Epic Mickey Product Details

Released on 26/11/2010

• Disney Epic Mickey hits shelves this Friday

  Disney Epic Mickey hits shelves this Friday

  This week may belong to Gran Turismo 5, which is coming out for the PS3, but if you've got a Wii beneath your television, you're probably getting a little excited about Disney Epic Mickey, which will also be hitting stores around the country, aimed squarely at Nintendo's world-beating console.

  Disney Epic Mickey's been almost as long in development as GT5, it seems. A platforming adventure set within the Disney universe, the game will send the famous mouse on a mission to purify the Wasteland - a distorted and frightening place ruled over by the company's former mascot, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

  While the focus is firmly on jumping and clambering about, Mickey's also armed with a brush that allows him to soak the landscape in paint or paint thinner - wiping out enemies and bits of the environment, or painting them back in to interact with them. Alongside that, you'll also be able to make choices that influence the course of the story - and affect how the Wasteland's inhabitants react to Mickey.

  Created by Warren Spector, the mind behind the classic PC RPG Deus Ex, Disney Epic Mickey is looking like a treat for kids and grown-ups alike. If you're not into cars, it might be a good bet for this Friday.

• Skyrim takes top honours at Game Developers Choice Awards

  The people who actually make the games we play got to have their say last night in San Francisco, as the Game Developers Conference celebrated with its annual awards show.

  Bethesda's Skyrim, the fifth entry in the popular Elder Scrolls series, took home the top prize for Best Game, adding yet another trophy the Bethesda's groaning awards shelf. "We never imagined the reception the game would get or the success that it has had," game director Todd Howard said,
  "Thank you to everyone who supported us. Thank you to everyone who's making games that inspire us."

  Elsewhere, Portal 2 warped its way to three wins, the biggest haul of the night, as developers from around the world picked it for Best Narrative, Best Design and Best Audio. Naughty Dog won Best Visual Arts for the thrilling cinematic sweep of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, while Battlefield 3 was rewarded for Best Technology.

  Legendary designer Warren Spector, creator of the original Deus Ex and, more recently, Epic Mickey, was given a lifetime achievement award. "Changing players' lives is - I promise you - much more satisfying than generating massive revenue," he told his industry peers.
  

• Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two announced

  Disney icon Mickey Mouse will be returning to consoles in a sequel to the ambitious fantasy adventure Epic Mickey.

  Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is being developed by Junction Point for Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and will see Mickey return to the Wasteland, a strange world filled with fairground attractions and forgotten faces from Disney's history.

  Renowned game designer Warren Spector revealed to the Associated Press that the sequel will be a two-player co-op experience co-starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, one of the very first characters created by Walt Disney back in 1928.

  Not only will The Power of Two feature full voice-acting - giving Oswald a voice for the first time ever - it will also be a musical in the classic Disney tradition, with composers Jim Dooley and Mike Himelstein currently penning a number of songs.

  Mr Spector said: "I'm such a geek about musicals. I love the co-op and next-gen stuff, but for me, when a character breaks into song, which they do on a regular basis in this game, it's magic."

  The original Epic Mickey was a Wii-only release back in 2010 and saw the cartoon legend changing the world around him with a magic brush and paint thinner.

  Published: 22/03/2012

• Epic Mickey 3 might be a musical, says Warren Spector

  Warren Spector, the man behind Deus Ex and now working on the Epic Mickey series for Disney, has bold ideas for where he'd like to take the series. The addition of two-player co-op in the upcoming Epic Mickey: The Power of Two is an obvious evolution, but the inclusion of songs is apparently just the first step towards creating a full video game musical.

  "I had some really crazy ideas about ways to use music in games, that seemed very Disney-like to me," Spector told IGN in an interview this week. "This time around, in the second game, I just wanted to take a baby-step to making the full-blown interactive musical game. This is not it. Gamers, you tell 'em there are songs in the game and they start getting panicked, but I just want to see if people will accept songs in games and, if they do, next time I'm going crazy. People don't even know what's gonna hit 'em."

  It's all part of what Spector calls his three-story arc, where he works out in advance what new ideas he'd like to explore in future instalments of any game he works on. "One of the parts of my process is I figure out a three-story arc, like a narrative arc, and then I figure out, 'Okay, if we get lucky enough to do more than one game set in this world, what's the game innovation? What's the new thing in the first one? What would the new thing be in the second game? What would the new thing be in the third?'"

  Are you ready for song and dance numbers in games? We'll find out in November, when Epic Mickey 2 arrives for the Wii, Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3.
  

• Comic book legend Marv Wolfman signed up to write Epic Mickey 2

  Marv Wolfman, the legendary comic book writer and editor, who has created classic characters for both Marvel and DC, is the man behind the word processor for the upcoming Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.

  "The opportunity to work with Marv Wolfman was incredible to me", gushes Warren Spector, boss man of Junction Point studios where the game was made. "He was the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and one of the first story editors on Disney Adventures magazine. He totally gets the characters, he has a deep understanding of the Disney universe"

  "I don't think you can grow up in America and not be a fan of the Disney material", Wolfman says in a new promotional video about the game's story. "I watched the shows all the time, all the cartoons. I really love the old Disney black and white cartoons. I'm a huge fan of that."

  Writing for a game is very different to writing for the page, as Wolfman found out. "Comics, as a writer, I control everything," he explains. "Videogames are unique, in that players are affecting things, and therefore as a writer you have to take that into account and give the information that's necessary in ways that give them the freedom to go off and do it in the way they want."

  That freedom of choice was a key feature in the first Epic Mickey game, which came out for the Wii in 2010. It'll play an even larger role in the sequel, which finds Mickey Mouse teaming up with his discarded predecessor, Oswald the Rabbit for a co-operative adventure.

  Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is out in November for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and PC.

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