See told you we would be focusing on the SNES for a while (If I had a megadrive I would do more reviews on that but I don’t so other than the occasional sonic game from collections we won’t be seeing much from 16 bit Sega). So today we travel back, to a time when licensed games could be awesome and the odd partnership of Disney and Capcom was gold.

The magical quest was released in 1992 (amazing that’s over 20 years ago now) and stars the cartoon icon Mickey as he goes through a magical land to rescue Pluto who the evil emperor Pete has captured for no logical reason (at least Peach is a monarch, this is just a dog) and you must travel the land, defeat his minions and evade hazards before you face the tyrant, yep its a good old mascot platformer.

Mickey isn’t just relegated to jumping on enemies to defeat them, he can also pick up blocks or some small stunned ones to throw them at people. But there is also the main gimic of this game, the costumes. From the 2nd zone onward you will start acquiring magical costumes that give the mouse new powers, starting with a magician outfit that gives you unlimited air underwater and lets you fire magical blasts. Next comes the fireman outfit which lets you fire a continuous stream of water which can put out fire, harm enemies or on the ice level (because there is always an ice level) make platforms. Finally you get the mountain climber outfit, you get this near the end and after the mountain level you get it in is completed you probably won’t see much use.

The game has a colourful world of levels to play through, starting up in the tree tops before heading down into a deep forest, through the bowels of hell (ok not really but it’s a fire level that starts with you going all the way down to lava so it basically is) then the aforementioned mountain level followed by the also mentioned ice level, finally you are into Peters evil castle( so basically you went down one hill to go up another, hmm sounds familiar, a dark memory of something, it haunts me a name Super Ghouls and… hmm probably not important), though you can probably run through the game in an hour once you know what you are doing.

The game is not easy, you start out with 3 health and a few lives, but if you do your exploring right you can find more big hearts that will extend your health meter. Yep it’s a game that rewards exploring, if you run through it like normally you will have to face the final boss only about to take a few hits, but if you did your exploring you will not only have more health but you may have popped into the general store and acquired a means to half power consumption (oh yeah fire man and wizard attacks eat up power, but you can get those back from fire hydrants and magic lamps). This does mean that when you get better at the game, it gets MUCH easier, as you will know where all the hidden objects are that boost you as well as know how to avoid things.

As said the visual and music have this nice feel to them, like going through a cartoon and the bosses are different from each other (except for often having Pete’s face) and are each faced in a different way, often using the costume you got in that level. It’s a fun game if you can track it down, and a great point when licensed games didn’t mean crap.

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