Mickey's Wild Adventure is a platformer starring Mickey Mouse. It was originally released as Mickey Mania for the SNES and Sega Genesis but was later ported to PlayStation with enhanced graphics. The game is a 2D sidecroller platformer where the player controls Mickey. He has limited moves, being only able to jump and throw marbles. Jumping on most enemies will kill them, although in later levels, this only allows Mickey to stand on them with no damage. Otherwise, he can collect marbles scattered throughout the levels and throw them at enemies. Again, the earlier levels have enemies that die with one marble but later ones require three marbles while shooting projectiles of their own.
Mickey has limited health and continues. He starts the game able to take five hits per life (unless you play on Easy mode, in which case it is doubled), once that is depleted, he loses a life. Losing all his lives means that you need to use a Continue, and depending on your settings, using three to five Continues means that you have to restart the game from the first level again. The painful thing is that the game does not offer any sort of saving system at all. This means you need to beat the game in one go. Note if you play the game on easy mode, you cannot unlock the last level.
Not being able to save isn't so bad since the game is extremely short, taking only around an hour to complete all the levels (six levels plus a final boss). Unfortunately, as expected from games of that era, it is extremely difficult. The first level is easy but from the second level onwards, it can become brutal. The second level introduces enemies that explode when killed, and these pieces fly everywhere and will damage Mickey. The game has a tendency to have anything and everything being able to hurt Mickey and later levels has a large number of enemies crowded in a small spot making it hard to avoid.
The game can feel cheap with its reliance on hiding things out of view. Enemies can shoot you outside the range of what's currently shown on the screen (although the same can be said of Mickey, so it's a double edged sword). The controls could be tighter since Mickey runs fairly slow and his jump is very "floaty". This may lead to more than a few instant deaths by falling into a bottomless pit. One of the worst parts has to be when Mickey is forced to jump from swinging chain to swinging chain. Miss one (and you will miss), and it is instant death, have fun repeating the level again.
The player has to figure out simple puzzles in some levels. They are simple... once you realize what you have to do. A few times, you may scratch your head as you needed to have pushed this random item that you thought was a part of the scenery all the way to the end to be able to jump onto a platform. A noteworthy aspect of the game is the nice graphics. It is colorful and looks fantastic, aging very well to this day. The levels are based on various Mickey Mouse shorts, and the beginning level feels so iconic with its black and white color palette based on Steamboat Willie. That being said, it can be hard to judge what is part of the background and what is a platform that Mickey can stand on is. There are some areas where there are nice 3D effects such as when Mickey is running down a castle or during the chase sequences.
Surprisingly, there aren't too many boss battles. The various stages of the final boss are extremely difficult. You need to be patient by slowly and methodically going through the motions. It dragged on and on since you are forced to repeat the same thing multiple times. There's not much story to the game since it is just Mickey traveling to his various cartoons from the past, saving the various Mickeys in them. Overall, the greatest things going for Mickey's Wild Adventure are the graphics and nostalgia. The controls and design aren't exactly the best, with the game becoming very difficult early on. The final levels just feels impossible to beat and the fact that you cannot save, being forced to beat the game in one go, is just poor design.
--------------------------------------------------
For other game reviews, have a look at this page.
