It feels unusual to get a Mickey Mouse video game in 2024 where he’s not covered in blood or sporting fangs. Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is proof legit Mickey games still exist — even if they happen to be remakes.
The original Epic Mickey was released for the Wii in 2010. A collaboration between Disney and famed developer Warren Spector, it was the studio’s own attempt to give Mickey some “edge” by putting him in a dark universe and giving him a heroic goal. The game is a platformer where Mickey must use a magic paintbrush to repair the broken world of Wasteland, ultimately confronting the one behind the destruction, the Shadow Blot (why he isn’t the Phantom Blot I have no clue).
Epic Mickey is not only a good game but an actual footnote in Mickey’s history — it’s the first time Walt Disney’s pre-Mickey character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, appeared in a Disney production. The character was owned by Universal until Disney traded the contract of ESPN sportscaster Al Michaels for him. Oswald is public domain today, being older than Mickey, but no one does anything with him since it’s not as tantalizing.
Epic Mickey did very well on the Wii and led to the creation of an Epic Mickey 2…which fared worse both in sales and with critics. There would be no Epic Mickey 3, but we’ll always have the first one.
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is expected to be mostly the exact same as what was released fourteen years ago, albeit with “a variety of upgrades” according to THQ. They refer to it as an “enhanced remake” yet have not revealed what enhancements await. Since the original was on the Wii it had to deal with a limited set of buttons and just one control stick. An improved camera system would be keen.
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed will be released for Playstation 5, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, XBox Series X/S, XBox One and PC later this year.
