Disney icon Mickey Mouse becomes videogame hero
Mickey Mouse makes his US debut as a videogame hero Tuesday in "Wasteland," featuring an alternate world that includes Walt Disney Company's long forgotten characters and attractions.
"Disney Epic Mickey" for Wii consoles puts players into the large yellow shoes of the famous cartoon mouse and challenges them to use wits, paint, and paint thinner to defeat enemies, save old friends and restore a ruined land.
Mickey has the power to erase characters or restore them to glory, with his actions influencing the course of the game, according to Warren Spector of Junction Point Studio, which crafted the software.
"Mickey hasn't been the videogame hero he was meant to be," Spector said of the character introduced in 1928 while providing a glimpse of the title at a conference in Los Angeles earlier this year. "That's about to change."
Mickey's foes in the game include "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit," a pioneering Disney cartoon figure turned bitter because the mouse soared to stardom while he sank into obscurity.
The game will mark the first time Oswald has appeared in a new Disney story since 1928.
Disney Interactive Studios is introducing Mickey's videogame as Nintendo works to keep players enchanted with the Wii in the face of motion-sensing controls being added to rival consoles built by Microsoft and Sony.
Wii launched in 2006 with innovative motion-sensing controls and became a must-have videogame console credited with expanding the market far beyond "hardcore gamers" devoted to shooter titles.
Microsoft just hit the market with hot-selling Kinect hardware that lets people control Xbox 360 games with body gestures alone. Sony unleashed Move hardware which allows motion-control of games on PlayStation 3 consoles.
Nintendo reported that Wii consoles and DS handheld gaming gadgets were hot sellers in the United States during the prime holiday shopping week marked by "Black Friday," the day after the Thanksgiving in this country.
The Japanese videogame titan estimated that it sold 600,000 Wii consoles and 900,000 devices from its DS line of handheld game gadgets between November 21 and 27.
"US shoppers bought about 9,000 Nintendo hardware systems nonstop for every hour of every day during the week of Black Friday," said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.
Fils-Aime maintained that the strong start to the traditional shopping season meant that Wii consoles haven't lost their magic in the market.
Nintendo enticed shoppers with deals on bundles of videogame hardware and software.
Third-party game makers such as Disney, Ubisoft, and Activision fueled the momentum with new titles for play on Nintendo systems, according to Fils-Aime.
(c) 2010 AFP
