Hello friends, I hope your week went well. I’ve got a few things on the back burner now, that I hope to share with you in the future. News is a little slow this early in the new year, I’m sure you’ve already heard that Mickey Mouse has now entered public domain. Well to be fair it is a specific version, the Steamboat Willie / Plane Crazy iteration of the mouse are now available to be produced by fans for commercial purposes. If you try to make knock-off versions of recent Mickey art then you can expect a cease and desist letter from the Disney legal team. It got me thinking about Mickey’s older brother, and how he had recently popped up in a racing game. I wanted to share the updated design with you.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was the star character that Walt Disney had created before Mickey Mouse back in 1927. Unfortunately he lost the rights to the character to Universal Studios. The company wouldn’t regain the rights until around 2006. Since then he has appeared on merchandise in the parks, and even a few video games. In fact his girlfriend / wife Ortensia the Cat was redesigned for the SpeedStorm racing game as well.
We have to give credit where it is due. Ortensia was not really a set character until Warren Spector, and his team at Junction Point created her in Epic Mickey, the Wii exclusive from 2010. In the early Oswald cartoons he would move in between a cat, and a rabbit girl as his girlfriend. It was Warren that decided on making her design stick with a cat, and even named her. I was fortunate enough to see his presentation at the E3 in Los Angeles when he talked about this. He was also jealous of my Oswald plush.
Animation fans are sort of split on the classic character appearing in new games. Not so much in that they are being brought in, but rather how they are being presented with modern aesthetics. Specifically when they get details like teeth added to their 3D models, when those were rarely, if ever, seen in old cartoons. It’s not quite uncanny valley, but a small detail that throws off their classic roots. I’m just happy to see something being done with these icons.
I’d like to know what you think about classic cartoon characters appearing in modern games of any genre. Would like you like to see more, or less of them? Do you think they would be better used in platform titles, or other games? I’d like to know.
If you’d like to learn more about Oswald then please check out some of my earlier blogs below.
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