Mickey No Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken (SNES)

 Daibouken desho, desho?

A snippet of the Japanese box art for Mickey's Big Adventure in Tokyo Disneyland

 So, the “Master of the Mouse” challenge has yielded some interesting games, had it not been for me undertaking this, I would not have discovered the other games in the Magical Quest series. I suppose there is a possibility I would have encountered them at some point, but today’s game is certainly one I would not have come across. Mickey No Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken is a Japanese exclusive Mickey Mouse adventure as he travels various ride inspired worlds in Tokyo Disneyland, such as Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and Cinderella’s Castle, to gather his friends who have been deceived by Pete. Pete truly is Disney’s Bowser at this point. Though, I had to check a plot synopsis because I had erroneously said in my toot on this game that Pete had kidnapped everyone, he does have form for that sort of thing, so I am sure you can understand how such a mistake like that could be made.

Mickey ventures around the worlds using a backpack that can either fill balloons up with water or helium, depending on how long you hold the button for, it will fill up a bar. In the case of the helium balloon, once the bar is full it will lift Mickey off the ground allowing you to reach places you can’t jump to. As you float up the amount of helium in the ballon will decrease giving you a finite amount of height you can float to. You can also use the helium balloons to zip around, by prematurely releasing the helium inside them. Water balloons functions as your attack, the more water you put into them, the more damage they do. A fully charged water balloon can also be placed on the ground, where you can jump on them for a boosted jump or to be a weight to place on a pressure switch.

Mickey using a helium to float up to a high up platform in the Pirates of the Caribbean world

Initially, everything sounds quite simple, but it isn’t too long into the game that you need to start getting creative with the tools at your disposal. When you release a helium balloon, depending on which direction you are holding, you will zip in that direction, if you zip diagonally down towards the floor, you can crouch slide underneath obstacles, such as spikes. You can also use the helium balloons to get infinite height with the right timing of releasing the air and then starting to inflate your next balloon. There is a puzzle in Big Thunder Mountain where you need to place balloons in an updraft to make platforms across a gap. It all has a very surprising learning curve to it all that means that understanding and mastering how the balloon mechanics work is important to beating the game and this made the game much harder than I was expecting.

Mickey using a Helium balloon to zip along horizontally

Something that also doesn’t help is the game has numerous first-time traps. Rude enemy placements, enemies hiding in chests that don’t become active until you are ridiculously close to them, leaps of faith, platforms that will lead you into damage or into an instant death pit. Everything feels designed to be inconvenient and to bleed you of lives. Graciously, some stages do give you the opportunity to farm for lives, by either finding extra lives (Park passes) or collecting enough coins, dying and then repeating the level netting you a gain on lives. The lives counter caps at 9, but your lives do keep going. I remember having about 20 lives going into the final world on my One-Continue-Clear run of this game… You don’t need to 1CC, but I was doing it for RetroAchievements Mastery and to some extent, I regret this, especially because it was hard mode, and hard mode doesn’t mess around.

My own personal inclination for suffering aside, this is the kind of game that you will most likely crawl through, each life lost is hopefully a learning experience and with enough perseverance you will beat it. I felt the game doesn’t really ease you into anything, with first time players probably dying on the early stages a decent number of times before they wrap their head around what exactly is expected of them. Graciously the game does provide you with infinite continues and a password system, so for the casual playthrough you will make it through the game, possibly battered, bruised, a little scarred, pretty standard fare for 1990s gaming now that I think about it. I should note that by the time I did play through the game on normal difficulty, it was quite a comfortable experience, but that was because I was battle hardened by some of the nonsense hard mode threw at me.

Mickey navigating a maze of roller coaster tracks in Space Mountain

Overall, I would say that this is a pretty decent entry in the Mickey Mouse sphere of games, sure it isn’t as intuitive as the Magical Quest games or as beautifully nostalgic as Mickey Mania, but if you are a fan of Disneyland, and the attractions within, this game does a pretty decent job of taking those environments and turning them into game worlds, Magical Racing Tour probably does a better job, but that is a racing game which sounds like a much easier endeavour. Though, if you are looking for a platformer that does things a little differently, then I think this is a pretty good contender as the balloon mechanics are quite unique, the nearest thing I might be able to compare this to would be Kid Clown in Night Mayor World, which the Japanese version had a Disney flavoured theme… A Mickey Mouse theme… Where he uses balloons as his primary means of attack... Dammit, is this a Mickey Mouse III Yume Fuusen successor?!