Toy Story Mania Preview
About a year ago, Disneyland and Disneyworld opened up a new ride called Toy Story Midway Mania, using 4D effects and shooting, while players rode on carts. The ride was an instant success and used cutting edge effects, including a Mr. Potato Head greeter that used optical technology to talk to the crowd. Disney immediately identified the success of the ride, and started work on migrating the experience to the one console that would fit the game style at home, the Wii, and with that, Toy Story Mania is becoming a reality.
Toy Story Mania is a collection of 30 mini-games that play out in either a shooting gallery or knockdown type of gameplay. Mark Madsan gave us a guided tour of Toy Story Mania and it looks to break out of the typical mass market shovelware shooting gallery game fare, by using the Toy Story franchise, and years of fan service to grab the player.
The mini-game that we get to try out in Toy Story Mania is the Pie Toss. Pie Toss is set up with targets set in the distance that have point values, and you have to try and hit the targets to rack up a high score and earn tickets. Tickets are the currency of Toy Story Mania and are there to unlock new mini-games as you play through the game. Shooting pies was easy enough, using one of the buttons on the Wiimote to shoot out an unlimited stream of custard-filled goodness.
As we started to play Pie Toss, the first thing pointed out to me by Mark, was the absolute lack of a targeting recticle. Without the recticle, I really felt challenged trying to hit targets, so I had to ask why no recticle. The reasoning made sense – there is no targeting recticle on the Toy Story Mania ride, so the developers wanted to stay true to that vision. However, for those that feel the need to know where they are aiming , a targeting recticle is available via the options menu.
Next, we moved to the Ring Toss, which uses the same basic mechanics that were present in the Pie Toss, except that we were shooting rings around targets. In this level, we got to see one of the numerous amounts of fan service in Toy Story Mania. When we were able to get rings around all the targets on the planetary rings in the background, we were treated to a little segment from Zerg. Fans of the movies will find a bunch of these little easter eggs throughout all the games. As a matter of fact, Mark made mention that there are so many, that you will find yourself coming back to the game again and again to try and find all of these hidden bits of fan service.
Not all of the games in Toy Story Mania focus on shooting items on the screen. In Army Air Raid, we were presented with R. Lee Ermey, commanding his green toy troops to build structures that we as a player, had to topple, similar to Boom Blox. The structures were made from what looked to be the old building blocks that some of us older folk, played with as children. As you knocked down structures, more complicated creations would be built, continuing to build the challenge for players. As with Boom Blox, you use the remote in a throwing motion to chuck a ball at the structures. The throws are velocity sensitive, so the harder you throw, the better chance you have to knock down some of the more complicated targets.
While we did not get to see any of the levels mentioned, Mark let us know that Toy Story Mania would capture the true feel of the ride experience by including some levels that would be in 3D. The glasses would be included in the game box, but they were not announcing what mini-games would be in 3D.
There are a lot of family friendly features in Toy Story Mania, including two player drop in and drop out play, and three to four player round robin gameplay. It was only apparent after playing the game why they limited the mini-games to two players at any one time, and that is due to the amount of stuff happening on the screen at one time, that four players would have just been sheer chaos. Scores are also not shown on the screen, but with the press of a button on the Wiimote, you will get a quick pop out by the character that is winning, along with a score. A lot of the voice talent from the films is in Toy Story Mania, including Tim Allen performing newly recorded material for Buzz Lightyear. I did not get an answer on whether “Angels and Demons” star Tom Hanks was recording new dialog for Woody.
Disney Interactive has really been working hard on trying to translate their very popular Toy Story Mania ride into an experience that fans of the Toy Story franchise, as well as casual players will enjoy. Look to huddle around Toy Story Mania with your family and friends September 15th, 2009.
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