Disney Announces Epic Mickey

Disney Interactive Studios has announced the development of Disney Epic Mickey, an adventure-platforming game with light role playing elements for the Wii. The game stars Mickey Mouse who has been re-imagined for videogames by game designer Warren Spector and his Junction Point game development studio. In Disney Epic Mickey, Spector, a life long Disney fan, taps into Mickey Mouse’s rich history along with the characters and worlds brought to life by Walt Disney to create an edgy and unexpected cartoon adventure.

In the game’s fiction, a sorcerer named Yen Sid creates a beautiful, whimsically twisted world where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations thrive. Originally, the powerful sorcerer fom “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Walt Disney’s 1940 film “Fantasia” was nicknamed “Yen Sid” by Disney animators, although never named as such on screen. In Spector’s game, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit – Walt Disney’s first cartoon star created in 1927 – becomes the earliest inhabitant of Yen Sid’s Cartoon Wasteland after Mickey Mouse is created. Oswald makes the Cartoon Wasteland comfortable for other retired characters as they join him in this magical land. Years pass, and as Oswald dwells in the Cartoon Wasteland, he becomes resentful watching Mickey’s popularity swell. When Mickey curiously stumbles upon Yen Sid’s map, he makes an innocent yet terrible mistake and inadvertently devastates Oswald’s comfortable world. Eventually, Mickey’s mistake pulls him deep into the mysterious Cartoon Wasteland to face the destruction he unknowingly created.

Players use the Wii Remote to wield magical paint and thinner to re-shape the world around them. Paint’s creativity and thinner’s damaging effect give the player robust tools and empowers them to make choices about how they move through the world. Each player’s decision to use paint, thinner or both dynamically changes the world with consequences that affect the environment, interactions with other characters, and even Mickey’s appearance and abilities.

“Having Warren combine creativity and innovation with one of the world’s most famous characters takes Mickey back to his creative roots and allows fans to deepen their engagement with him as a character – especially in video games,” said Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios. “In addition to Warren’s lifelong love of cartoons, films and comics, his visionary approach to game design and storytelling will make certain that this heroic tale of discovery and redemption resonates with Disney fans and gamers alike.”

“The core of this game is the idea of choice and consequence, and how that defines both the character and the player,” says Spector. “By putting the mischievous Mickey in an unfamiliar place and asking him to make choices – to help other cartoon characters or choose his own path – the game forces players to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, players must ask themselves, ‘What kind of hero am I?’ Each player will come up with a different answer.”