Mickey's Ultimate Challenge (SNES) Review

Received: February 11th, 2015 / Written: March 28th-April 4th, 2019

Year: 1994 | Developed by: Designer Software

Published by: Hi-Tech Expressions

You know it's been awhile since I've covered a licensed game revolving around Mickey Mouse...  I just wish it was a good one...  😞

In 1990 there was an American video game developing company named Designer Software that was founded by technology entrepreneur Voldi Way.  Not familiar with them, you say?

Image from Wikipedia

Well you might be more familiar with their later brand name WayForward Technologies, that has since 2000 made many notable titles that were largely of high quality, many of them based on licensed or existing properties.  Some games they made were Contra 4/Contra: Dual Spirits for the Nintendo DS,

Blob shall not go unhugged; hug the blob!

the heartwarmingly endearing and innocently lighthearted 2009 Nintendo Wiimake of the Nintendo 8-bit David Crane classic(?) A Boy and His Blob,

RIP Alan Young (1919-2016) and June Foray (1917-2017)  =(

and the 2013 remake of Capcom's 1989 Nintendo 8-bit game based on Disney's 1987 animated series DuckTales with DuckTales: Remastered which blows the original out of the water in my humble opinion, and that's just to name a select few entries from their huge and growing catalog.  But before any of that, there was...

Image from GameFAQs

… this game (by Designer Software producer Bill Bogenreif, Hi-Tech Expressions producer Seth W. Rosenfeld, and Disney producer Sam Palahnuk).  The cover is decently drawn and captures the Disney charm with Mickey Mouse in his Mickey and the Beanstalk getup, but I don't know why it's green as those weren't his colors in the 1947 special.

Even when you meet up with that version of Mickey in Travellers' Tales' Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse he's got green on when in actuality he wore red.  Not sure why people feel the need to change that, but I digress.  😕

Released in February 1994 by Hi-Tech Expressions, Designer Software's Mickey's Ultimate Challenge was initially released for the SNES in America where shortly after came versions made for Sega's Genesis console, Nintendo's Game Boy, and Sega's Game Gear handheld that year, with the final iteration being in the form of the aged out Sega Master System version released by Tec Toy in Brazil in 1998.

Mickey Mouse's follow-up 16-bit venue after his console debut with Capcom's 1992 platformer Mickey no Magical Adventure/The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse, and it's a game that was made with educational purposes--basically, an edutainment title.  Now that in itself is not a bad thing, but it's the execution that counts and well...  I'm getting ahead of myself.  This game was an American-exclusive, so that means that neither Japan nor Europe got to experience it officially, so Nintendo loyalists at the time in those continents only had access to the earlier better-crafted title for awhile.

Oh, wait.  That's a... bad thing, isn't it?

Like Mickey's Ultimate Challenge, these two games share the same license manager Sue Fuller

Luckily 1994 proved to be a busy year for the Disney Mouse as far as 16-bit content was concerned because not only would Japan, America, and Europe receive the aforementioned British-developed Mickey Mania by Travellers Tales and the Japanese-developed Mickey to Minnie: Magical Adventure 2/The Great Circus Mystery starring Mickey & Minnie by Capcom but they would also be played by both Nintendo and Sega loyalists at the time (and he also starred in another Nintendo 16-bit title that year, albeit a Super Famicom-exclusive in the form of the GRC-developed Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibōken).  In America, well, until those other games came out the choice was either Capcom's 16-bit foray Disney license or this one done by pre-WayForward Designer Software.

Unless you count the highlighted character walking in place towards the other one, no interaction whatsoever between the two here

When you choose to press Start in the title screen you'll have a choice to play as either Mickey or Minnie in her console debut, and whoever you chose you stick with to the end; once you made your choice, though, you have one of three difficulty options to choose from: cake, medium, and challenging.  This is also that rare Disney license featuring both Mickey and Minnie where they do not interact with each other at all.

Late one night Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie Mouse--who either share the same room or live individually in similar-looking rooms at an apartment complex--are lying in bed reading a book

and fantasizing what it must be like to live in a far away land

with a magical castle.

I speak from personal experience when I say this: don't read or use your laptop or Surface Pro while lying in that position, otherwise the comfort of the bed will make you fall asleep

But as they read further they fall asleep because of the comfort of their bed without getting a chance to finish.

As Mickey and Minnie sleep they dream that they are in the magical realm of the book they're reading and fall down to Beanwick Kingdom.  As you're welcomed by the lone Weasel guard the ground suddenly begins to shake, and when he's inquired about it the guard replies that no one in the kingdom knows what causes it.  The Mouse you take control of volunteers to find the cause and help the inhabitants of the land in the meantime.

I love how there were not one, but two 1994 Mickey Mouse video games that feature a Weasel from the 1990 short The Prince and the Pauper.  Just comes to show how popular that short was during the '90s.

As Mickey or Minnie you walk left and right at a deliberate pace, which isn't a problem as the Beanwick Kingdom is not a vast land (it's actually pretty small).  Outside you can do a normal jump with the A button and perform a high jump with the B button, you hold down to duck (not that there's much reason for you to, but it's there if you want to do it), you press up to enter any of the five rooms awaiting your help, this is the only portion of the game where you're allowed to pause, and at the bottom portion when you walk near the edge of the port you'll prepare yourself to go across water.  I like how either character goes about it differently so they don't come across as palette swaps with minor alterations: Mickey elects to float on a rubber ducky while Minnie changes into her scuba gear.

I love also that Minnie magically conjures up a red curtain for her to change behind as she would end up doing the same thing in The Great Circus Mystery as that's quite a coincidence; it's just ironic that the latter title lacks the overall magical element that defined not just this game but its predecessor and 1995 Super Famisuccessor Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3 as well.

Say "hello" to my RetroGen peripheral cartridge, my way of playing physical Sega Genesis games on my Super Famicom and Super Nintendo consoles

Why yes, I do own both 16-bit cart versions of Mickey Mania and The Great Circus Mystery, thanks for asking.  No, I won't do the same for Mickey's Ultimate Challenge--one version's enough, really, though I doubt there's really anything to warrant getting more than one version of today's game anyway.

You can enter these fives rooms in any order that you please, so there is a semblance of replay value in that regard... if you feel compelled to revisit it.  Up in the tower you'll be paying a visit to the magician Donald Duck.

"Alakazam"

While practicing some magic one of his spells accidentally reflects off the last potion and comes into contact with the Mouse and shrinks Mickey or Minnie down to size.

Donald tells you that in order to restore you back to normal size you must push the required amount of potions towards the mirror.  This is the only part of the game where you can move in all four directions, and a little maneuvering plus strategic movement is required in order to succeed.  I love the reflective surface of the checkerboard showing Donald looking at you with concern, that is a nice sense of detail.  On cake mode there are two segments of this, on medium there are four, and in challenging mode six.  If you made an unrepairable blunder (you can push, but you can't pull) simply press the B button to start that segment over, but don't press Select unless you forcibly want to get out of there.  Once you've cleared this segment you go back to normal and are rewarded a pair of glasses.

To the left of the solitary Weasel guard's post is a room that takes you to the library where you'll meet with the teacher Horace Horsecollar whose poor eyesight prevents him from properly organizing the books, so you agree to do it.  The object is to jump on the proper books that go up and down, and on cake mode you can walk on the ground where the books float up and down; cake and medium are similar in that you have to jump on the correct alphabetical order of books but if you fall off to the bottom you'll have to start over and with a different set of letters, and in challenging you must jump on the books that bear the letters that form up a word (in any order).  You'll know that you landed on the correct letter once it shows up, but don't stay on that book too long otherwise it'll disappear thereby rendering your fall.  Repeat the same process until everything's formed up at the bottom gold leaf frame, and the last book will fly you back to Horace who will reward you with a book of magic spells for helping him.

Pete and Pluto may not be in this game physically, but they are here in spirit

At the castle entrance when you enter you'll meet with Daisy who has to dust all the paintings but can't because she can't find her slipper so you agree to do it for her.  This is a matching style game where if you revealed one icon but revealed another one that didn't match then it would be covered up again until you got the correct pair where you must repeat the process everything's been dusted out in the top, bottom, and third row of frames--it must also be done before the candlelight is completely dimmed out as if you take too long it starts to darken a little.  Cake is the simplest mode here in that there are four columns of paintings, on medium there are six columns' worth, and the mode you'll have the most trouble with is challenging mode in that there are a whopping twelve columns of paintings and because there's so many of them there's lots of trial and error and so little time to do it in.  Anyway, once you've fully dusted all the paintings Daisy will reward you with a bar of gold.

The characters in-game have a smooth and vibrantly colored design, and the animation for them was provided by Robert Buchanan; Mickey and Minnie's walking animation is very fluid, which is impressive for a Disney video game license not directly involved by Disney's own animation studio like Mickey Mania would be thanks to Creative Capers.  And the various backgrounds were drawn by Matt Bozon, simplistic though they may be they do their job well and the colors pop when you're outside the castle.

Image from Wikipedia

The same Matt Bozon who would go on to create the Shantae video game series, which is no coincidence as that's also a WayForward IP and one of the developing company's flagship franchises.

So I went from reviewing a game that could've had fart sounds given the animal it centered on but didn't (thank God) to reviewing a game that has fart-like noises whenever you step on a pump?  That's sad

When you first arrive at the lower left section of the castle the drawbridge is up, so in order to lower it you'll have to pay a visit to Donald's drawbridge operating nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie in the first of their handful of appearances on Nintendo's 16-bit console.  The pump is suffering from technical issues, so if you wish to lower the drawbridge you'll have to help them in a sound-based Simon Says-style portion where you press the buttons in the correct order that you're instructed, for the objective is to do it just enough times (on cake you have to do it the least amount of times while on challenging you have to do a lot of it) until the arrow in the back gets down to "open"; one mistake will result in you starting over as the arrow goes back up to "closed".  Those with hearing impairment needn't worry about being left out, as the pumps that you have to jump on will become brightly colored for a brief moment.  Successfully clearing it will have the nephews reward you with a glass slipper... I dunno.  😕

Once the drawbridge is down you can gain access to the shoe-shaped workshop where the blacksmith Goofy resides at the far left portion; another way to access it if you didn't lower the drawbridge is by floating (as Mickey) or swimming (Minnie) from the right port to the left one.  If you agree to spend time with Goofy while he's "twiddling his thumbs" he'll have you engage in a code-breaking game of Mastermind, and if you're familiar with that game's rules you'll know how to play it.  But if you don't know how to play it, basically there are four spots to insert any of the given tools (between three and five) laid out on the table (sometimes used more than once)

and once you confirm that you're done you'll go down a row and in the prior row will either be tiny green pieces signifying you got the pieces in the right spot (if you got it right at all), the red pieces mean you used the right tools but didn't place them in the correct spot, or nothing if you didn't use the appropriate tools.  On cake the correctly placed tools will be highlighted in green, on medium they will only be highlighted in the first segment, and in challenging you'll be forced to guess throughout, and if you didn't get it right by the seventh row you'll either choose to start again or forfeit.  If you succeed all the way Goofy will give you his hammer as a reward.

Apart from being one of a quartet of programmers (alongside Ken Bailey, Rick Richard, and Rick Moghadam) company founder Voldi Way made the music alongside Jeff Avella and fellow programmer Ken Bailey thanks to Chip Level Designs' music player

… which apparently was composed in 1992...  Suddenly I get the feeling this game may have been shelved for a bit prior to release.  😟  The soundtrack is very limited in terms of composition and is rather small, which is fitful for a very small game, and they all vary in quality.  Beanwick Castle's theme is simple and quaint in composition, the drawbridge puzzle theme sounds lowkey which was done by intention as it's a sound-based puzzle, the theme for the hall of paintings is soft and tranquil to listen to, the library theme is classy, the shrinking potion theme is mystical, and the theme inside Goofy's workshop has got tool-like aesthetic in the backdrop.  The songs are overall harmless, but Goofy's theme can grow to become obnoxious if you contend with him too long... it's not the worst song in the game though, for they saved that one for last.  Goody.

Once you have the five items in your inventory it's time to revisit the rooms you've been in to exchange them for beans; on cake mode they're automatically given to them, but in the subsequent difficulties you have the choice to do the puzzle again, decline the request, and to give the respective item which you must manually choose.

Left: "I wish my talking pose wasn't so awkwardly drawn with me stiffly holding out my hand like this"

Right: 🎵 I wish...  more than life...  more than jewels...  a carefree young lad...  🎵

Disappointed that they worked hard just to gather beans, they toss all five into the nearby well and wish to discover the reason for the rumbling in the ground.

Suddenly a beanstalk suddenly grows from the well and reveals that they were not ordinary beans that you threw in but magic ones.  At least with Mickey he's reacting appropriately to this situation unlike Minnie with her non-reaction.  So they climb up the beanstalk

until they find themselves in heaven, I suppose.

No gold coin-laying geese to chuck into the heavens,

though you do find the magic wand from Kemco's Mickey Mouse V: Mahō no Stick/Mickey Mouse: Magic Wands! beside a sleeping giant whom you discover to be the cause for the occasional earth shaking.  He's not the euphemism-named Willie the Giant (Designer Software must've not have had his likeness rights, but he would appear in the PlayStation One version of Mickey Mania, Mickey's Wild Adventure), just a random one.  The box and top label of the SNES cart suggest there are five puzzles in the package, but that is not accurate in the slightest for there is one more in the end, and this game has the brilliant idea of bookending itself on a

DAMN BLOCK SLIDING PUZZLE!!!  😱

I have only just one question here, and that question is WHY?!?  Of the kinds of puzzles I like and enjoy, the block sliding ones were never ones I particularly cared for even as a child; with block pushing puzzles you're at least given more liberty with movement and positioning, with block sliding puzzles it must all be done and constantly reorganized within the frame which is meticulously arduous and tedious work to get done (not to mention highly annoying and patience-testing especially with that barely existent and depressingly droning background music--do yourselves a favor and mute the TV at this point to salvage your ears).  The only positive thing I can say about this is that there's no timer to worry about.

When eventually you manage to form the alarm clock it rings thereby waking up the giant, and when you tell him that it was you who woke him up he thanks you for rousing him for he begins to tell you that he had the strangest dream.  Then after cutting to the ending with Mickey or Minnie waking up it all culminates to a credits sequence that lasts forever.

… mostly because it plays on an indefinite loop because like the game itself the credits are very small, and it'll keep on going

until you press Start which brings you back to the title screen as the character you had played as, and when you decide to play it again immediately after the first playthrough (regardless of difficulty and character choice) the castle and anything that was previously gray will become bronze.

I was aware of this game's existence several years ago, and of the 16-bit Mickey Mouse games it wasn't really one I was rushing to catch up with... well, at first anyway.  It wasn't until years later, after having caught up with several of the other games featuring him (both on the SFC/SNES and Genesis thanks to my RetroGen cartridge) that I decided to check the original SNES version out.  I knew it wasn't going to be a high quality title based on what I looked up, so I kept my expectations in check, but of the Mickey Mouse games available on Nintendo's 16-bit powerhouse Mickey's Ultimate Challenge is ultimately the weakest out of the six (well, seven technically, but I'll elaborate on that shortly).

Now I realize how it must come across as, but I do not think it is a bad game nor do I think it is a great or even good one.  I know this game was geared towards children, being an edutainment title, but I found the experience to be rather lightweight.

And, yeah, I know the Disney Mouse's other 16-bit venues were targeted towards child audiences as well, but at least with the other games there is an elemental sense of quality about them with enough substance that makes these titles appealing and/or enjoyable not just for the intended audience (the children) but for adults as well.  With those titles there was something for everyone, but that is not the case for today's game as I felt it to be a child's only affair.

Mickey's Ultimate Challenge does capture the Disney charm, there's no question about that, and it is harmless for the most part, but if anything has soured my experience it's the block sliding puzzle in the end (and partially Goofy's tool-themed Mastermind sequence).  I found that kind of puzzle to be ill-advised, which gets worse and convoluted with each subsequent difficulty setting; I can't imagine a child having the patience to do that sort of puzzle in the end, and given that children were the target audience for this game that may have been highly counterproductive on Designer Software's part.  I'd say that the title is a misnomer but surprisingly I agree with it: it is Mickey's ultimate challenge (and Minnie's if you play as her) if he (or she) has to put up with that bullcrap in the end!  😠

As for Goofy's segment, the medium and challenging difficulties came close to making me hate Mastermind due to the randomization and having to start right from the beginning if you failed (there are sections you have to go through, if you fail in say the third section then you must begin anew in the first section and it's very tedious to do it all over again) which is a shame because Mastermind was a game I enjoyed when I was younger.  I'll take the interactive take on Mastermind from that one Marvin the Martian-based stage in Behaviour Software's Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time (which I did play as a child and have a fondness for) over this; actually, I'd rather play Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time period.

If I can say anything nice about this game, though, it's that this game handled the "it was all a dream" ending cliché better than Capcom did with The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse before it.

There is a difference between how that game handled that ending as opposed to this one.  In the former title once you defeated Emperor Pete and saved Pluto the screen faded to black except for the characters

which faded back in to reveal that the game was a dream as Mickey was in bed.  The game ending in the realization that it was a dream wasn't so much an issue as much as the fact that it's merely treated like an afterthought (there was no hint or implication up until this point that it was all taking place inside of Mickey's subconscious) with Mickey going about like everything is normal with an "Oh, well!"  Not even things from his dream popping up in real life (those two geese in the "The End" screen after you wait a bit don't count) or any explanation for why he was in bed either (maybe make a case for Mickey getting knocked out after falling off a cliff looking for Pluto in the opening sequence which could easily explain everything, but there isn't one).  That game's "it was all a dream" ending I felt was infuriating because with one moment The Magical Quest went from having a point to having no point.

I greatly preferred the way Mickey's Ultimate Challenge handled that ending because it was established from the outset that it was taking place inside a dream and the elements within were magical and fantastical that it could only have been a dream, and the ending after waking the giant thereby waking you up has Mickey or Minnie finish the story they were reading the previous night to find that apparently they lived through it which takes the Mouse you controlled by surprise.  That at least was something!  How unfortunate it is then that the lesser game ends up receiving the most satisfactory ending.

I suppose that in all fairness one could view this game as a testament to how a developer can grow and improve over time, which is exactly what WayForward accomplished with the games they crafted for the past two decades which generally proved to be more successful in terms of quality and audience reception.  In that regard, they've come a long way since working on this game under their initial Designer Software label.

As for the publisher Hi-Tech Expressions, this was hardly the first time they handled the release of a Mickey Mouse game as previously they distributed the NES release of Beam Software's edutainment title Mickey's Safari in Letterland in 1993, and the last game they published that starred the Disney Mouse

Image from GameFAQs

was Beam Software's follow-up Disney-themed edutainment title on the NES Mickey's Adventure in Numberland which came out in March 1994, one month after Mickey's Ultimate Challenge's SNES release.  Pretty late in the NES lifespan given the SNES was a hot commodity, but at roughly the same time came out Nintendo's Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II in their 8-bit console too so there was still some life left in that console.

In 1994 Hi-Tech Expressions had changed their name to Hi-Tech Entertainment, but nothing ever came off the ground for them as they haven't released any more games.  One game that was planned to come out under their new label was

Image from GameFAQs

Visual Concepts' Mickey's Playtown Adventure: A Day of Discovery for the SNES which was pretty much complete (and had a box ready for it as well) but for some reason got cancelled; several years later an anonymous source dumped the ROM online so that it could be experienced (and since it never came out, there's no concern about depriving the publisher of potential revenue since it was never physically released).  I played the ROM over four years ago out of curiosity and here are some major takeaways:

it take place in an open-ended environment, Mickey wears actual clothing as opposed to his red shorts, Scrooge McDuck is in it and Mickey shares the same screen with him at one point, in this ensemble Disney game Daisy makes an appearance but not Donald (bizarrely enough), and it's bittersweet to hear digitized voice clips from Mickey's late voice actor Wayne Allwine on occasion.  Like today's game it's neither bad nor great or even good, but I do think that the intended child audience would eat it up.  It's a shame it never came out, as of the two Nintendo 16-bit Mickey Mouse edutainment games I consider Mickey's Playtown Adventure to be superior, which isn't saying much really, but at least there's no block sliding puzzles involved.

Mickey's Ultimate Challenge is well-intentioned and I feel it would be mostly enjoyed by the child audiences; there are things to like and appreciate about the game (mostly on a visual sense), but not enough to feel highly about it for apart from WayForward's connection to it it's rather unremarkable.  I don't think the developer had bad intentions, but the final puzzle doesn't do it any favors and I do believe it would've been better off had there been a different kind of puzzle to cap things off instead.

It's not the worst video game with Mickey Mouse in the lead role, it's playable enough, but there are better Disney licensed alternatives you could play than this regardless of the video game format.  If you want to play a superior game that has both Mickey and Minnie in it I recommend The Great Circus Mystery instead as it's enjoyable and can be played up to two players, if you are curious about this game it does take roughly fifteen or so minutes to beat depending on the difficulty and/or how much you struggle during certain puzzles--children will get the most out of it, adults or more experienced gamers on the other hand may vary in mileage.  If you want to play a WayForward game, however, I recommend you check out their other content instead.

My Personal Score: 5.5/10

d(^-^)bTO EACH THEIR OWNd(^-^)b

● I sure chose a simple and lightweight game to talk about before I turn 28 this Friday (April 5th); at least with the other games there's more ground to cover and enough material to work with.  I'm sure some may find I did an underwhelming job talking about this game, and I apologize if that was the case, but here's to doing a better job with my next video game review (whatever it may be).

Happy 25th Anniversary, Mickey's Ultimate Challenge!

(whether it deserves it or not)

Thank you for reading my review, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think (neither spam nor NSFW allowed); hope you have a great day, take care!

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There are worse Nintendo 16-bit games out there than this, but by the same token there are better ones also--especially since most don't involve block sliding puzzles--and one such game I'd play over this is---

Again??  Can Produce's failed platformer please just leave me alone this year?!?  😫