on Metacritic. Ouch.
But regardless of its awful reception, this inexplicably spoke to me as a kid. It probably helps that it came out when I was like… four years old, although I’m sure I retried it a couple of times during the years that followed. I also operate solely on v i b e s, of which this game has plenty. Sadly, like most things I played during my youth, I never finished it.
Regardless, my attachment to this game is intense. Its toy train section in particular has stuck with me; I recall exploring a kid’s room with wooden blocks making up a little station as a gorgeous orange glow gave it a nostalgic warmth. Stepping through a tiny hole in the wall and seeing another side of a makeshift train station as a miniaturized Mickey Mouse traveled between rooms collecting gold stars sits powerfully in my mind.
I was shocked when I got to that section of the game: All of that is technically here, but it is not present in the ways I remember. If you showed me a YouTube video of that scene, and I wasn’t sure what game I played as a kid, I would have definitively told you “no, that’s not the game.”
At some point between playing this and revisiting it, my memory got generous and filled in massive gaps, making it seem more imaginative. It’s a supremely small part of the world and while the train station is there, the memories I have of exploring an elegant, detailed rendition in third person was complete fantasy. It’s also possible I had a vivid dream expanding upon that part of the game and that’s what my brain decided would become the memory. Who knows!
It’s one of those classic examples of “I remember this looking better.” I typically don’t subscribe to that mindset, as I am a firm believer that old games look phenomenal, but I can’t deny I felt it during the earliest sections of this game. It’s the most I’ve ever been flabbergasted by my own rose-tinted glasses.
But it didn’t take long for me to reach new and unexplored regions of this mirror-realm. There’s a sort of bizarre, difficult-to-parse atmosphere here that speaks to me. I actually think it has an effectively playful adventurousness in its seemingly endless, maze-like mansion. Its several, minimally detailed rooms with few key props are a major vibe.
I loved the clock mechanism room, and I felt cozy stepping outside and seeing the 2D painted town in the background at the top of the tower. That joyous feeling is only enhanced by music full of dreaminess and light-hearted, goofy fun.
But it is not a pleasant game to play. Mickey Mouse takes forever to do anything, and the animations make him feel like he’s doing the Dora the Explorer thing where large pauses are used to try and get the viewer to answer some sort of question. But of course, there is no question, it’s just unnecessarily drawn out.
There's no intrigue to its point-and-click elements. You just move around environments and animations play out with few to no exciting puzzles; it's all very simple. I like its visuals and soundtrack so much that it absolutely saves it, but it's quite boring.
The mini-games are hilariously poor technically but they’re admittedly charming. Flying a toy plane and shooting little pellets at a giant rubber ducky, fireballing barrels rolling towards you, or dancing to a rhythm mini-game as your Mickey Mouse doppelganger does sick dance moves to an admittedly groovy track are all fun in concept. This game just does not have the execution, even if it’s cute to look at.
I like that the little ghost that’s been tormenting Mickey Mouse through the whole game seems genuinely upset when he has to leave. It’s classically wholesome to turn the “villain” into a cute little fella who just wanted to play. Mickey has no hard feelings towards him in the end. It’s very loving and precious :)
Overall, Magical Mirror kinda rules, but it kinda doesn’t. Any vibe-operated individual who doesn't mind a game playing like shit if they have an interesting experience won’t regret their time. I respect this game for its weird little rooms, but I can’t pretend I loved playing it.
Although… I did play it for four hours straight until completion in a single sitting. Impressive considering it’s very easy for other games to lose my attention fast. Dunno! Maybe the game does rule and it’ll grow on me as I forget how it played and remember more of how it looked and sounded.
But I’ve been slacking lately, so here’s the next game :)
Disney’s Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse is an absurdly long name. I don’t think I ever knew it was called that. The front cover doesn’t particularly help, as “Magical Mirror” and “Mickey Mouse” are so prominent, especially being the only words in color. Kiddo me called it Magical Mirror so that’s what I will refer to it as in this review.
Anyway, Magical Mirror is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the “Thru The Mirror” Mickey Mouse short from 1936. It involves interacting with environments seen through fixed cameras, collecting key items, and figuring out how to progress through a collection of bizarrely laid out rooms inside a massive castle.
It’s also a joint project between Capcom and Nintendo, which is bewildering; you’d think sticking those two studios in a room during the GameCube Era would result in an absolute classic, but this got dismal reception. IGN gave it a 4.8/10 and it has a 50/100 on Metacritic. Ouch.
But regardless of its awful reception, this inexplicably spoke to me as a kid. It probably helps that it came out when I was like… four years old, although I’m sure I retried it a couple of times during the years that followed. I also operate solely on v i b e s, of which this game has plenty. Sadly, like most things I played during my youth, I never finished it.
Regardless, my attachment to this game is intense. Its toy train section in particular has stuck with me; I recall exploring a kid’s room with wooden blocks making up a little station as a gorgeous orange glow gave it a nostalgic warmth. Stepping through a tiny hole in the wall and seeing another side of a makeshift train station as a miniaturized Mickey Mouse traveled between rooms collecting gold stars sits powerfully in my mind.
I was shocked when I got to that section of the game: All of that is technically here, but it is not present in the ways I remember. If you showed me a YouTube video of that scene, and I wasn’t sure what game I played as a kid, I would have definitively told you “no, that’s not the game.”
At some point between playing this and revisiting it, my memory got generous and filled in massive gaps, making it seem more imaginative. It’s a supremely small part of the world and while the train station is there, the memories I have of exploring an elegant, detailed rendition in third person was complete fantasy. It’s also possible I had a vivid dream expanding upon that part of the game and that’s what my brain decided would become the memory. Who knows!
It’s one of those classic examples of “I remember this looking better.” I typically don’t subscribe to that mindset, as I am a firm believer that old games look phenomenal, but I can’t deny I felt it during the earliest sections of this game. It’s the most I’ve ever been flabbergasted by my own rose-tinted glasses.
But it didn’t take long for me to reach new and unexplored regions of this mirror-realm. There’s a sort of bizarre, difficult-to-parse atmosphere here that speaks to me. I actually think it has an effectively playful adventurousness in its seemingly endless, maze-like mansion. Its several, minimally detailed rooms with few key props are a major vibe.
I loved the clock mechanism room, and I felt cozy stepping outside and seeing the 2D painted town in the background at the top of the tower. That joyous feeling is only enhanced by music full of dreaminess and light-hearted, goofy fun.
But it is not a pleasant game to play. Mickey Mouse takes forever to do anything, and the animations make him feel like he’s doing the Dora the Explorer thing where large pauses are used to try and get the viewer to answer some sort of question. But of course, there is no question, it’s just unnecessarily drawn out.
There's no intrigue to its point-and-click elements. You just move around environments and animations play out with few to no exciting puzzles; it's all very simple. I like its visuals and soundtrack so much that it absolutely saves it, but it's quite boring.
The mini-games are hilariously poor technically but they’re admittedly charming. Flying a toy plane and shooting little pellets at a giant rubber ducky, fireballing barrels rolling towards you, or dancing to a rhythm mini-game as your Mickey Mouse doppelganger does sick dance moves to an admittedly groovy track are all fun in concept. This game just does not have the execution, even if it’s cute to look at.
I like that the little ghost that’s been tormenting Mickey Mouse through the whole game seems genuinely upset when he has to leave. It’s classically wholesome to turn the “villain” into a cute little fella who just wanted to play. Mickey has no hard feelings towards him in the end. It’s very loving and precious :)
Overall, Magical Mirror kinda rules, but it kinda doesn’t. Any vibe-operated individual who doesn't mind a game playing like shit if they have an interesting experience won’t regret their time. I respect this game for its weird little rooms, but I can’t pretend I loved playing it.
Although… I did play it for four hours straight until completion in a single sitting. Impressive considering it’s very easy for other games to lose my attention fast. Dunno! Maybe the game does rule and it’ll grow on me as I forget how it played and remember more of how it looked and sounded.