After many very good and a single bad 2D Mickey platformer of the 16-bit era, we end with one of the best looking and animated games of the 16-bit generation.

Mickey Mania takes Mickey on a platforming journey through his most iconic episodes such as Steamboat Willy, The Giant Beanstalk, The Mad Doctor etc. All the stages and sprites feel like that came right out of the cartoons as this is some of the best animations on a 16-bit device period.

With most other Mickey platfomers being a great Mario/Ducktales type of fun arcadey platformer, Mickey Mania takes a different approach of trying to be something more of a "cinematic" platformer. Something along the lines of SNES Dragon's Lair, Prince of Persia, Heart of Darkness, Another world etc. While I do think the idea is neat for a game about Mickey's classical episodes, the execution is not great.

The game is just not fun to play and is absurdly hard relying on a lot of trial and error moments, bad enemy placement, bad hitboxes, bad platform collision in the sense where you will sometimes be falling through the floor even though you clearly landed on the platform, and enemies you can barley see. So many bad and frustrating design choices that it just sucked any enjoyment I wanted to have with this game as I loved the premise and visuals.

After getting through a chuck of many trial and error moments, just shredding lives and continues to get through most of the game, the game has the gull of letting you know that this game actually does NOT give you infinite continues despite being based around trial and error. Normally I don't have an issue with finite continues, but the game doesn't tell you and whenever you are on the continue screen there is no counter of any sort. So you have a game that really wants you to die and try again but also forces you to start all the way from the begging if you do die. Really bad design and I won't be continuing this one.