Disney's Magical Quest

Screenshots

Notes

Now, my list named this game as "Disney's Magical Quest", but as far as I can tell, no game with that exact name exists. Rather, there are three games with titles that are a variant of "Magical Quest Starring X & Y", all of which got GBA versions. Looking at the release date listed, I'm pretty sure the listed version is the first title, "Magical Quest starring Mickey and Minnie", so I played that.

Magical Quest is a classic 2D platformer, and a port of a SNES title. As a result, it's surprisingly tough even on normal mode.

Gameplay is classic platformer with a few twists. At the beginning of the game you can grab and throw blocks and stunned enemies, giving it a Klonoa feel. As you play, you are given alternate costumes for Mickey which you can switch between giving different powers. These are not what you might guess, which is nice. There's a turban granting magical powers, a firefighter's uniform granting the ability to spray water with some interesting applications, and a grappling hook which is mostly an upgrade of the basic abilities. These are put to some reasonably interesting uses in the game.


The game is pretty short, it only took me a few hours to beat. Levels are mostly linear with some exploration. A few later levels are a bit more labyrinthine, notably the final level which has a bunch of apparently pointless side rooms with mini-boss refights.

Graphically the game is alright, nothing spectacular. It suffers a bit from having platforms that can't be distinguished from the background.

The game has lives and game overs, but for the most part game overs do nothing. They return you to the start of the stage, but only a few stages have any kind of mid-level checkpoint anyway. The game does have a few bosses at the end of long stages, which is annoying.


Overall, Magical Quest is very average. I had a bit of fun playing it, mostly experimenting with the costumes, but it is fairly bland and occasionally annoying.