It’s a bold gamble for Disney,” said Geoff Keighley, a longtime video game journalist and executive producer of MTV Network’s GameTrailersTV. Game developer Warren Spector is “absolutely playing with fire in trying to give Mickey a new dimension. He is a mainstay at the company’s theme parks and on its cruise ships, and he and his longtime pals Minnie Mouse, Donald and Daisy Duck, Pluto and Goofy reach 140 million viewers around the globe, on the Disney Channel’s “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” The big cheese accounts for $6 billion annually in global sales of toys and other merchandise. ĭisney has made a practice of granting artistic license to A-list directors and other top-flight creative types who want to work with its classic characters, as was the case with director Tim Burton and his stylized, through-the-looking-glass interpretation of “Alice in Wonderland.” Mickey Mouse, though, is arguably the most valuable (and venerable) asset in the company. IGN called Epic Mickey “one of the Wii’s most anticipated games of 2010.” Gamespot, another game review site, ranked it among the 15 likely most popular titles of the year. The game (suggested retail price: $49.99) can be played only on the Nintendo Wii. In the 1940 movie, Mickey stumbles into a magician’s lab where he picks up a wand and conjures music by bringing life to the objects in the lab. Its storyline picks up where “Fantasia” left off. In Epic Mickey, an early Disney creation Oswald the Lucky Rabbit rules Wasteland, a sad alternate universe of Disneyland.

“Disney is trying to take a family-friendly character, add a bit of suspense and darken the palette with the hope that gamers will see Mickey in a whole new light.” “Part of the game’s appeal is the fact that it delves into the Disney canon and brings back some of the more shadowy, less pristine aspects of the Disney mythos,” said Scott Steinberg, a longtime game journalist and founder of TechSavvy, a video game consulting firm in Seattle. While Disney executives vehemently denied any attempt to remake the company’s mascot, the game is garnering buzz precisely because it appears to offer an edgier version of Mickey Mouse from the beloved if harmless corporate icon he had become in recent years. This is Epic Mickey, a video game whose dark undertones and tale of redemption Disney hopes will intrigue teenagers and adults when it comes out Nov. property, even if its moniker is a topsy turvy twist on the Disneyland theme park where no one really dies and fairy princesses always prevail.

This is after all still a Walt Disney Co. Its denizens are forgotten, dejected and resentful. The happiest place on Earth has a doppelganger.

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