Prerelease:Epic Mickey

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Epic Mickey.

To do: There is a bunch more here to look into. Detail original announcement screenshots. (for example) See if anything can be included from the art book. Find a picture of the health bar as Hero Mickey too. Explain things better; better format. Currently there's info everywhere. [1] [2] Add more scrapped music and sound tracks.

Developmental Timeline

2004

• Summer - A meeting was held, dubbed the "Epic Mickey Think Tank 2004", consisting of undergraduates on how they would revitalize Mickey Mouse, leading towards the birth of the Epic Mickey concept.

2005

• Unknown date - Warren Spector signs onto the project.

2008

• Unknown date - Concept art is leaked, showing a much different setting.

2009

2010

• Nov. 25-30 - Epic Mickey is released.

Early Development

Initial Concept

The idea for Epic Mickey dates all the way back to summer 2004, where a meeting was held consisting of seven undergraduates invited by Buena Vista Games, which was the first-ever "Think Tank".

Early Gameplay

Gameplay of the 2009 prototype was shown off at Digifest 2012. The game back then was really different not only because of the design of the HUD, but the whole concept behind the game was different.

Here are some differences about the prototype and the final game:

• The movement of Mickey was more limited than in the final game.
• Mickey doesn't have an idle animation. This was changed because Mickey looked like a statue.
• Pete's animations didn't look really finished. To be honest, all the animations looked pretty unfinished, except for Mickey's walking animation.
• You could see Mickey's bright yellow footsteps.
• If you jump and Mickey lands on the ground, you can see a yellow blot spawning underneath him. It looked nice, but if you would jump too much, it would look messy.
• The lamp posts "came to life" if you walked in their direction.
• There was a flying book, which was later used in the mansion level.
• The whole map is unused and looked like a map to test different mechanics.
• Mickey's health bar looked drastically different.
• Mickey had lives. If he lost them all, you would get most likely a game over. Strangely, you only see the half of the bar in a few screenshots, but not all of it.
• The e-ticket symbol looked different and was right on the top and always visible for the player.
• There was no pointer for the brush. No idea how you used the brush back then.
• You could switch between the brush and the other sketches with the control pad instead of the + and - buttons.
• There were no guardians, but thanks to an early screenshot, we can say that they were white instead of blue. It could also be that there was only one type of guardian back then.

Concept Art

Released along with the game was an art book appropriately named Art of Epic Mickey, which contains several pages of concept art.

Hero/Wastelander/Scrapper

This mechanic was planned for the game, but was sadly scrapped. You can still find some files which reference to that feature. The system was simple. If you killed all enemies and are mean to everyone, you would be the scrapper. If you do helpful things, you would be the hero. If you do both, you will be the Wastelander. You could see that on the early HUD of the game.

This was the early health bar as the Wastelander.

And this was the health bar as the Scrapper. A little scary, don't you think?

Early/Unused Enemies

Dropwing

In the config files, there are some mentionings of Dropwings, likely a type of Blotling. Although Dropwings did ultimately end up appearing in the sequel, a render of one from the first game was seen in an Italian magazine article, and their appearance differed substantially from their design in the second game. There are also mentions of "GoBlobs", which was an early name for the Spladooshes. However, despite them just sitting and not doing any sort of attack (other than exploding when approached), the config files specify movement speeds and mention a ranged attack.

Early Spladoosh

At the Digifest 2012, Junction Point Studios Creative Director Warren Spector and legendary comics writer Marv Wolfman talked about their new game Epic Mickey 2. They also showed some early designs for the enemy Spladoosh for this game. They also had some animation, but sadly these were never used in-game. Here are the three earlier designs.

That's the first design. It had claws back then, which aren't in the final design.

The second design looked much more like the final one, only with the difference that this thing could even walk. That made that enemy even stronger than in the final game.

The third design looked already like the final one. Sure, it lacks the right textures, but the general design was done.