Mickey's Space Adventure

The Good
Like Donald Duck's Playground and Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood before it, Sierra once again teamed up with Disney to create another children's game. Mickey's Space Adventure. Of course, the main character is Mickey who teams up with Pluto in search of the seven crystals that were stolen from Oron by an inter-planetary space thief, and its segments scattered around the solar system. Without it, the citizens of Oron have no idea about their history. And not only will Mickey have to put the crystals back together again, but they must be put together in the correct order.

Unlike Troll's Tale and Winnie where you have to select the path that you will take in order to proceed further, Space Adventure is a similar to Sierra's future adventure games, except that there is no typing parser involved. Instead, you have to select a verb-noun combination from a list of options that you are given, and to make things happen like they should, select an appropriate combination of words. If you happen to select a "nonsense" combination like EAT NORTH, all the game says to you is "Huh?".

The traveling from planet to planet is all done inside your spaceship, but the planet that you need to go to next isn't quite so obvious, unless you have some knowledge about space. If you have none, then you either read some text books and look for the answer there, or find the answer in the game's manual, but seeing as I don't have the manual with me, I can't confirm this. On most planets, the crystal segments that you need to get are out in the open. Some planets, on the other hand, require you to do a little digging. Before you go ahead and set foot on a planet, you need to wear your spacesuit due to the hazardous conditions on each planet. When you are out exploring, you better hurry up and find those crystals, otherwise your air supply will get low, as you can expect in real life. You also need to change disks every time you attempt to leave the spaceship. If you decide that you need a rest and want to resume the game at a later date, you can save the game, but you can only do this in your spaceship.

Consider Space Adventure to be an educational game, rather than an adventure. On most screens, the game tells you what the picture is about, whereas on others, you are presented with some brief information on the planet, though it can't be compared with Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe Edition, with its planet summary sheet and rather detailed information database that covers everything.

The game can be played in either CGA or EGA, but the game will not be as detailed in CGA as you have to suffer having a 4-color palette. With EGA, the game is colorful and everything is colored in exactly like Disney's old cartoon show. (Most Disney's characters like Mickey, Goofy, Pluto, Donald, and others have now fazed out.) The sound comes through the PC Speaker, which might not be a problem for you if you did have a PC back in 1986. The beeps that it produces are not bad for a kid's game.

The Bad
The only gripe that I had with this game is the way that you have to press a button twice after highlighting the "noun' in among the list of commands, rather than once.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Space Adventure is still an adventure game, where it teaches you about each planet in the solar system, and the game will take about an hour to complete. Even if you complete Space Adventure the first time, you are encourage to discover the alternate ending. Can you die in this game? I'll leave that up to you to explore each planet thoroughly and see if you can.

The Good
In this Disney licensed game, Mickey and Pluto are travelling around Solar System and searching for nine crystals. Each at one planet (in case of gas giants, it's on nearby moon). I am big fan of astronomy (I made astronomy themed game as well), so despite of childish game setup I gave it a try and finished the game (around 3 hours). Now to good points:

• astronomy education - I really appreciate that. On every planet, there's basic educational text and facts about it, so that's really nice.

• graphics - for 1985 title it has nice full screen and true Disney graphics. Running 16-color Tandy version was a pain (only DOSBox-x which allows to setup machine to 128kB RAM in Advanced settings, then machine type Tandy). But because screens are static, I didn't mind also CGA composite mode.

• it's Mickey and Pluto - and there's surprise on Pluto (which was still a planet back then btw) :)

And in the end, technical execution was well (as it was with most of Sierra titles in those times already).

The Bad
The game is a bit repetitive. On every planet, there are several screens where majority is just deco, with no gameplay elements, and only few screens are important. Also you can run out of oxygen, so you have to return to spaceship and then go back to planet surface again. Rinse and repeat every time.

Also, I'm not sure about game's target group. It's really easy for adults, in the end, it's Disney game. But can be quite hard for children of age which are excited about Mickey Mouse. By its difficulty, it's for children about 10 years I guess.

The Bottom Line
Cute attempt for educational adventure game. Technically well executed. It's just gameplay / difficulty which for me is somehow not very well defined. For 5-7 years old (which can be excited about Mickey), it's a bit too hard, for 10 years old (which can beat it), it can be already quite uninteresting.