Disney's Villains' Revenge

Disney's Villains' Revenge is a video game developed and released by Disney Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 1999. The gameplay is a simple interactive "point-and-click" method in various forms, featuring the player helping Jiminy Cricket save the happy endings of several of the Walt Disney Company's animated films from the vengeful Disney Villains.

Plot

The game's story is set in the bedroom of the player, presumably a child. Jiminy Cricket (Eddie Carroll) is the guardian of a book in the player's room which features several stories with happy endings. However, the book's happy ending pages are ripped out by a very bored Jiminy Cricket, who has read them so often that they put him to sleep. As a game, he asks the player to put them back where they belong, when suddenly the book is possessed by the spirits of several Disney Villains, namely Captain Hook (Corey Burton) from Peter Pan; The Witch (Wicked Queen Grimhilde) (Louise Chamis) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; The Queen of Hearts (Tress MacNeille) from Alice in Wonderland and the Ringmaster (Corey Burton) from Dumbo, who alter the stories to their advantage, without the presence of happy endings. The Blue Fairy (Rosalyn Landor) appears and explains that because stories live on in the hearts of readers, by removing the happy endings left the stories at their climax, with the heroes in peril and the villains in control. Jiminy and the player venture into the worlds of the stories to correct the happy endings.

In the altered stories, the Wicked Queen Grimhilde as Old-Hag Witch has built a giant house resembling her infamous poisoned apple and has put Snow White to sleep and intends to do the same to the seven dwarves, and the player must use the spellbook to free the Prince (Michael Gough), whom she trapped by magic, so that the Prince kisses Snow White to wake her up. The Ringmaster forces a now flightless Dumbo to endlessly perform humiliating stunts in his circus, and the player must help Dumbo fly again by make the circus contraption perfect so that they can force the clown to perform the humiliating stunts. The Queen of Hearts has rather violently had Alice (Kathryn Beaumont) decapitated, although the girl does remain alive despite the separation of her body and head, and the player must find Alice's head to piece her back together, so that the White Rabbit (Corey Burton) must lead them home. Finally, Peter Pan (Michael Welch) is an old man (Kevin Schon), which makes it too hard for him to fight Hook, and the player must pick up Elderly Peter's sword to win the swashbuckling sword fight against Hook and his pirate crew, so that the Crocodile can chase him away, and Peter turns back into a young boy again.

The villains steal the happy ending pages, changing the bedroom into a battlefield mixed with their four areas. The player uses the book as a shield to deflect the villains' attacks and defeats each one (Hook is sent flying by a reflected cannonball, the Wicked Queen Grimhilde as Old-Hag Witch is seemingly frightened to death by her own reflection, the Queen of Hearts surrenders when a hedge maze topiary statue she hides in is destroyed by the player shooting Hedgehogs, and the Ringmaster is knocked unconscious by a well aimed custard pie). All of the happy endings are restored at the end of the game.

Gameplay

The gameplay is an interactive point-and-click style that can take various forms. The cursor usually resembles Jiminy's glove. Most of the games involve a click-and-drag routine (e.g. dragging branches of thorns off of a trapped Jiminy in the Snow White world). In the Queen of Hearts labyrinth world, the player has to listen out for Alice's voice and decide on a direction to go in the maze to locate her head. In the Neverland world, the player has to move the mouse to combat Captain Hook with a sword, through which the mouse's movements are shown, much like how the Wii gameplay works.

In the final boss battles against the game's four villains, the game goes into a point of view similar to what one might find in a first-person shooter game. The player uses the storybook as a shield to block and deflect fired projectiles at the enemies of the game. Upon completing the game, several minigames are unlocked.

Development

The original concept of Disney's Villains' Revenge is credited to Roger Holzberg. It was part a trend of making Disney's pre-1970s animated films relevant since the successful launch of Walt Disney Classics, especially through Disney Villains.

The game incorporates full motion video via the DreamFactory engine licensed from Bill Appleton. Traditional animation was outsourced to Karen Johnson Productions, and ink and paint was conducted by Virtual Magic.

Reception

Monika Lechl from German magazine PC Player gave the game a score of 68%.^[1]

Disney's Villains' Revenge won the Interactive Achievement Award for Computer Children's Entertainment Title of the Year in 2000.^[2]

References

External links

• Disney's Villains' Revenge at the Internet Movie Database
• Disney's Villains' Revenge at MobyGames