Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse

[Aarzak]

SNES Alpha 2 was impressive technically, but gameplay-wise it was shit. It barely played like the arcade/PS1/Saturn ports and was slowdown-ridden.

SNES Mickey Mania looked mostly similar to the Genesis version, but had a higher color count and some extra layers of parallax here and there. But as the gentleman who replied to my post explained, it suffered due to not being natively designed on the SNES hardware.

[Barone]

SNES Mickey Mania looked mostly similar to the Genesis version, but had a higher color count and some extra layers of parallax here and there.

SNES version lacks the staircase sequence though, which is pure 16-bit awesomeness IMO.

[The Jackal]

SNES Alpha 2 was impressive technically

That is was what I meant.

SNES version lacks the staircase sequence though, which is pure 16-bit awesomeness IMO.

Yeah, I was amazed they didn't have that in the SNES port. Any technical reason it wasn't included perhaps, or just laziness on the dev's part?

[Kamahl]

That is was what I meant.

Yeah, I was amazed they didn't have that in the SNES port. Any technical reason it wasn't included perhaps, or just laziness on the dev's part?

There's one of the staircase scenes (the one near the end), so I really haven't got a clue.

[The Jackal]

Bump!

Found this video which gives a very good comparison of the two versions. It's worth a watch, but word of warning, the comedy skits they do are painful to watch. I'd suggest to skip 'em and watch the informative parts.



If you don't want to watch the video, they basically say the Genesis version is the superior version. Having a better screen resolution, more sound effects, better music placement and generally better graphics. The SNES version on the other hand, had some graphical affects exclusive to it (like a night sky complete with moon and stars in the Ghost House level), title cards having a background to them, and -better- music (their opinion, but it's wrong ). Negatives noted were loading between each stage, weird music placement, with some songs being altogether absent, far less sound effects and some stages lacking graphical affects (like the snowfall in the window during the final boss fight).

I think it's safe to say Mania was written for the Genesis first, and then ported to the SNES. During development it gained a few things, but lost a lot as well, maybe because Travelers Tales weren't familiar with the hardware? I don't know, I just can't understand why the SNES game has or needs loading.

[Kamahl]

My guess is that they just ported over the compression they used on the genesis version (with little to no optimisation towards the SNES CPU), and it ended up being slow enough that the game has to stop and load.

[Thief]

Their comedy skits used to be better in the early episodes. At least to me they were. Still like these guys, even though we started off on the wrong foot due to how bad their comparisons were. But seems like they've listened to the YouTube comments or something as they got better at this Genesis VS SNES comparison thing.

[The Jackal]

I watched a couple of their other videos - they're skits were much better in them, I found.

[bigladiesman]

Another fantastic effort by those guys at Traveller's Tales: as an tribute to a cultural icon, this game is the best Disney-licensed product on the console (however, I think the Illusion games are better overall, just that they aren't “tributes”). It's striking in all aspects: the first level is one of the most spectacular beginnings in a MD game: one really feels that the contemporary Mickey has gotten back to his young days with Ub Iwerks. Playability wise, Mickey Mania is not as addictive as the majority of its Disney siblings on the MD, but it's still good enough, with good controls and a moderate difficulty that makes the game very accessible.
One of the best titles of the late official MD catalog, no doubt about it.