Disney Adventures in the Magic Kingdom

The Good
You can generally bet that you’re in for a treat if you pick up an NES game developed or published by Capcom. Out of all the companies that worked on the original Nintendo platform, few can claim to have produced such consistently high-quality titles. That’s not to say that they were infallible, but few, if any, of their early games are bad beyond reason. While licensed titles are generally known to be mediocre in this day and age, it wasn’t the case back in the early days, and Capcom did some of the best. Of particular interest are their Disney licensed titles. Between Duck Tales and Chip ‘n Dale, Capcom made the most of their license. Today, I’m going to look at their lamest Disney title: Adventures in the Magic Kingdom.

I’ve been to Walt Disney World in Florida twice in my life, once as a child, and again as an early teen. I can confirm that it is indeed a pretty magical and surreal place, with one major problem: everybody knows it’s a magical place, and they want to go there. So the place is packed wall to wall with people at every hour of the day, and the line-ups are, like, a bajillion miles long. Plus, everything is so damned expensive and eye-catching. You should totally visit there one day, it’s great! Adventures in the Magical Kingdom takes place in, I think, DisneyLand in California, but it’s a more idealized version. All the walkways are replaced by grass, it’s sparsely populated, and there are no lines to get on rides. It’s really strange to think that anyone could base a game on an amusement park, but Capcom aren’t the only people who’ve tried.

The premise of the game revolves around finding six silver keys to open the castle. To achieve this, you must complete six mini-games. Five of them are based on the park’s various rides, while one is simple trivia given by people scattered around the park. The mini-games cover quite a variety of play-styles. Autopia plays a bit like a Road Fighter, Space Mountain is a lot like Simon Says, and Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean are both side-scrolling platformers. Then there’s Big Thunder Mountain, which doesn’t really resemble anything that I can think of, where you must navigate a mine-cart by selecting different routes while trying to finish in the proper station.

Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion are definitely the best of the bunch. Given Capcom’s history with platformers, it’s no surprise that these two are pretty well done. They both have tight control and present a comfortable challenge. Better yet, they feature varied backgrounds, and nice, subtle, visual touches such as rain spattering on the windows of Haunted Mansion. Neither of them have much to do with the rides outside of pirates and ghosts, but it’s probably better that way. As an added bonus, the music in the Pirates of the Caribbean level really pops.

The Bad
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is too hard for its own good, but not hard enough to extend its life to any meaningful length. While it seems to me that it’s a game aimed at a young audience, I can’t imagine any of them traversing many of the levels. In each of the mini-games there’s a degree of memorization required to complete them, disabling you from completing them on your first attempt. The worst of them is Big Thunder Mountain, which requires you to find the best route to the end through trial and error. Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean are both relentlessly unforgiving platformers. Some of the jumps in them are stretched out to the extreme, requiring you to position your character slightly over the edge of the precipice to make it across.

Yet, despite the difficulty, it’s possible to comfortable finish the entire game in under an hour. Each of the mini-games are short on their own, and there are so few of them that even with constant deaths, you’ll be finished very quickly. A lot of the challenge is even offset by unlimited continues and the ability to buy extra lives, health, and even temporary invincibility from the game’s menu. While not using the menu allows you to set your own challenges to get more out of the game, I’m not giving the game credit for player-made limitations.

Worse still, Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is completely devoid of any alternate goals or final challenges. Once you collect the silver keys and open the castle door, that’s it, game over. No hidden antagonist appears to steal the keys away again, no final stage in which you explore the castle to find the golden key, hell, they don’t even let you see the parade. All that work you did for the thankless jerks and all you get is a still frame of them looking happy with “The End” printed on it. After that, is there any reason to play again? Well, I guess there’s always more Disney trivia for you to solve.

I have a fondness for completely ridiculous storylines, but I think Adventures in the Magic Kingdom might have taken it to the extreme. Apparently Goofy has forgotten the key to the Kingdom’s gate and the parade can’t start without it. Luckily, he just left it in the castle, but oops, you need six keys to open the castle door, and he’s lost them in the park’s various attractions. So what do Mickey, Donald, and Goofy do? Why, they make you go get them, of course! Mickey looks straight at you as if to say, “We’ll send the guy in the hat! No one will care if he dies on one of my amusement park’s many dangerous rides.” Okay, so the plot is just there to set things up and as I’ve said, 8-bit storylines are never important, but boy, it raises so many questions.

The Bottom Line
I think Capcom should be commended for creating a complete game around exploring an amusement park, but it comes across as a little rushed. Five mini-games and a handful of trivia questions don’t make for much of a game, especially when each of them comes in but one flavour. Plus, while none of them are putridly bad, none of them are all that great either. Adventures in the Magic Kingdom isn’t a bad game, but it is MEDIOCRE. You’d be better off playing one of Capcom’s other Disney licensed titles, but come to think of it, most of them are pretty short, too. All I can say is: thank god they didn’t try to make the “It’s a Small World” ride into a mini-game.