Do you ever have something on your backlog for so long that it gets remade before you play it? I sure have. As you may have guessed by the title of this column you’re reading, that game is Epic Mickey.

You see, growing up, I never had a Wii. That’s right, I was one of the 4 people on the planet who didn’t have one. I was a PlayStation kid, and no matter how much I liked Mario, I just didn’t care for motion controls. But every now and then, a Wii exclusive came along that got me kind of interested. Not interested enough to get Wii, but interested. Epic Mickey was one of those games.

While I was never much of a Mickey Mouse fan (I’m a Bugs Bunny guy), something about this game spoke to me. I don’t know what it was, but whenever I saw commercials for it and when I eventually watched reviews, I thought “that’s a game I’d like to play.” I never did though. I wouldn’t be writing this if I had.

It had a sequel that was released on PS3, which I thought about getting. How could I get the sequel without playing the original? My naive-ass thought surely they’d eventually port it to PS3. After all, if Epic Mickey 2 is on PS3, eventually the first one will be as well. It never did, and so I never played it. I eventually got a Wii U, and since that system plays all Wii games, guess what was on the top of my list? That’s right, buying Epic Mickey. Guess what I never did? That’s right, buy Epic Mickey.

That’s just how it goes sometimes. You’re interested in a game you can’t get and by the time you can, you just don’t get around to it. Backlogs, am I right?

Cut to many years later, and they announce Epic Mickey Rebrushed. Finally, I’ll be able to play Epic Mickey, only this time it will look better than 480i resolution. Well, as soon as it was released, I jumped at the chance and bought it immediately.

JUST KIDDING.

I decided that it would most likely go on sale for either Black Friday or Boxing Day, so I waited. Turns out that was a bad move. It did go on sale but either this game was super popular or Disney didn’t make enough copies because every store around me was out of stock. They didn’t have it on Switch, they didn’t have it on PS5, and they didn’t have it on Xbox. I mean, who’s still buying physical games on Xbox?

I know what you’re thinking, “Why didn’t you just buy it digitally, you idiot?” To which I say, you must be new here. Viva la physical media!

Anyway, back to the story. Nobody had this game. None of the GameStops I went to, the local independent game stores, not even Amazon had it in stock. To actually get this game, I had to go to a mall in a completely different district, and they had a single copy. But that lone copy was mine. Finally, I would get to play Epic Mickey.

Before I could play it, however, it had to sit on my shelf for 3 months. You see, between my November birthday and the holidays and all the post-holiday sales, I had a lot of games to get through. Despite my decade-long quest to play Epic Mickey, it was still somehow not my priority. I had to play the other games first. Although I will note that at time of writing, I still have not played all the games I got over the 2024 holiday period.

My gaming schedule with this giant pile of games (a pile that included Metaphor: ReFantazio, by the way, which is a well-paced 50-hour game in a 100-hour package) just couldn’t squeeze time in for Epic Mickey. I had to play it though. The desire was strong. So I did what anyone in my position would do.

I made a wheel of backlog games for my Twitch streams to randomly choose what game I would play next. As every streamer knows, games you play on stream operate on a completely different schedule than games you play off stream. Streaming a game creates more time in the day to play. It’s like a pocket of time that exists outside of regular time. Don’t ask me how it works, but that’s how it works.

2 games later, and the wheel finally chose Epic Mickey Rebrushed. Finally, I would play this game.

Before I talk about the game, I’ll quickly address the elephant in the room. Despite inviting her to each and every one of my Epic Mickey streams, Sydney Sweeney unfortunately did not show up to chat.

Now that we’ve cleared the air. This is a very good video game.

Epic Mickey is a great example of keeping it simple, stupid. It’s an action platformer where you mainly spray paint with your magic brush. Well, paint or paint thinner. You use it on enemies, and you use it on the environments. Thinner will make certain parts of the environment disappear, and it will kill enemies. Paint will make those same parts of the environment reappear, and it will turn enemies into your friends. You can even turn the bosses friendly if you want.

You may be wondering why you would want to turn enemies friendly instead of just eviscerating them. That’s because how much you use thinner or paint will actually determine whether you get a good, bad, or in-between ending. Using thinner to take things away is seen as bad, and using paint to restore the world is seen as good, but you’re free to play and make those choices yourself. That’s right Disney made a game where you can make Mickey Mouse into a shit disturbed. Where has this Disney gone?

The gameplay loop is simple. Use paint and thinner to platform and solve basic puzzles and to engage enemies. There are side quests where you can help the residents of this world or mess with them. The game even features a couple of points where you have to actually make moral choices. They’re very basic. Not amounting to much more than binary “Destroy this or fix it” decisions, but just the fact that at one point, Disney made a game where I can have Mickey Mouse do not-so-nice things is just a sign of how sanitized that company has become.

So, the gameplay is all relatively straightforward. It’s fun, but it’s not anything special. But what ties the whole thing together is the vibes. Sure, it’s a cute game, but it’s weird and dark and full of Halloween vibes. Not scary Halloween vibes, but fun Halloween vibes. A lot of the world's design and music feels like they dropped Mickey Mouse into a Tim Burton version of Disneyland. I love that shit.

The buildings are crooked, the sun is never out, there are rivers of acid, well, rivers of paint thinner, but in this world, that may as well be acid. The whole place is run by Oswald the Rabbit, a real Walt Disney cartoon character who was abandoned in favor of Mickey Mouse, and that’s his backstory in the game as well. Oswald’s whole motivation is that this world is his version of life if Mickey had never taken his job. It’s just terrific stuff.

I’ve played better action platformers, hell, I’ve played better Disney games. But Epic Mickey is more than just a good time. It’s a reminder of the kinds of interesting things that can happen when a corporation lets creatives get a little weird with their IP. I mean could you imagine Disney in 2025 making a game where Mickey Mouse runs around a dark magical world run by an abandoned cartoon character and can just fuck with people and make their lives worse? I’m surprised they even funded this remake.

There’s a side quest where you collect the dismembered limbs of robot versions of Goofy, Donald, and Daisy for goodness’ sake. That’s the kind of weird shit that they should be doing more of. They won’t because they’re feckless cowards, but they should. At least we’ll always have Epic Mickey.