Mickey Mousecapade
PUBLISHER: Capcom
DEVELOPER: Hudson Soft
RELEASE DATE: Mar. 6th, 1987 (JP), Oct. 1988 (US)
The years-long partnership between Capcom and Disney would produce some of the finest platformers on the NES, king’s aces like DuckTales and Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers. Mickey Mousecapade is not among them.
And yes, before the comments start up, I know Capcom only published while Hudson Soft developed Mickey Mousecapade. Later Capcom/Disney outings are solely developed by Capcom and are all the better for it. Still, Capcom should have known better than to put their stamp of approval on this bona fide mouse dropping.
You play both Mickey and Minnie at the same time, presumably because they’re co-dependent. This coupling sounds obnoxious, and it can be when Minnie’s stuck on a ladder or falls down a hole and drags Mickey with her into the abyss. Other than falling, though, she can’t take any damage, which comes in handy later in the game.
Solid relationship dynamics aside, Mickey Mousecapade just isn’t very fun to play. From the first level where you have to climb a ladder, then go to a different screen to acquire Mickey’s star weapon, the game just feels off.
Why did I have to go slightly up and to the right just to get Mickey’s weapon? Why can’t I have it from the outset? Acquiring the weapon vs. just having the weapon from the get-go makes so little difference in the game, yet Hudson Soft intentionally made this choice. So strange!
The gameplay is as basic as it gets. Take in enemy pattern, avoid or shoot, repeat. Occasionally, multiple enemies, all with unique movement patterns, will often clutter the screen all at once, forcing you to just take a hit and move on.
The level length is all over the place, and yes, this is a complaint. The first level, Fun House, is the only area that doesn’t outstay its welcome or feel far too short. You search for keys, beat a witch boss, try to keep Minnie from getting stolen by a crow, and move on. The Ocean, however, is a short, linear level with enemies constantly coming at you - then suddenly, you’re at the boss battle in less than a minute. The Woods is far too long, a multi-part area where you find hidden tree doors to move forward and avoid the aggressive honeycomb-throwing bears. The Pirate Ship is literally four screens, but all the enemies, including boss Pegleg Pete, are insanely tough. Then there’s the Castle, the somewhat convoluted and obnoxious final level that just drags on forever.
So the levels are either too short or too long, with only Fun House’s length being “just right.”* Perhaps this sounds strange, but the lack of consistency in level length felt jarring and messed with the game’s overall flow. Imagine a Mario game where one level is fifteen seconds long, while the next one is five minutes, and the entire game is back and forth like that. Gross!
Mickey and Minnie’s love may be timeless, but Mickey Mousecapade is very much a dated, sad product of its time. Unless you’re a Disney fan who wants to consume every piece of media tangentially related to the company and its characters, leave this one alone.
D+
*Goldilocks and the Three Bears are not a property of The Walt Disney Corporation.
MILLIPEDE
PUBLISHER: HAL Labs
DEVELOPER: Atari (port by HAL Labs)
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1st, 1987 (JP), Oct. 1988 (US)
According to Millipede’s Wikipedia page, four reviewers for the Japanese gaming magazine Biweekly Famicom Tsushin “commented that the small graphics and play screen [for Millipede] made it difficult to play and lamented that different favorite arcade titles weren’t chosen or that the cart did not contain three or four extra older games.” Yes, even in October 1987, when Millipede released on the Famicom, game reviewers of the day were not satisfied with the lack of content on the cartridge.
Unfortunately, I don’t read Japanese, so I can’t go investigate for myself if this blurb is true. If it is, though, it answers a question I’ve had about these prolific NES arcade ports. Did they satisfy the Famicom/NES gamers upon release when sat next to larger, more expansive titles like Super Mario Bros. 2 or even Mickey Mousecapade? Sure, classic arcade junkies probably enjoyed them, and I’m sure they were cheap to produce. Maybe the latter was enough? Maybe the publisher didn’t need to sell many copies to make their investment back?
Or maybe I’m thinking too hard about the whole thing. Maybe HAL Labs just really loved Millipede and wanted to bring it to a whole new generation of 8-bit gamers. Fair enough. How does she play, then?
You control a ship that’s confined to a gray box at the bottom of the screen. From here, you shoot anything that moves with your magic arrow, including but not limited to: dragonflies, spiders, mayflies, ladybugs, and of course, the dreaded Millipede, the fastest of all bugs. DDT bombs are placed sporadically throughout the playing field, and when the bombs explode, they kill any bugs near them. Mushrooms also litter the area and can hinder your ability to shoot the millipede. Once the millipede is dead, a new level begins, albeit on the same screen. With each passing level, the colors change, the mushrooms shift downwards towards you for some reason, and the bugs become more aggressive.
All told, Millipede is a fun little shooter that offers the same repetitive gameplay again and again, only slightly harder as you progress. You can play it for five minutes or five hours if you love getting points, but unless you’re hypnotized by the millipede’s swagger, you’ll probably treat it like a mobile game distraction. Yes, it’s an old arcade game, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Still, from a game development perspective, 1982 was firmly in the rearview even in 1988. As such, I agree with those four Japanese game reviewers from four decades ago. Millipede is fine, but it’s not enough.
C-
PAC-MAN (TENGEN)
PUBLISHER: Tengen
DEVELOPER: Namco
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1988 (US)
Namco’s legendary mascot makes his first appearance on the NES, courtesy of unlicensed mavericks, Tengen.
If you’re not familiar with Tengen, they were a subsidiary of Atari Games, formed so that Atari could release games on other consoles without the “Atari” moniker. Pretty smart move, but before Tengen got going, Atari tried to negotiate with Nintendo for better licensing rules as Atari found their rules too restrictive. Essentially, Nintendo required licensees to only publish five games per year, each game be NES-exclusive for two years, and allow Nintendo to handle all cartridge manufacturing. After some back-and-forth between the two companies, Atari finally agreed to Nintendo’s terms and Tengen went to work.
In 1988, Tengen released three licensed NES games, R.B.I. Baseball, Gauntlet, and Pac-Man. By the end of 1988, however, Tengen had successfully reverse-engineered the NES’ lockout chip and announced that they were going to make their own unlicensed cartridges for the NES.
The Tengen story is vast and insane. I’ll delve more into it when we get to their version of Tetris. For now, I just wanted to provide a brief historical backdrop to this otherwise innocuous version of Pac-Man on the NES.
As for Pac-Man, well, if you haven’t played one of the most influential, iconic video games of all time, you could do worse than this NES port. You control Pac-Man around a maze to eat pellets and the occasional fruit. Four colored ghosts – Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde – chase Pac-Man through the maze for reasons unknown. Maybe the pellets are theirs? Perhaps Pac-Man is the true villain within his own game? Whatever the case, the goal of each level is to consume all the pellets in each stage. When the ghosts get in your way, eat one of the four Power Pellets in the corners of the maze to turn them blue and eat them; if Pac touches them in their colored state, he’ll collapse in on himself and die. Of course they’re ghosts, so even when Pac eats them, they can’t die, but they will be disabled long enough so Pac can continue with his gorging. Each level (all 255 of them) is exactly the same as the last, only with slightly higher speed and different fruit.
Pac-Man absolutely dominated the arcade landscape upon its release in 1980, and Ms. Pac-Man, the game’s sequel, did even better when it released in 1982. Like the original Donkey Kong or Space Invaders, Pac-Man isn’t just a classic arcade game. It’s responsible for moving all video games forward. Not only is Pac-Man the first mascot character in all of video games, but the game was one of the first designed to appeal to women and not just men.
All in all, Pac-Man is a classic, but like I’ve expressed in my writeups for Millipede and other NES arcade ports, your ability to play them beyond a few minutes at a time will depend on how much you love the core gameplay loop and/or achieving the highest score possible. Personally, I get on with Pac-Man better than some, but even I have my limits. I appreciate Pac and others paving the way for more in-depth titles, and sometimes it’s nice to revisit the classics, but I rarely want to linger in these limited, ancient worlds for very long.
B-
Oh my god I know I just commented that I loved this game as a kid but then I came to read the actual piece and the realization I was wrong and had mentally blocked out the existence of this game. Anyway thanks for sending me back into therapy
The codependency comment had me rolling.
I still can't think of Mickey Mousecapade without replaying the Game Grumps episode on it lol