Mickey Mouse Had Crossovers Long Before Joining the Public Domain

Long before Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willie) became public domain, Disney character crossovers were turning up in the least likely of places. While they may not have been in horror movies or horror-themed video games, Mickey Mouse and friends did get around.

Today it’s not strange to see various movie and television icons showing up in commercials or rival properties. Heck, we saw a Peter Weller-voice RoboCop selling KFC!

However, unlike other companies, Disney is way more protective of its brand. Take the public domain version of Mickey Mouse. Disney won’t allow people to do certain things even if the black-and-white rodent is free to use. The company will make sure no one is tricked into thinking that a zero-budget horror movie was sanctioned by Walt’s empire.

However, on occasion, Disney did let its guard down a little and allowed Mickey and Company to be used in conjunction with seemingly unrelated products and franchises. One such time was when Capcom licensed both Disney characters and Tetris to create Magical Tetris Challenge.

Magical Tetris Challenge was launched in 1998. It was a major affair. Rather than sticking to arcade machines, Capcom ported the Disney-themed puzzle game to multiple consoles including the Nintendo 64, Playstation, and Game Boy Color.

Similar to other games like Puzzle Fighter and Bubble Bobble, MTC uses Disney characters as the players’ avatars in competitive modes. The sprites are kind of basic in terms of animation, but each stage presents Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pete, the Big Bad Wolf, the Weasels, and Donald in different outfits, which helps keep it a little fresh.

Although Capcom was typically the go-to publisher/developer for many Disney games in the 1980s and 1990s, Konami got in on the action, too. However, what the company made was not an action-adventure title

In 2000, several core Disney characters joined Konami’s Pop ‘n Music franchise. Pop ‘n Music was an arcade rhythm game where you matched the corresponding buttons to the on-screen action. 

What is most interesting about this game is that it features animation that was made specifically for the game, rather than clipping segments from old Disney shorts. Of course, the game was not released for the North American audience, even though it was ported to the PlayStation and Game Boy Color. 

Of course, several Disney characters show up in the Kingdom Hearts series, but that’s not a one-off thing. So, we’ll skip that and focus on some non-video game instances.

Mickey Mouse, at least an actor in a walk-around costume, shows up in Bob Clark and Jean Shelpherd’s classic A Christmas Story. At the time of its original release in 1983, the movie was under the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer banner. Oddly, the costume looks like something that would have been found in the parks in the 1970s or 1980s rather than the ’40s era where the film appears to take place.

We couldn’t close out this article without mentioning the major crossover (and rights nightmare) known as Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Although Mickey makes a small cameo besides Bugs Bunny, several other Looney Tunes and Walt Disney characters appear in abundance throughout the live-action hybrid film.

[Source: YouTube]