Mickey's Safari in Letterland

Mickey's Safari in Letterland

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Beam Software Publisher Hi Tech Expressions Published 1993-??-?? Platforms NES Genres Educational, Licensed, Platformer Themes Cartoon, Wilderness Series Mickey Mouse Distribution Commercial

Mickey's Safari in Letterland is an educational platformer video game developed by Beam Software and published by Hi Tech Expressions for the NES in March 1993 and only release in the USA.

In the game, Mickey is trying to collect letters to spell words, and find stone tablets with letters on them. The game was made for toddlers and young children ages 3-6.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. Super advanced difficulty.
Finished	2021-03-02.

I played this game to better familiarize myself with NES titles and increase my total completed game count. I beat it on "super advanced" difficulty after about an hour of play. I was bored the whole time.

Review

2	3	3	4	2

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Review

Good

• The multitude of maps for each section is nice.
• The digital speech, though limited to letters and a few stupid sounds, is technically impressive on the NES (though not impressive for 1993).
• Mickey has a lot of animation variety.
• Several of the word graphics take into account some minor Disney characters.

Bad

• Having been released a couple years after the SNES, the game was very underwhelming.
• The cut-scenes are too long and repetitive, and the dusting-off and standing up animations take too long.
• Neither the controls, graphics, or music are all that impressive.
• The words in the game never go beyond 3-letter nouns, so there isn't much to learn.
• The snowflake in map graphic for the Yukon is not hexagonal.

Ugly

• Even on the hardest difficulty level, there is no way to die or even get set back in any way, and you don't even have to collect the letter gems if you don't want to. This isn't so much a game as a toy.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The US box art has a professional cartoon of Mickey trying to catch letters with a net. It makes the game look a lot more interesting than it really is.

Documentation

• 

  Manual.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

NES

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no important women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	No women ever speak.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no human characters.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links