Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse was a game that I played when I was a kid, it was one of the few American SNES games I had, I have no idea how these games came into our possession, I feel like I have mentioned this before… Perhaps not on this blog space. I remember this game being quite challenging, a particular moment in the game was stuck burnt into my mind because it was a roadblock that took me quite a while to get past. I did beat this game as a kid, so beating it now isn’t some kind of overdue catharsis, more a nice journey through nostalgia.
So, Magical Quest follows the Quest of Mickey Mouse to find Pluto after he chases after a ball and disappears, Mickey journey into a strange world and learns that Pluto has been kidnapped by Emperor Pete for… Reasons. Magical times ensue. Honestly, I do worry about what would happen if something truly terrible happened to Pluto, Pluto seems to be a common victim and motivator for Mickey’s adventures, but what would Mickey do if the worst happened? Would he go John Wick on people?
In the beginning Mickey has two moves at his disposal. Jumping on things and grabbing blocks and throwing them. Jumping on most enemies won’t kill them, but stun them, allowing you to grab them and throw them into other enemies. As the adventure continues, Mickey gains special outfits that give him new abilities. The Magician outfit allows him to charge up and shoot a projectile, the Fireman outfit gives you a hose you can shoot water from to stun enemies and push certain blocks, the Climber outfit gives you a grapple hook, allowing you to grab onto and swing off certain blocks and platforms. Being in any of those outfits removes your ability to grab blocks and throw things, so a good amount of the game is switching in and out of outfits to tackle the obstacles the game throws at you. It should be noted that both the Magician and Fireman outfit has a bar for how much energy they have, so you can’t just spam their attacks indefinitely. To recharge these abilities, you need to either find a lamp for the Magician or a fire hydrant for the Firemen.
So, I wanted to touch on the roadblock that bugged me as a child. In the third world, there is a mini boss who you can only damage using the Magician outfit. In the boss arena there are some lamps, but there is a real possibility that you can accidentally run out of magic before defeating this mini boss, especially on higher difficulties where bosses have significantly increased health pools. I make this situation sound harder than it is, it’s not that bad, but as a kid I struggled with this section. Graciously, this game gives you infinite continues, and you will always restart at the stage you are on, not at the start of the world. That is awfully polite! As a bonus, if you use a continue, you keep all coins you have collected, coins are used in hidden shops across the game, these shops allow you to purchase additional heart containers and upgrades to the Magician and Fireman outfits, halving the amount of energy their abilities use. Chances are, on a casual playthrough of this game, you probably won’t get the 1,000 coins you need to purchase every major upgrade, and out of all of them the Magician one is the handiest.
So you may have noticed in the title, I put SNES/GBA, that is because this game was ported to the GBA and quite frankly there isn’t much to be said, there are two main differences to the game, firstly the GBA version allows you to play as Minnie Mouse, it’s just an aesthetic change as she controls the exact same. Also, there shop sells items that, I believe, can be used in the Gamecube game Mickey Mouse and the Magic Mirror via the GBA-GC Link cable. Other than that, it is a standard SNES to GBA port, with a slightly muted colours and horrendous screen crunch. I can’t recommend playing this on GBA when the SNES version looks better and doesn’t from the lower resolution of the GBA.
The game itself was a lot shorter than I remember, it has 6 worlds with 3 stages and a boss stage in total, but most stages only take a couple of minutes at best. It being an SNES game that doesn’t utilise a password system or a save system (the GBA version does have a save function), I shouldn’t expect it to take more than an hour or so. Even doing this for RetroAchievements as part of my “Master of the Mouse” challenge, I had mastered both versions within a day or so, only requiring me to beat the game fully four times in total. One thing I do appreciate about RetroAchievements for this title, is that the GBA and SNES versions have slightly different achievement sets, the SNES version having damage less achievements and the GBA one having boss speed runs. It certainly made the game easier to play the game multiple times when I had a slightly different set of goals.
Perhaps it is due to my nostalgia for this game, but I really love this game. At it’s core it is a very simple little platformer with some fun little quirks and mechanics. It was made by Capcom, so we shouldn’t be too surprised that it is of some quality. If enjoy platformers, this game comes highly recommended, as previously mentioned though, give the GBA version a miss and stick to the SNES, unless you want to follow in my footsteps and play every game on the Mickey Mouse Hub of RetroAchievements. Oh, and this game has two sequels! So, if you do enjoy this, then there are two other SNES games that will be worth your time. But we’ll talk about this separately, as I feel they deserve that much.
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