Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse

This is one of those Disney games that’s clearly trying to copy the formula of other successful games of its day, in this case we have mickey trying his hand at 16-bit era Mario as he relives his greatest hits in each stage from his golden years during the 30s and 40s. It's a controversial take, but I've never been much of a fan of Mario (yes, I'm a sonic fanboy sue me) so needless to say I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay here even if there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. I'm also not the biggest mickey mouse fan, meaning I'm definitely not the target audience for this game (I'm more of a goofy or Donald duck fan.)

Presentation wise I have no complaints here; this is a clear love letter to the Golden age of Walt Disney that would inspire the loony tunes to do the same later in the decade with their bugs bunny time travel game. The graphics are amazing and do a brilliant job in recreating the shorts that each level is adapting, to say nothing of the soundtrack which faithfully recreates the lush scores of each episode for 16-bit hardware. The level design is decent here, nothing too special as it's obvious it was made for nostalgic Disney fans rather than hardcore gamers of the 90s, but complex enough that there's more to the game than sheer novelty. It greatly benefits from the cartoons each level is adapting from as these shorts widely differ from each other not only in tone but also aesthetics which the developers took full advantage of when constructing their layouts and even their enemies. My big issue here is the gameplay as mickey really wants to try his hand at being Mario but escapes plagiarism territory by having a range attack in the form of marbles which serve as the game’s collectibles rather than coins like most Disney game released in the 3d era. There's even a time limit to complete each level which was another common staple for 2d platformers back in the day given how Mario and sonic wrote the blueprint for this back then.

I get the feeling my score for this game wouldn't change if I were a bigger fan of Mario and mickey, mainly because my disappointment would be how the latter felt the need to copy the former in order to remain relevant in the last stretch of the twentieth century which I don't think was necessary given how popular he remains to this day.