Best Genesis Platformers: Mickey Mouse?

When it came to platformers, Nintendo definitely got there first and dominated the landscape with many different action platformers. The main one being Super Mario Bros which absolutely took the world by storm and even turned non gamers into gamers after just a few plays.

Sega did reasonably well in Japan and also Europe but the Master System was barely a blip on the radar in the States and I didn't even know anyone that had one whereas everyone I knew had an NES.

Platformers were and are one of my favorite types of games in existence, especially now that they are playable in a somewhat non linear fashion if you want them to be that way. While everyone focuses on Sonic the Hedgehog as being the best platformer on the Sega Genesis I found it actually to be a bit annoying because it was too fast to really understand what the hell was going on. Mickey Mouse was only acquired for my family because I had 2 younger siblings (still do) and I guess Mom and Dad wanted something a bit more kid like.

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When we got it, me being the little shit that I am, I kind of groaned because I just presumed it was going to be a kindergarten esque experience but man oh man was I wrong. This game is actually fantastic and I believe it is one of the best platformers that was ever released on the Genesis.

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The graphics and sound were some of the best that I had ever heard or seen on the Genesis and while the gameplay was simple utilizing just a jump and a throw button that you would rarely use because you normally don't have much to throw, it was still a lot of fun.

Also, it while it wasn't Resident Evil or anything, this game wasn't a dumbed down educational game and was even quite dark at parts. We have to keep in mind that Disney and even Mickey Mouse animation stuff was pretty dark in the past as well (anyone remember Fantasia ?)

The bosses were unique and had different methods to defeating them and there was just the right amount of levels (5) for the game to be long enough that you wouldn't be able to simply defeat it every time but not so long that it was going to piss you off with the difficulty.

The story is basically the same as every other game in that your damsel in distress has been kidnapped and it is up to you to get her (Minnie) back! For reasons that I don't really understand this day but was probably rooted in me not having a tremendous selection of games overall, I replayed this game over and over to the point where I knew exactly what was going to happen at every turn.

The Genesis wasn't known for its great sound and this was one of the major shortcomings as far as the system was concerned especially when compared to titles on the SNES, but somehow the developers for this game made it work because given the time period it sounds amazing.
It was a lot less fast-paced than Mario and certainly slower than the seizure-inducing Sonic, but for a casual player this game was a lot of fun. You could take 5 hits as well and this was just a way of making it so that anyone could enjoy this game.

None of the bosses were particularly difficult once you understood their attack patterns and mostly the replay value was there to see if you could do it even more perfect the next time you played it. My challenge was to run through the entire game in just one life and even thought I tried to do it without taking any damage - I never got to the point. I would be willing to bet that there are tons of people out there that have done so.

The game was only about a 30 minute experience from start to finish but since you couldn't save your progress, perhaps that was a good thing.

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I just found out that this game has been remade several times and one of them is on PC... it looks incredible and I am sure it is. SO guess what I am going to be doing with the rest of my day?