I basically weighed you all down with a Mega Man sandwich for the last three blog series...so I slipped a Mickey.
In this game, there isn't really much of a story. Instead, you're taking Mickey Mouse through six levels in order to take on "the biggest, baddest Pete anyone has ever seen." Yeah, that's really not much of a story. It's more of an excuse to drag Mickey through six of his most well-known cartoons in video game form like some sort of retirement-age present. The game came out in 1994, a little more than 65 years after his debut, and was supposed to come out in 1993. Since it would have taken only months to complete the game, the game was delayed until the following year.
The game was released on Genesis/Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Sega CD. It was also released on Sony PlayStation in Europe and Australia only, where it was renamed Mickey's Wild Adventure and remade from scratch with extra scenes not on the Nintendo and Sega versions. It was released worldwide on PlayStation Network in 2012.
This LP is played on Hard. Unlike the lesser difficulties, there are no checkpoints on Hard.
Steamboat Willie
November 18th, 1928
As soon as you start the level, you'll see...load times. Yes, there are load times in a Super Nintendo game. This was actually my first experience with load times in a game, and it took me until I was older to figure out this was a loading screen. Not that I complained or anything, but it always weirded me out and stuff on cartridges usually load nearly instantly.
You will be seeing this load time show up after completing every section of the game.
Section 1
You can stop the goat from spitting out music notes by jumping on the wine bottle, causing the cork to fly out and fly into his mouth. If you jump on the goat, the cork will fall out and he'll spit out notes again.
The whistles above Steamboat Willie can damage you with their steam. If you walk towards Steamboat Willie, he'll run away from strange reason. I usually do this to make sure I've found them, as there's usually another Mickey to find everywhere you go.
If you jump on the cat, you'll be able to go under Steamboat Willie and find some power-ups. I could never tell what's down there, but apparently they are both health power-ups. They'll be explained later, don't worry.
The birds that poke their heads out of the boxes can also damage you.
As it rains, there will be a crane that picks up the top crate in a stack full of them. Stand on this crate as the crane carries it and you'll be at the exit.
Section 2
You'll be using clotheslines as platforms, walking on windowsills and taking on the tobacco-spitting Pete at the beginning. You'll see Pete at the beginning, but it won't do much good to fight him at the moment. For now, use the spring near him to jump left to the windowsills of the house you just passed. Do as the sign near Pete says: ring the bells at the top of the house to open the bridge past the water. Unlike the first section, where a fish would nudge you back to the boat, you'll die if you hit the water in the second one.
As you walk among the windowsills, you'll be picking up marbles. These are Mickey's main weapon throughout the game other than jumping on enemies, and even though you could defeat the parrots that fly around with them, you could just as easily jump on them without taking unnecessary damage and save your marbles for something else.
You'll notice that you have a glove in the upper-left corner. This is your health, while the number below it is your remaining lives, or "tries" as the game calls them. As you take damage, the number of hands on the glove count down, and if you get hit while it's a closed fist, you're dead. Enjoy your animation of Mickey hitting imaginary ground and pulling a flower out of his pocket with some hilarious "I'm dead" expression on his face. It's funny the first time, but as you go through the game it becomes the focal point of why you want to destroy your console, as you lose all the marbles you've collected and you start back at the beginning of the section. In short, it is annoying. (There, I used that word again.)
Want to recover your health? Pick up a star. It recovers one point of health.
As you progress through this section, you'll notice that the world is going from black and white to color. At first, it's just the window dressings, but then in extends to the sky and water until you finally color everything else.
Once you've rung all the bells, go back and lure Pete all the way to the right where the crates are. Jump on Pete's until he dies, and jump over the chewing tobacco globs he spits at you. From there, jump on his stomach to get up onto the crates and continue on.
Be patient with the crates. They have a definite pattern, as one drops right after the other, but they drop pretty fast. At least you don't get knocked back from taking damage.
Love the animation on the crane that allows you to jump on the boxes to the end. It's fluid and was also done just as fluidly on the other systems.
The boxes lead to the boss, but jump left instead of right on the fourth box and keep going in that direction. You'll be able to grab a Mouseketeer hat, which looks like a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and gives you an extra try...and keep it, too. Remember that when you're jumping on these boxes, wait for them to stop shaking before jumping to the next one. In case you somehow screw up, they'll reappear just in time.
The boss here is some mechanical contraption with four gears. Throw the marbles at the gears to destroy them. While the bottom gears are no problem, you won't be able to reach the gears at the top with your jump. This is where the contraption comes in. There are two crates which will move across the top of the screen that drop bombs. Every once in a while, one of these crates will drop a spring. Jump on the spring and you'll be able to throw a marble at one of the two gears at the top. The spring is one-use only, so make sure your aim is true. You'll be dodging these bombs as you wait for the spring to appear again. When you destroy all four gears, you've beaten this short introductory level.
If you run out of marbles, there will be two that show up in the bottom corners as you move around the stage, allowing you to either keep your marble supply steady or get some in your possession in case you're desperate.
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