MickeyMania2.gen
Hi, my name is Brandal. I was an intern at SEGA of America during the 1995 season, and my main job was checking various third party Genesis games for quality assurance. Being a QA Tester is pretty hard work, but is important to ensure that the SEGA Genesis' library is up to snuff with the competition.
One day, I got a package from Sony Imagesoft pertaining to their upcoming game: Mickey Mania 2. I've tested out the original and liked it, so I was excited to play another game replicating the style of old Walt Disney cartoons. I opened up the package and saw that the only contents are a single floppy disk containing the game, which was strange since usually packages sent to the SEGA QA department also contain materials that the game would be sold with at retail stores. I shrugged it off and put the disk into my PC.
Inside the disk was the game ROM itself, named "MickeyMania2.gen." Usually .gen files are used by Western developers, but the previous Mickey Mania (Developed by a British team) was in a ".bin" file. "Nevermind that, must just be an inconsistancy." I thought. I flashed the file to an EEPROM to begin testing.
When I powered on the test bench Genesis, the game started with the usual SEGA logo, but then it cut to black. The blackness was shown for, and I counted with a stopwatch, six minutes and nine seconds. As I was started to get bored, the game's title screen finally appeared, it was the words "Mickey Mania Too" on a plain blue background alongside text telling me to press the start button. So I did what the game told me to do.
It started with a pencil drawing out an image of Mickey Mouse wearing a cowboy costume and using two guns, clearly this level is based off of the "Two Gun Mickey" cartoon but there was no level title card to make sure. I was immediately brought to Mickey Mouse standing within a western town, but there were no enemies in sight.
I guided Mickey to the right, and he kept walking by a bunch of buildings, there were still no other living beings in sight though. Suddenly, after walking for a few minutes, an explosion could be heard. I let go of the Directional Button, but Mickey kept walking in what seemed like a cutscene of some sort. There was no music, and the screen was getting darker every second.
Eventually, Mickey Mouse finally found that cowboy Mickey from earlier, but something was wrong. His eyes were blackened out, and he held a weird grin. The playable Mickey Mouse stood with what seemed to be a "What the heck?" expression. The screen cut to red, and text appeared stating the following:
"Mah boy, this peace is what all true warriors strive for!"
"Alright?" I said, being rather confused. The screen then suddenly cut back to a scene of the playable Mickey Mouse and the cowboy Mickey staring at each other, with the screen still getting darker every second. Eventually the playable Mickey broke the silence by speaking.
"You know, why are we doing this thing where we stare at each other and see who doesn't close their eyes the longest? I think this is dumb as gosh!" The playable Mickey asked, pretty clearly too.
"You never asked before?" The cowboy Mickey replied. "You better prepare to die!"
"Well, do it quick, so that it'll hurt less." the playable Mickey remarked, unamused.
The screen then cut to a 3D boss fight between the playable Mickey Mouse and the cowboy Mickey, I decided to get some ammo to shoot the cowboy Mickey with for the first step, so I used the D-Button to go backwards. The cowboy Mickey followed my every move, so I obtained a powerup to run faster.
Finally, after getting the ammo needed, I shot the cowboy Mickey once. Somehow, that single shot killed him and left a single note. I picked up the note and tried reading it, but the game wouldn't let me before cutting to black.
"Well done, you killed the monster. Now get out while you still can!" Text that appeared on a blue background said. The game then went into a level title card saying that the next level was based off of the infamous cartoon: "Suicide Mouse" from 19XX.
The playable Mickey Mouse started walking in a dark city that looped on for hours, there seemed to still be no signs of enemies anywhere. The music playing in the background was the same as the Steamboat Willie level from the first Mickey Mania, so there seemed to be an aesthetic clash. Suddenly, after a few moments, a smiling black and white Mickey started chasing the playable Mickey.
A bunch of spikes were appearing, I jumped over them with the C button with ease but the black and white Mickey kept getting closer. I jumped over another row of spikes, and then a row of lava, but that wasn't stopping the chaser. Eventually, it caught the playable Mickey Mouse, and it cut to what seemed to be hell.
I guided the playable Mickey through the hellish stage, and finally managed to throw some marbles at what seemed to be enemies. It seemed like I was finally playing an actual level, and I was even having a little fun! However, that was short lived. I had to fall down a pit at the end, and met up with the Suicide Mickey. Once again, a staring contest started between the playable Mickey and the Suicide Mickey.
The suicide Mickey had the same grim smile from before, and he was hunched back like he was in the original film, his face was pretty blank aside from the smile and the eyes. It didn't seem like he was actually alive.
"You don't scare me!" The playable Mickey Mouse said, but soon after the screen cut to red. I wasn't sure what would happen next, but it sure wasn't that good of a sign. I noticed that the Genesis was heating up a little bit, which isn't supposed to happen.
(TO BE COMPLETED LATER)
Written by Zdrmonster
Content is available under CC BY-SA
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