14 DAY TRIAL // It takes courage to work with Disney properties. The well known characters that the company has created over the years are so clearly defined and so pure in their existence that it's hard to put any creative spin on them.
And that's just one of the challenges faced by the newly confirmed Nintendo Wii videogame Epic Mickey, the title that aims to tell the story of long forgotten Disney characters living in an alternate world until Mickey Mouse himself shows up. The idea has a lot of potential and it seems that its creators are already thinking about sequels for the game set for 2010.
When asked by 1UP about the possibility of putting together a series based on the Epic Mickey concept, Warren Spector, the head of the Junction Point development team, stated that “I don't do anything that isn't extensible. And I will certainly feel like that I have not done my job if we can't make other games in this world with these characters. In my head, I've got two more planned. In the business world of reality, those games have not approved, and who knows if we'll ever see them. I had three games planned for Deus Ex, and you see where that got me.”
It seems that Spector is also pretty interested in creating other videogames with a Disney cartoon-like sensibility. He talked about how the company now owns rights to games he was creating, like Ninja Gold, a title he was working on with John Woo, and to another one that Spector describes as “a big, epic, dragons-flying-in-the-sky-and-guys-using-elemental-magic kind of thing.” Of course, neither of them will see the light of day if Epic Mickey is successful when it is released late next year and manages to sell well and garner positive reviews.