06:11
Carsotomotifonline
Mickey Mouse is making over his squeaky-clean image.
Disney and Nintendo have spent the past year redesigning the 81-year-old icon for an upcoming video game on Nintendo Wii, reports the New York Times.
The iconic character is now a little leaner and a little meaner, akin to his original incarnation in 1928’s "Steamboat Willie" where he got into fistfights, played tricks on his friends and amorously pursued Minnie.
"Holy cow, the opportunity to mess with one of the most recognizable icons on Planet Earth," says Warren Spector, the game designer behind "Epic Mickey," which will be available in Fall 2010. "I wanted him to be able to be naughty—when you’re playing as Mickey you can misbehave and even be a little selfish."
While Mickey holds on to his trademark red shorts, yellow shoes and white gloves, the new three-dimensional redesign includes longer limbs—a return to the original "rubber hose" Mickey—and edgier facial expressions.
Of course, Disney is treating this redesign with kid gloves to prevent upsetting lifelong fans used to the rounder, gentler mouse.
"There’s a distinct risk of alienating your core consumer when you tweak a sacred character, but at this point it’s a risk they have to take," Matt Britton, the managing partner of Mr. Youth, a New York brand consultant firm, tells the Times.
It’s a gamble the company believes that it has to make in order to keep Disney’s meal ticket, who rakes in about $5 billion or so in annual merchandise sales, relevant in a generation growing up with Nickelodeon and Pixar.
"This is a huge opportunity to create more relevancy for Mickey and pull him into the fastest-growing entertainment medium," says Jim Wilson, the chief executive of Atari’s North American business.
The game "Epic Mickey" is set in a cartoon wasteland populated by Disney’s forgotten and retired characters, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character that Walt Disney drew in 1927 but ditched in favor of Mickey Mouse.
The somewhat dark game also includes a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a twisted version of Disneyland’s infamous "It’s a Small World."
When the dystopian Disneyland becomes endangered, Mickey Mouse is called upon to save the day.
