Interview: Epic Mickey

Disney’s first mouse is back is his own video game using the power of ink and thinner to solve a crisis in the Wasteland–a place of forgotten and recognizable people, places and things in the Disney universe. It’s part of the rebranding of the Mickey character to make him more complex and “mouschievous” rather than the do-gooder we’ve come to know.

I got some hands on time and chatted with Raul Ramirez of Disney Interactive Studios for insight into this new game slated for later this year on the Nintendo Wii.

Epic Mickey is filled with neato moments as you explore the Wasteland. Visually, it moved from standard Wii-quality 3D exploration mode to a stylized 2D dialogue scenes to 2.5D classic ink on paper platforming.

Moving around takes some getting use to and the time we had wasn’t enough to become fully proficient.

Overall, my time with the game left me wanting to explore the world some more but realizing it might still not be for me. This is a game geared toward the family market the Wii tries so hard to own. I kinda wish something like Epic Mickey with its visual style and collection of characters and places would appear on another console with a less family-focused mandate. There’s lots of potential to make Mickey a bit darker for an older audience and visually crisper with more processing power.