No, you didn't
accidentally end up in Saturday
Matinee (though that's an
excellent column I recommend
reading). Steamboat Willie is
without a shadow of a doubt one
of the most iconic Mickey Mouse
shorts ever made. It may not
have been the very first Mickey
Mouse short (that honor goes to
1928's Plane Crazy), but
it certainly was the one that
propelled Mickey into superstar
status in the early days of
animation that to being the
first Disney cartoon with
synchronized sound. Due to its
large presence in film and pop
culture history, Disney has
referenced the short in any
project with Mickey as the star,
such as House of Mouse or
the ending in the theme park
show Fantasmic! Even
their Walt Disney Animation logo
consists of the first few frames
of Mickey famously steering the
steamboat and whistling.

To cut a long
story short, Steamboat Willie is
an important Mickey Mouse
cartoon. With that little nugget
of info in mind, video game
developers have sought out to
reference the short in any
Disney video game with Mickey
Mouse as the main protagonist.
On today's Gamer Tuesday, I will
talk about the worlds based on
Steamboat Willie and how they
were presented and implemented
into the gameplay of each
respective game.
Let's dive right
in, shall we?
One of the
earliest instances of Steamboat
Willie being referenced was in
Mickey Mania: The Timeless
Adventures of Mickey Mouse. The
story behind Mickey Mania is
that Mickey is traveling through
some of the best films of his
career. Some of the shorts
referenced include Mickey and
the Beanstalk, The Mad
Doctor, and Lonesome
Ghosts. And the very first
level of the game is, of course,
Steamboat Willie. As you would
expect in a world based on a
classic cartoon, all of it is
presented as a black and white
film, except for Mickey himself
who is in color. You get to meet
Steamboat Willie Mickey in the
boat and do battle with Sailor
Pete. The most interesting thing
about this world is that as you
progress, the world slowly
begins to gain color. It is
never explained why the world is
in color at the end of the
level. I do know that many
Mickey Mouse shorts would be
colorized years after their
original releases, but it does
seem to come out of nowhere in
this game. Still, the Steamboat
Willie level in Mickey Mania
helped set the tone in a way
that would make the game one of
the most popular Disney video
games ever.

Years later,
during the PlayStation 2 era,
Square Enix released Kingdom
Hearts, a game so popular I am
devoting a whole year of Gamer
Tuesday articles to its
inception (Seriously go check it
out on the first Tuesday of
every month in 2012! ;) ). The
sequel, Kingdom Hearts II,
promised to be more creative in
its Disney world selection. Not
only did we get The Lion King
fully represented outside of the
Simba summon from the first
game, we also got a world based
on Pirates of the Caribbean
and TRON. Mickey and
friends didn't get left behind
as they got not one but two
worlds to call their own. Disney
Castle was originally introduced
in the first game, though we
couldn't visit it. It was only
seen through cut scenes
involving Donald and Goofy prior
to their big adventure. Kingdom
Hearts II solved that little
problem and made it a world you
could visit. Not only that, a
good chunk of the story was
developed there.

So how does
Disney Castle tie to Steamboat
Willie? Outside of being Mickey
Mouse's home world, there is a
moment in the story in which
Maleficent steals an orb of
light that protects the world
from the invasion of the
Heartless. Sora, Donald, and
Goofy get Merlin the Magician's
aid in order to retrieve it.
They do so by traveling back in
time, to a time before Disney
Castle was ever built. Just how
back in time they go? The whole
world was in black and white.
This segment of the game was
dubbed Timeless River, dedicated
to Steamboat Willie. Square Enix
are geniuses when it comes to
presentation, and they went all
out with this world. Not only
was it in black and white, the
characters, including Sora,
resembled their 1920s
counterparts, right down to
Mickey Mouse being silent. You
would also get to hear the film
strip going on in the background
as you played the world.
One of the most
unique aspects of Timeless River
is that it is composed of
various areas based on other
Mickey Mouse shorts. Some of
these segments include
Building a Building,
Mickey's Fire Brigade,
Gulliver Mickey, and
Mickey's Orphans. It even
had appearances by characters
like Horace Horsecollar,
Clarabelle Cow, and Clara Cluck.
Timeless River may not have been
strictly dedicated to Steamboat
Willie, but it certainly makes
it known that it was one of the
first of Mickey's grand
adventures, and Mickey would go
on to star in some of the best
animated shorts ever produced.
Not to mention that it is one of
the most creative worlds
presented in ALL of the Kingdom
Hearts franchise.

In 2010, Disney
set out to once again make
Mickey Mouse relevant in the
video game world. They hired the
talents of Warren Spector, best
known for his work on Deus Ex
and a major Disney fanatic
(Watch out, Brent Dodge, you
have stiff competition...) to
create a game that would be more
than just a typical licensed
game and make it exclusive to
the system that at the time was
one of the most popular with
families: the Wii. Junction
Point (Spector's studio) took
the assignment to heart, and
worked hard to create a game
that would celebrate not just
everything Mickey Mouse, but the
entire Disney legacy as a whole.
The end result was Epic Mickey,
a 3D platformer in which Mickey
Mouse is sucked into the
Wasteland, a world dedicated to
Disney characters that have been
forgotten and ignored, and needs
the aid of his older brother,
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in
order to set things right.
In between the
platforming (which was based on
making the right and wrong
decision, eventually affecting
the course of the story), Mickey
Mouse could get sucked into
mini-movies based on Mickey's
short movies. You know the drill
by now, if Mickey's filmography
is referenced, then Steamboat
Willie is not far behind. The
best way to describe how
Steamboat Willie is designed in
the game is that it is a 3D
version of the Steamboat Willie
level in Mickey Mania. The world
goes through the big locales in
the short, and features Sailor
Pete near the end. It is very
short because it was presented
as a brief diversion inside a
much bigger game, but it does
its job well and nails the look
of the original film well.

There we have
it. Three different games
developed by three different
companies on different video
game systems. And they all did a
fantastic job at bringing us
Steamboat Willie to the video
game masses. Even if you were
born in the mid-to-late 90s
there is a very good chance that
you know all about Steamboat
Willie, and these video games
helped you appreciate better
just how far Mickey Mouse has
come as both an iconic cartoon
character to an image of the
whole Disney company.