The Rise & Fall of Epic Mickey | Missed Potential & Not Actually Epic

[Music] looking back the nintendo wii did a lot of good things you know in spite of its huge library of shovelware first party output was fantastic the retro gaming scene really boomed thanks in part to the virtual console and also thanks to some well optimized controls multiple ports are often considered to be the best versions of those games all these years later and we still don't have a modern port of resident evil 4 with motion controls crazy but substantial third party support yeah that that really wasn't one of them there were plenty of great smaller games don't get me wrong when a team had some sort of budget and a clever idea with the wii remote we did get some gold in most cases however when a company attempted to be super ambitious and break new ground with this console yeah it usually fell flat and in my opinion no rise and fall story of that era is as interesting and tragic as that of epic mickey almost makes you ask what happened it was low-hanging fruit i had to do that i have made it no secret that i absolutely love 3d platformers and hey the same console that has super mario galaxy on it one of my favorite games of all time also has a kinda dark and mysterious mickey mouse platformer it really undervalues what the company was initially going for but that's all it took to get me really interested also all three of these games have been in my backlog for years so i just wanted an excuse to knock them off oh man it's crazy they took that one character from kingdom hearts and gave him his own game series you know good for him the entire concept of epic mickey is kind of more well known than the actual game itself and honestly that really shouldn't come as a surprise reverting mickey back to a more classic design and tossing him into a darker and grittier world with wasteland filled with dozens of characters that haven't seen the light of day in forever and putting a spotlight on vaulted characters like the phantom blot the mad doctor and especially oswald the lucky rabbit who was created before mickey mouse which is just really cool bringing in warren spector of deus ex fame with an entirely new studio junction point which was a wild jump to bring him in to do a disney game and making a platformer of it all the mouse is no stranger to fantastical adventures with a whole lot of jumping you know you got the magical quest trilogy on super nintendo the illusion games on sega mickey mouse company oh okay maybe maybe not that one it's also not the first time we're going retro either remember timeless river from kingdom hearts 2 i remember thinking that i wanted to see a whole lot more of this stuff and hey this kinda does that and oh boy you've all seen the concept art right clearly this was not meant for the public eyes to see since the final product is nowhere near as menacing but it is hard to deny just how much hype was behind a project like this look at this crazy art this is a mickey mouse game this is going to be incredible have you seen the concept for evil mickey oh jesus that's horrifying and hey it did get a spotlight during nintendo's e3 2010 press conference one of the company's strongest showings at that expo you know the same year skyward sword had all of those stage tech issues what could possibly go wrong here when you start talking about epic mickey in terms of what could have been you already are going to be falling way under expectation and realistically that's just not fair no matter what was the initial pitch or the concept are no matter what that was going to be i have still seen so many people wax nostalgia over the final product and that's important not so much for these two games no one really talks about those and there's probably reasons why the tale of epic mickey begins with mickey stumbling across yen sid using a magic paint brush to create a world for forgotten characters and once the sorcerer steps away for a little bit mickey decides to goof around with the paintbrush ha ha and accidentally messes everything up oh he spills paint and thinner all over the place it's a disaster and rather than own up to it he escapes before yen sid can see what happened years pass by you can see mickey celebrating in his bedroom with the trophy all by himself at one point much respect and then the result of all of that mischief the phantom blot comes out into the real world captures mickey and brings him into the painted world he helped destroy you see to the people of wasteland mickey messing things up causes a catastrophe called the thinner disaster filling the world with evil blotlings and just overall despair they don't know mickey was the root of all the chaos but it's not going to stop you from going to fix it or maybe continuing to be a jerk that's a thing yeah it's kind of weird there's like this whole morality system in the game even though it has no bearing on the overarching plot until the very end it's really odd but we'll get to it the mad doctor is here and he is now super power hungry with the phantom blot running around causing issues and oswald is the ruler of the nearly post-apocalyptic looking area of wasteland also we got robotic buddies of mickey's friends here yeah yeah that's kind of weird like you randomly stumble upon goofy's decapitated robotic head at some point and i don't know that's that's a little twisted can we be honest here but hey we do get to explore a pretty interesting world of disney as a result so i'm a okay with this creepiness without a doubt the world is easily where epic mickey shines the brightest it's not just an art style choice here modernizing a classic look for mickey barely scratches the surface the entire world is filled with disney nostalgia you jump into projector screens showing off old cartoon title cards leading to side scrolling segments based on said cartoons many cutscenes play out like animated storyboards those are really cool you interact with characters that have been stuck in the disney vault for generations there are plenty of classic disney park rides you get to run around in as well that's really cool mickey junk mountain is littered with old merchandise like lunch boxes pins and even video games oh god not again this approach to the design of the world shows up across all three games so while we will touch on the latter two games later just know that no matter what i say going forward the world and universe of epic mickey is just fantastic except in the oft-forgotten adventure of epic mickey pathfinder you know everyone's favorite point-and-click adventure game that was exclusive to web browsers what do you mean you don't remember this one and especially in the modern world where you have something like cuphead as a massive success this modern take on an old cartoon style oh there is definitely potential for more stuff like this nowadays i mean hell when i put it like that it kind of sounds like epic mickey was a bit ahead of its time which i would agree with but when we start talking about how the first game plays eh alright so in essence epic mickey plays out like a fairly typical genre bending 3d platformer definitely feels very ps2 era and that is not a bad thing you run you jump you got a spin attack this ain't my first platformer rodeo here this thing hits all of the basic notes the big unique mechanic is being able to shoot out paint and thinner from a special paintbrush paint fills in parts of the land thinner takes it away thinner can slowly deteriorate enemies while painting them will slowly convert them to fight on your side it is a really cool idea but in practice it is pretty limited you are explicitly shown at all times what you can interact with so when it comes to the light puzzle solving and platforming that you do perform it works fine but it does end up feeling pretty underutilized especially when sometimes there are items just hidden under floors that you wouldn't know otherwise so just spray thinner all over the place and hope for the best it's it's pretty half baked but its biggest use case isn't even necessarily for the platforming or the combat it's for working towards the wide range of side quests because yes there are a lot of them and there's a morality system attached to it finally mickey mouse can be your angel and your devil what i've always wanted to see it's almost like ow the edge mickey mouse edition it's all pretty minor stuff there's just a lot of it you can either prove a thief is guilty by painting his trail for evidence or you can just pay him off and let him get away and get an item in return you'll often run into these pumps that can take either paint or thinner and whatever you fill it with something different will happen you can fill this one with paint to get the teacup ride to operate more smoothly or with thinner to mess it up get it to break and you get the chest in the middle my favorite one though is where this guy damien salt wants to win the affection of henrietta right across the way but he's too nervous so he asks of you to figure out what she likes and for you to go and get it for him she says she loves flowers but also hates ice cream so many guys try to give her ice cream and that's really bad because she's lactose intolerant okay so that's an allergy you really don't want to mess with that that could have serious repercussions we're going to a dark place with us aren't we yeah bro she totally loves ice cream i got you i'm gonna be right back i'm gonna give you some sweet ice cream you can give her no worries oh man i get it there's a morale system may as well go as far with it as we can within reason but this just comes off as that one quote from shadow the hedgehog where he goes this is like taking candy from a baby which is fine by me having a morality system in your game is definitely an ambitious choice but really when it comes down to it the choices you make really don't affect things like at all so for example when the time comes for an upgrade you get extra space for either the paint or the thinner depending on which one you used most up until that point and that's kind of about it as far as i can tell some characters may speak down towards you a little bit more but yeah who cares splat them with thinner and let them melt into the ground i'm committed to the evil mickey route here oswald will remember this that being said there are story elements that are more important than others when it comes to this morality system like you can take down the big bosses with either mainly using paint or thinner and things do change as a result which is actually pretty cool but you really don't get to see the fruit of your labor until the very end of the game when you go through a sort of where are they now series of clips the standard linear adventure is fine enough as it is the morality system really adds nothing to it some items are good and evil specific so i guess that can encourage a second playthrough and the painting and thinning i get it you know this is a wii exclusive there's inherently going to be some limitations here but realistically for what's here that part works fine whether or not you're a hero or just a big old jerk it leads to a few laughs but not much more and also on that topic a whole lot of the game just feels like fetch quests and not actual platforming when you get thrown into a new area and you explore it at your own pace finding some secrets that part's decent i like that stuff but you talk to any character i swear almost any of them chances are they're going to ask you to get a thing from a different part of the world and bring it back to them asking you to do a whole lot of backtracking and it happens a lot a whole lot ah like late in the game there's this one painting puzzle where you got to keep going up and down floors to properly rotate portions of really really tall paintings and truthfully it's pretty tedious but it's at least building upon the game's core mechanics i know the characters are a big selling point of the whole disney world in general but here it just feels like busy work there are some typical platformer woes here too but hey i'm a sucker for the genre i can look past those parts to an extent like the camera isn't great surprise surprise however they did program it so mickey's ears are visible at any angle constantly showing the mickey emblem so yeah it works for me pretty fantastic stuff to me epic mickey suffers from too much ambition you go back and listen to what warren spector was saying about this project and he very clearly wanted this to be really really big but due to specific reasons that we will probably never know the actual answers to what we ended up getting is a game that tries to be the jack of all trades and is the master of none aside from the art style yes that part is really good epic mickey is a fine platformer great style cool use of mickey as a character relatively decent mechanics but not much more than just fine maybe the sequels are going to be the ones to fix everything who am i kidding you already know that's not the truth a few years after the first game's release the world of epic mickey was about to expand bam full-blown sequel releasing on all consoles now not just the wii bam side game on 3ds inspired by the classic sega mickey games bam disney can now monetize oswald merch good for them they really needed the money bam oh no okay so that's that's it just two games and a bunch of merchandise all right cool let's check out the games gotta start off with the sequel first here we have epic mickey two the power of two let's go oh gosh that was a doozy of a landing oh oh there's voice acting now alright that's pretty cool the budget has increased since the last game that's a bit of a whiplash after the lack of it in the first game and i kind of think it worked better in that way but sure the voice acting isn't bad but considering how bright and bubbly all the characters sound it kind of nullifies the dark and gritty tone the world was initially setting out to be but okay i guess i can live with it what sucks though is the mad doctor is back he claims to be good now and it's very clear from a mile away that that's a big fat lie and um all he does is sing friends friends friends i stand before you a changed man and in case you were wondering yes it gets old really fast so the premise of this sequel is fairly straightforward more shenanigans are happening in wasteland this time it's a bunch of earthquakes go for the most part the game is actually kind of exactly the same but the big difference is there's now co-op joining mickey on his quest is oswald fully playable by a player 2 or computer ai it adds a little bit of nuance to the platforming some puzzles can only be done with oswald i just i just don't like it though maybe playing the game with an actual person controlling oswald would ease some of the issues as the ai is not that smart gonna be honest with you but it just feels shoehorned in otherwise though the rest of the game really isn't all that different at all some basic exploring there's some side scrolling 2d segments this time lacking the classic cartoon vibe the first one had so that's disappointing simple puzzle solving with paint and thinner and this time electricity thanks to oswald's special remote there are still plenty of camera issues even though apparently the devs promised it would be way better and they made like thousands of individual changes i couldn't tell you a single one it's just so boring i mean hey i at least beat the first game and i had a good time doing it here i got two hours in before i fell asleep there's just nothing interesting going on you're just going from point a to point b i really don't want to bother with any of the side quests because i care about the world even less than i did last time and considering it is painfully obvious that the mad doctor is evil again i have zero drive to see what he's up to behind all that singing and according to nearly all of the responses i got on twitter i very clearly have nothing to look forward to so i'm gonna call it quits on this one hope that's okay listen the first game wasn't perfect but all they had to do was really dial into what worked in that game and amplify it but instead they just kinda made another epic mickey game with co-op that's not fun and once again annoying singing but hey it's on multiple consoles now so more opportunities for people to play it right i mean hey this is a wii u launch title after all i've been playing the original wii version all this time i can't imagine what it's gonna look like in hd oh oh my god the frame rate this is real oh oh man how how did they release this i don't know if it's like this on ps3 and 360 but oh man this is rough let me just fill up the entire room with thinner real quick ah it's beautiful and how can we forget it also released on the vita [Music] cool cool so epic mickey 2 kinda sucks that's a shame but the side game that released on the same day power of illusion on 3ds this is what i'm excited about combining current epic mickey with the classic castle of illusion is honestly genius and it's made by dream rift not known for much but they did do monster tail on the ds never thought i get to mention this game it's like pokemon mixed with the metroidvania i recommend it so yeah i'm pretty optimistic here this time around a mysterious castle randomly appears in wasteland literally the castle of illusion i'm already a big fan and minnie is trapped inside of it kinda crazy that the two main games came and went and minnie was in neither of them now that i think about it so oswald calls upon mickey once again to get to the bottom of things of course ooh and maleficent is at the helm of this one no mad doctor in sight pretty refreshing to see honestly the opportunity for him to sing in both the console and portable game at the same time and make this a rhythm game was very strong and i am glad they didn't take it i i mean i i guess technically it's not maleficent it's miserable she has been in the other illusion games and i mean that's what she calls herself in this one but i guess she just decided this time to look like maleficent now i um okay first off the game looks pretty good the sprite work is super top notch i love all the hand-drawn character art the backgrounds are nice and really detailed this is great stuff to look at look at this scrooge mcduck is here and he does the cane bouncing from the ducktales game hell yeah dude gameplay wise it does play a little slower than i was expecting but i mean that is how the original illusion games were too when you put these games up side by side they are very very similar like the butt stomp is back as one of your main forms of attack and the sound effect is exactly the same small touch but it goes a long way it's no platforming marvel but i'll be damned i'm really enjoying this the problem though is at the end of the day the 3ds has plenty of 2d platformer competition in the third-party platformer space this is definitely up there but you got to remember here this is epic mickey we're talking about we gotta throw in some painting mechanics and that's where the game fails a little bit it kind of works the same as the console games you can shoot paint and thinner from your paintbrush this time both acting like just normal ammunition and if there's an obstacle in your path you click it on the touchscreen the entire game stops you slowly erase it with some thinner and if you want to place an object down once again you tap the spot on the touchscreen the entire game comes to a stop and then you gotta outline the item with some paint yeah this i'm not really into the game is already inherently slower paced and even still this whole painting and thinning mechanic it is a total pace breaker if none of this stuff was in the game we would have a competent reimagining of the castle of illusion series but instead all of this painting and thinning stuff it really stops this game from being anything better than kinda good just like the console games before the concept behind this game is fantastic but it overshoots its shot and the final product suffers because of it just keep things simple man us gamers would like it a whole lot more what started off with huge expectations and fantastic concept art ended with one pretty good platformer with a lot of potential a retro inspired offshoot with mishandled mechanics a sequel that yeah just it just kind of sucks and a bunch of new oswald merchandise enjoy probably the best thing to come out of this i mean there are special wii remotes and nunchucks you can find on the internet too that were released alongside the games so cool cool i guess not long after the release of epic mickey 2 the power of 2 disney closed down junction point studios and the future of epic mickey is currently unknown i think a modern revised port of the first game would be really cool you can leave the second game in the garbage but i think epic mickey hd would be really really cool you know as long as we don't try to revive mickey mouse capades i i think things can only go up from here the games that we got may be just kind of whatever nowadays but i still believe that epic mickey as a concept deserves another chance if we have cuphead showing to the world that the old cartoon style in a modern adaptation will work totally fine if you know what you're doing why are we not doing anything with this well at least i get to say i can knock these games off my backlog so that's that's pretty nice and now hey you all know the history of this forgotten series as well so the next time epic mickey comes to mind you never have to think to yourself what happened you got to admit that clip is pretty epic

Channel: AntDude

Views: 901,256

Keywords: AntDude, Epic Mickey, Epic Mickey Wii, Disney Epic Mickey, Epic Mickey 2, Epic Mickey 2 The Power of Two, Epic Mickey Wii U, Epic Mickey XBOX 360, Epic Mickey PS3, Epic Mickey Vita, Epic Mickey 3DS, Epic Mickey The Power of Illusion, Epic Mickey Power of Illuision, Epic Mickey series, Epic Mickey Rebrusted

Id: 3GdChskKoi8

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021