Challenging but annoying platform game featuring Mickey & Minnie mouse.

Story

Mickey Mouse and friends were playing baseball one sunny afternoon. All was well until Goofy threw a pitch that went awry and Mickey’s pet dog Pluto ran after the ball, not to be seen again. Mickey and Minnie quickly started to search for their lost dog and it turns out to be one lengthy search. What could have happened to Pluto?

The Game

Disney’s Magical Quest is a side-scrolling platform game featuring famous characters from Disney’s Mickey Mouse world. The game was originally released on the Super Nintendo back in 1992 and this Game Boy Advance version is a remake, adding a much-needed game save feature and Minnie as a playable character.

The goal of the game is simply to reach the end of each stage. The game allows scrolling in all directions, so the stages are somewhat complex and do hold some secrets for you to explore.

Along the way you’ll fight all sorts of enemies including Pete’s minions, insects, huge fish and animals. Other than numerous enemies, you must survive countless traps such as standard spike traps, bottomless pits, water hazards, fire pits and crushing walls to name a few.

Controls

The controls aren’t exactly flawless. It’s hard to perform basic actions such as jumping from one platform to another because you can’t really tell where you need to hit that platform in order to land on it. There are many small or moving platforms that emphasize this difficulty. To make things worse, your jumping arch is high rather than long, which does take some time to get used to.

But a bigger issue still is that the game tends to throw enemies, projectiles and other nasty things at you from out of the blue. Even if you take the time and kill off the enemies that jump you, there will be new ones only a few seconds later.

You’ll also notice that enemies tend to hit you even though it doesn’t look like they had any direct contact with your character – the hit box feels huge, which in turn becomes frustrating and even unfair.

Content

Before you begin your quest, you get to select whether you want to play as Mickey or Minnie. The difference between the two is merely cosmetic. You can play the game in three different difficulty settings which is a nice option because of the extra replay value but more importantly because the game is really challenging.

Throughout the game you will acquire new costumes that will give you new abilities. There are four costumes that you can have;

• The standard outfit allows you to pick up and throw blocks.
• The magical hat allows you to shoot magical rays that can be used to knock out enemies or destroy blocks.
• The firefighter outfit will let you spray water from a hose – useful for knocking out enemies, destroying blocks and putting out fires.
• Lastly there’s a mountain-climber outfit that allows you to use a grappling hook.

Once you get a new costume you are free to switch between your outfits on the fly – you will need to pick the best suited outfit for the given situation. This gives you some freedom to figure out your own solutions to some of the traps and dangers that you face, which certainly gives this game its own unique appeal.

As noted above, you have the ability to save your progress when ever you want. Each of the six stages are divided into three or four sub-stages. Upon loading your save file, you are taken to the beginning of the sub-stage that you saved your game on, which is fair given that the sub-stages are typically very short.

When starting out your character can take three hits before you lose a life. Throughout the game you can increase the number of hits you can take by finding (often hidden) special heart tokens. You’re given three lives and an unlimited amount of continues, meaning that when you’ve lost your lives, you can select to continue the game from the beginning of the sub-stage that you died on. So basically you are given unlimited amounts of lives to play this game through, which makes this game a matter of patience more than anything else. Death comes quickly as there are many traps and enemies that will instantly kill you, and most hazards are impossible to foresee the first time around, so yes, those unlimited lives are needed. This is really a game where “trial and error” tactics is the only way to play, which of course takes away some from the fun factor.

The game also features special shops lying around in the game world. You can collect special coins that can be used to buy power-ups from the shop. Such power-ups include extra energy and powers needed to use your magical outfit. It should be noted that even though you have unlimited lives you do not have unlimited coins, so the stuff you buy from the shop can be totally wasted if you happen to die a second after buying it.

At the end of each stage there is a boss waiting. In order to proceed in the game you have to defeat that boss and the boss fights in this game are pretty tricky – so don’t expect to defeat them in your first few tries.

Other than the standard single-player mode, this game features a Party Game mode where you can play four different mini games with a friend. The different mini games are;

• Normal Battle – where you jump on platforms among the clouds and race to see who reaches the goal first.
• Wizard Battle – where you compete to see who collects the most coins using the magical hat outfit.
• Firefighter Battle – where you compete to see who collects the most points using the firefighter outfit.
• Climber Battle – where you use your mountain-climbing outfit to race to the top of the mountain.

Each Party Game can be played alone and the game keeps track of your best scores in each game. The Wizard- and Firefighter Battle take place in an enclosed area, so they’re pretty limited that way. The Climber Battle is the one that stands out as the most enjoyable thanks to the fact that the stage is pretty big, and allows you to play around with the grappling hook.

But all in all, the Party Game mode is rather shallow even though it adds a few more ways to play the game.

Throughout the game you will be traveling six different environments, including the magical treetop forest, the dark forest, the fire grotto, snow-covered valleys and the mountain range called Pete’s Peaks among others. There is great variation to how the levels look and the level design is well done overall – the stages do present new challenges almost all the time, so it stays fresh and engaging throughout the whole thing.

The game isn’t very long though, but it will still take quite a few hours to beat the first time around, before you’ve learned how to best tackle the traps and dangers along the road.

Graphics

The graphics are colorful and detailed, and it would have been nice if you could see more of your surroundings, because it’s impossible to see whats above or below you. It does feel like the game is zoomed in a bit too closely, so there’s not much space to move around in when it gets crowded with enemies.

The game has a distinct Disney look to it and it’s easy to recognize its characters. The artists have done a great job in capturing a cheery cartoon style which suits the game well. The character animation is good and the backgrounds are detailed and varied.

Sound

The music in this game is so annoying. It plays with high-pitched, screechy and noisy instruments. The melodies themselves do bring forth a reminiscence of Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoons, but they aren’t exactly memorable as good video game music. The sound effects also tend to be high-pitched and whiny. It does get frustrating to hear the same few sounds over and over, so after a while you may want to turn the sound off altogether.

Summary

Disney’s Magical Quest Starring Mickey & Minnie for Game Boy Advance will certainly test your patience. Playing a platform game where you are given no warnings or chances to act accordingly towards traps, enemies, hazards and pits simply becomes a painful “trial and error” patience test.

This game has too many flaws to be a really enjoyable experience – even though it builds on a well-known and beloved formula and franchise. If you beat it though, you do deserve some bragging rights, because this one is tougher than it looks.

Developed By: Capcom
Published By: Capcom
Version Reviewed: Game Boy Advanced
Genre: Platform
Players: 1-2 (Link Cable)
Also Available On: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released: 2002-09-27