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Denver, 5:05 PM
Mon Dec 21
39 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/05/09
I wish people in my fantasy football league would go for that. I'll take Miles Austin for the rights to my stick figure avatar, Nedly. #epicmickey
11/05/09
Starting in the early 1920's, a young Walt Disney is just starting out as an animator and making cartoons for a company he worked for. His first creation was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
As time went on, his Oswald cartoons were a success and made big money for the company (which one, I don't know, I need to brush up on my Disney history). Walt felt that since his creation was doing so well that he deserved a nice pay raise for his work.
The company's response was to fire him and keep the character all to themselves.
Walt certainly showed them when he eventually made his own animation company and created Mickey Mouse, seeing as how he could no longer legally use Oswald.
Flash forward to 2006 when the announcers for Disney owned ABC's Monday Night Football begin to slowly fade into the background as Disney puts newer announcers in. However, the announcers were still under contract to ABC and couldn't compete.
NBC, wanting to get some good announcing talent for their Sunday Night Football, wanted to pick up Al Michaels and other Monday Night Football announcers. So NBC called ABC up and wanted to find a way to haggle Al Michaels' and friends' contracts in exchange for something they had.
Well as it turned out, through a weird twist of fate, the General Electric owned NBC Universal had the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney looks at it and goes "This is our chance to get a piece of the Disney history back", and gives the announcers to NBC in exchange for the rights to Oswald back.
So now, with the rights secured, Disney can re-release the old Oswald cartoons, and also use the character for future Disney works.
Epic Mickey just seems to be one of the first new uses of Oswald, and frankly, this is like animation buff geekery in overdrive here.
Now if Al Michaels actually narrated a part of the game, THAT would be funny.
~Otaku-Man #epicmickey
11/04/09
11/05/09
11/05/09
[corporate.disney.go.com] #epicmickey
11/05/09
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11/05/09
[corporate.disney.go.com] #epicmickey
11/04/09
They got a veteran sportscaster who is a household name in America....so a super obscure Disney character from the 20s can appear in a Wii game.
And I whole heartedly agree with the NYT when they say that "Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people." At least in the states....over here..there is no easier way to get people to buy your cheap plastic crap then to slap Mickey onto it. #epicmickey
11/04/09
11/04/09
[sports.espn.go.com]
"Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice," Michaels said, referring to what the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets as compensation for releasing coach Herm Edwards from his contract. "I'm going to be a trivia answer someday." #epicmickey
11/04/09
Of course, if Disney hadn't lobbied so hard to destroy our copyright law, we all would have that oppertunity. #epicmickey
11/04/09
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10/30/09
Disney knows how to do a proper ad campaign. #disneyepicmickey
10/31/09
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10/30/09
So, don't buy it, don't play it, and don't blame your loss on the anyone but yourself. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
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10/30/09
Read the Game Informer article about the aspirations of this game, not so much the graphics or game play or anything else - what it's trying to achieve, and will succeed at, is that you're going to have a great protagonist and all his life breathed back into him. Mickey used to be an amalgamation of Goofy, Donald, Pluto, et al. and now he's the "aw shucks" personality-less team leader. He's adored and even he doesn't know why. This will be a story to restore that feeling, and will be his own journey of re-discovery through his purpose based on the failure of those before him. By that same token, if the game does it right, you, too, will discover things about yourself alongside him.
If it delivers, we're going to have a good, genre/platform changing game that sets the bar. If it doesn't, then we're going to have a good platformer. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
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10/30/09
I don't know how much it will cost them, but I definitely think the wrong choice was made when it became an exclusive. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
@geiko: #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
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11/01/09
If the game has some mechanic that absolutely CANNOT work outside of a Wii thanks to its controller, then I could understand. Considering the game initially was not planned for the Wii though, I think they could have found a way to make it work.
Keeping it on the Wii restricts the number of people who may play it. Just because Wi is the best selling console around does not guarantee sales eother. There have been more than enough stats posted to back this up. I just think they're restricting their audience too tightly... especially when the game isn't intended to be simply for kids. You would think for a new IP you'd at least consider multiple opportunities. #disneyepicmickey
11/01/09
If you are still "waggling," or even think you still have to, you haven't played in a ver long time. #disneyepicmickey
11/01/09
"Making it work" is exactly why so many multi-platforms are having so much trouble this generation. It either looks off on one, requires a different style of art, or new controls. If more developers had the good since to stop trying to "make it work" and instead "make it right," there would be a lot less crappy games over all.
Yes, making in exclusive restricts the audiance, but that goes back to the "work vs right" arugement above. The biggest problem developers have on the Wii is advertising, they simply assume they don't have to do it. Thye let sites like Kotaku pick up a few stories, throw up an ad at GameFAQS a week before release and assume that's all that is needed. But this is a Disney game, and they are good at advertising. The DS Kingdom Hearts game is one of the very very few advertisments I've seen around here. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
On the other hand, Spector's insistence that Wii games must be their own thing suggests that there was a significant chunk of (important) people that disagreed with him ... #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
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10/30/09
Noo, book to game! The movie version of Northern Lights was an abomination, they totally gutted the story to appeal to the American audience. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
We're all going to pretend that that movie never happened. Got it? #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
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10/30/09
Well that's ok then as the Wii can do 480p! No more need for you to worry. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
If that happens, I hope they still work on this Wii version since it's suits the Wii best.
10/30/09
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10/30/09
...Unless you were talking about how it was originally an ARPG, in which I'm pretty sure they said that they switched back to turn-based due to DS limitations that led to the possibility that multiplayer would be clunky as hell. #disneyepicmickey
10/30/09
10/30/09
Either way, this DQIX issue (with a number of serious dedicated fans who probably disliked the direction the game was going towards) can't really be compared to what's happening with Epic Mickey (in which nobody really knows what it's going to be like in the long run, and the only people trashing it appear to be those who want it on their console of choice/don't really like the overall look of the game judging from screenshots so far).
Oh, and many, MANY thanks for approving me. I've been waiting to be approved for about 10 or so months.