The Secret Origins of Epic Mickey

By Stephen Wark

At the start of his presentation, Warren Spector promised that he’d run over his allotted time, and it was a promise he gleefully kept: his talk about the development of Epic Mickey was longer than the usual IGDA presentation, but was filled with cartoon shorts, and funny voices.

Warren began by observing that Mickey Mouse is likely the most important thing invented in 1928. Nearly everyone has seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon, nearly everyone has an affection for Mickey and his adventures. He has a life outside of film and television: he’s been in theme parks, comic books, merchandise and in video games. But he hadn’t appeared in any significant media since 2002. The goal of Epic Mickey brings him back to the spotlight, and to help him conquer the video game world.

Mickey Mouse’s character has changed with the times, moving from Charlie Chaplin whimsy to Fred Astaire romance, to swashbuckling adventure in the style of Douglas Fairbanks to his present incarnation as a model suburbanite. The first step of the design process was getting back to everything that made Mickey Mouse cool in the first place.

To illustrate this, Warren played an early short called The Mad Doctor, which he described as “scary” and a “great bit of level design.” On a stormy night, Mickey explored a mad scientist’s mansion to save Pluto. From the collapsing bridges to the hordes of skeletal minions to the first-person, Castle Wolfenstein-style corridors, Mickey certainly handled himself with platformer-like aplomb.

But the story of Epic Mickey actually began before Warren and Junction Point Studios got involved. The original concept of the game was developed in-house via a special Disney internship program: Mickey is lost in a world of forgotten characters and rediscovers Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Warren met with Disney executives to pitch them on an epic fantasy Deux Ex-style game in 2005 but the executives pitched him on the idea of a Mickey Mouse game. Once they mentioned Oswald, Warren confessed that he was hooked.

Who is Oswald? He’s Walt Disney’s first cartoon star, a fact not commonly known. For 18 months, Oswald was the most popular cartoon character in the world. Walt Disney lost the rights to the character when he was fired from Universal Studios, and then created the familiar Mickey on the train ride home, and history was made.

Warren then played an Oswald short, called “Oh What a Night” to show the character’s potential. Bringing Oswald back to the public eye was at least as important as showcasing Mickey in a new adventure. (Fun fact: In 2006, Disney CEO Bob Iger traded the rights of sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC Universal to reclaim the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.)

Concept development started with a team of three people. By the end of the project, the team had grown to 285 people, including outsource teams. The goal was to make Mickey a video game star in a game that anyone can play. Just like Pixar makes films that anyone can enjoy, Warren wanted to make a game for everyone. This involved mashing-up genres, so it’s not just a platformer, not just an action-adventure game, not just a role-playing game. Let the players decide how they wanted to play.

This turned into the core mechanic. During his adventures, Mickey uses either paint to create new constructs to solve problems, or uses thinner to remove elements from the world. The more the player uses one or the other resource, then the more of that resource they’d find in the future.

This brings back the recurring theme of choice and consequence in the game. This is a common motif in video games now, but it’s not a common theme in other entertainment media.

To determine the art and animation style, the team researched everything they could about Mickey Mouse and the history of Disney, using all the material available in the Disney Archives, from the animation cells, original cells, sketches, maquettes, to the original artist contracts. They talked to the animation experts. John Lasseter helped review the story.

The first challenge was to bring Mickey Mouse to life in the game. Mickey’s motions and behavior are classic and familiar, so the game had to recreate that faithfully, with the added complication of looking good from all angles. Warren pointed out that film studios, such as Pixar, cheat with the animations because they know where the camera is at all times. Videogames don’t have the luxury of knowing what the player is looking at any given moment.

They tested animations, using the real rigs and models, against classic animation sequences, to determine if they’d succeeded in capturing the style. Animation tests were validated by the senior executives in the Animated Features department, where they gave very specific feedback...like “Mickey needs more drag on his knuckles when he runs.”

Pixar studios introduced Warren to the concept of the colour story: show the all the colours used in every scene to illustrate how the colour changes tell their own story. This is a technique that is used in the Pixar films.

This attention to detail was part of an overall production mantra to “get it right” no matter what “it” is. Getting it “almost right” is easy, Warren said, but getting it “really right” is hard.

The biggest production challenge occurred about halfway through the process, when the game became a Wii-exclusive. Yes, this meant that the team’s energies could be focused on a single set of hardware, but there were consequences to that choice. Especially because there wasn’t a line of Wii code ready. So they had to start over. In 2008. This was astonishing, from Warren’s perspective, after so much development time, but it demonstrated Disney’s commitment to “getting it right.”

During the lively Q&A session, Warren fielded questions about part of the game that he freely admits was a “one of the stupidest creative decisions he’s made”: the lack of full voice acting in the game. There was a narrative story to go with the game – the dialogue was written and ready – but Warren decided to stick with Mario or Zelda-style bark-speak using the best cartoon actors in the business.

Why? Because it amused Warren to imagine that Oswald, being a silent cartoon star, wouldn’t want anyone else to talk if he couldn’t. It was an inside joke that got a little out of hand. As is fitting for one of Warren’s project, the choice resulted in certain consequences (but he wouldn’t necessarily make the same choice a second time).