Squeak Squad (Michael Andretti's World GP, Mickey Mousecapade, Mickey's Adventure In Numberland, Mickey's Safari In Letterland)

The first game today is so unmemorable that I actually have to look up what it's called. Michael Andretti's World GP, or something. Oh, I got it. Too much football talk, I could have sworn there was a cup in there or something. To its credit, Michael what's-his-name shows up in the game to give you tips on how to take the curves. Nice of him. Shame I didn't really grasp the controls. To invoke the future a bit, this is just a less good Rad Racer... that replaces flipping and wasting valuable time with the ability to spin out and waste less valuable time. Except touching the dirt at all slows you to a crawl, and getting back on the road while you're crawling is excruciating. Which, since I'm shit at taking curves even with Michaelangelo's advice, happened often. I was not a fan, so let's talk about Mickey Mouse instead.

Mickey Mousecapade. Let's clean house here. People don't like this game. It did create this bit of silliness. There exists a ponified animation of that. Froborr and the Chaos God continue to haunt our blog. I'll get the feather duster, but first. Everything I've heard about this game prepared me for something awful, a black mark on the NES... and you know what? Bullshit. It ain't no platforming masterpiece, but it's passable... until a certain thing. I'll get to what made me put it down, but before that we should address Capcom. They published this thing in lands that existed in the late 80's, and it was the first shot of the great Capcom/Disney alliance. It led to Chip and Dale. Ducktales. Darkwing Duck. Talespin... okay, Talespin nobody talks about but give me time to get up to there. Mickey Mousecapade, when compared to those other three, is a dud that lacks the electrified spirit of Pure Platforming that possessed Capcom back in the day. It's not really fair to hold that against them because this is a damn Hudson Soft game and not a Capcom game. Taken out of its context, it's fine! It's the most fun game of this entry, I can say that for damn sure. Although special ire goes to level three, which is a maze of doors in a forest that sends you back to previous parts of the forest if you get it wrong. And some of the correct doors are hidden. It's trial and error bullshit, and I stopped after getting sent back to the very beginning for like the fifth time. THAT part sucks but the rest is decent. I remember seeing the solution in one of those Nintendo Power scans I have here. Better look that up.

Oh lord alive. Educational Mickey Mouse games. From 1992 and 1993. By Hi-Tech Expressions and Beam Software, the duo that brought us the wonderful Hunt For Red October video game. In contrast to that ridiculously difficult mess, here is a game made for children. Literal children who need help with letters and numbers, I guess. A silly idea to begin with, but an old man playing an old video game about finding the number 5 in an observatory while playing as Mickey Mouse is even sillier. Children would have cared in... 1988. 1992? 1993? The NES was dying. Beautiful things were blossoming as the Destructor's blades were being sharpened. Lush wonders of pure Valyan essence, existing side-by-side with utter dreck birthed from the darkest Nightmares, the failed experiments of Lady Capitalism. Scenes and machinations that small children would have no idea about, at the time. They just played their Mickey Mouse game and learned how to spell "hat" as Mickey's digitized voice rang out of the TV, compressed due to the limitations of alchemy, but clear enough nonetheless. Even Mickey's influence was waning in those days; Mario was more popular than he, according to the lore of the time. The times were changing, and the NES was falling into legend.

Oh, but how Mighty it was, and how Mighty it would face its destruction.