Mickey embarks on the quest of a lifetime.
A series of three video games, released by Capcom for the Super Nintendo, and later ported to the Game Boy Advance. The Disney's Magical Quest games take Mickey Mouse and (depending on the installment) Minnie Mouse or Donald Duck on a quest to give Peg-Leg-Pete the boot, out of the Magical worlds.
The game's main gimmick is the ability to change the character's outfit during gameplay, so as to use different powers to defeat Mooks or make for easier platforming.
This video game series has examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Pete is typically just a regular thug in the cartoons and comics who can be overpowered by the Mouseton police without much effort, or even a bumbling Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain; here he's reimagined as a badass Evil Overlord with vast sorcerous powers.
- All Just a Dream: The ending of the first Magical Quest reveals that Mickey/Minnie only dreamed about the game's events.
- Anti-Frustration Features: A game over isn't forced on you as in most other games; the only way to get it is if you choose not to give the level you were on another try after you run out of lives.
- Ass Kicks You: In Magical Quest 3, while clinging to a pole in the Woodcutter costume, Donald can attack by swinging his rump. (Mickey uses his backpack instead.)
- Attack of the Town Festival: The action begins in Village Festival, the first stage of Magical Quest 3, which is crowded with mooks.
- Bankruptcy Barrel: In the third game, Donald's version of the armor costume consists of him wearing a barrel.
- Battle Couple: Minnie accompanies Mickey in the second game, and they're both capable of fighting together.
- Big Bad: Pete is the main villain of the game series and the last boss faced in every game. He is always cast with imposing titles like Emperor or Baron, holes up in a dark, ominous castle that looms over the rest of the colorful world, and practices black magic. His only really "evil" acts, like kidnapping Pluto or wrecking the circus, are more like jerkass moves with his only motive being because he can.
- Big Boo's Haunt: The Haunted House, the third stage of The Great Circus Mystery.
- Blade Run: In the third game, the only way to deal damage to Pete in his second phase is to jump on his staff and hit him in the face, since he is taller than both Mickey and Donald, while his chest is protected by a shield.
- Book Ends: The Magical Quest begins and ends with Mickey and Pluto playing catch with their friends, except that the ending part is for real.
- Boss Arena Urgency: Zig-zagged in the second game. The Stage 4 mini-boss will gradually destroy the floor in his arena with his jackhammer, but he will also occasionally add blocks to the arena as well.
- Boss Rush: Taking a page from another Capcom series, the final level always has reprisal boss fights with most of the mini-bosses encountered throughout the game.
- In the first game, the Boss Rush is not guaranteed, and happens only if you take a wrong turn. Here you will need to fight Bat, Boioioing, and Cro-Magma.
- In the second game, this became mandatory, but you can fight the two bosses in any order. The two bosses being Juggler (the Stage 1 mini-boss) and Painting Pete (the Stage 3 mini-boss).
- In the third game, the bosses are in a strict order. The goes as follows: Cannon Dog (Stage 4 mini-boss), the Captain (Stage 4 boss), Magician (final mini-boss), and then King Pete.
- Butt-Monkey: While Mickey gets the coolest costumes, Donald always seems to be getting the ridiculous ones. Case in point, while Mickey's armor costume is a proper suit of armor, Donald's instead has him wear a Bankruptcy Barrel. That doesn't stop them from being useful in their own way.
- Character Select Forcing:
- The knight forms of Mickey and Donald in the third game work differently. Mickey can walk and jump with his shield raised, but Donald can only hide in his barrel and roll clumsily. Because of this, while fighting against the Cannon Dog, Donald has to rely on him always shooting low, which may not happen often.
- Alternatively, Mickey's metal knight form is useless in water as it causes him to automatically sink. Donald's wooden barrel costume on the other hand allows him to automatically float, which can make getting through watery areas much easier.
- Circus of Fear: The first stage of The Great Circus Mystery is a circus that is being invaded by Baron Pete's mooks.
- Clothes Make the Superman: The special powers you get in the game are all based on costumes. All you need is a quick costume change and bam, instant power.
- Continuing is Painful: You have unlimited continues, but using one after a Game Over will send you back to the beginning of the world you were on, and all of your coins will be lost (any upgrades you found or bought will be kept, however).
- Continuity Nod: In The Great Circus Mystery (Disney's Magical Quest 2), you get to fight a living painting of Emperor Pete, the final boss from the first Magical Quest, complete with the same music. In Magical Quest 3, you get to see statues of Baron Pete, the final boss from the second game, at the start of Pete's Castle. The fight against King Pete uses a mashup of both phases against Baron Pete as well.
- Death Mountain: Pete's Peak in the first game, which can get so windy the higher up you go that it can knock you off the mountain and cost you a life.
- The first half of Stage 4 in the third game is set in the mountains before boarding the airship.
- Death Throws: The player characters fall off the screen when losing a life, with their own unique animations depending on the costume.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After being beaten by Mickey for the third time, Pete finally decides to turn over a new leaf and become a better ruler for Storybook Land (see also: Mean Character, Nice Actor).
- Degraded Boss: Emperor Pete, the Final Boss of the first Magical Quest game, returns as a Mini-Boss in Magical Quest 2, as a living painting in the Haunted House level.
- Demoted to Extra: Minnie was the 2nd-player character in the second game (and the GBA remake of the first) but only appears in the ending of the third.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first game suffers from this:
- It takes a little while longer to collect all the costumes in the first game than in the two sequels. For example, while in the second and third games the first costume is received after defeating a mini-boss in the first level, Mickey doesn't get his first costume in the first game until he gets to the second level.
- Mickey's the only playable character (except in the GBA version), and there's no Co-Op Multiplayer.
- Levels also have time limits, and when you lose a life, you start at the beginning of the level rather than the spot where you were last standing.
- Fire Hose Cannon: In the first game, one of the outfits Mickey or Minnie obtains is a firefighter outfit, which uses the hose as a weapon, along with the utility of pushing blocks into better positions.
- Fusion Dance: In the first game, the ghosts of the defeated bosses merge at the end of the last level, creating the Final Boss.
- Gangplank Galleon: The Airship in the third game is a flying version of this.
- Goomba Stomp: It is possible to attack enemies by jumping on them. When done on mooks, it can stun them so you can throw them.
- Gun Twirling: In The Great Circus Mystery, Mickey or Minnie will twirl their guns with their fingers whenever they complete the level in their cowboy suits.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: When Donald loses a life while wearing the armor costume, he will lose the barrel and cover himself with his hands in embarrassment.
- Heart Container: A hidden and purchasable smiling big heart.
- Hellevator: In the first game, Mickey takes a trip to Lethal Lava Land by riding down an elevator with various The Walls Are Closing In traps.
- Jungle Japes: The Jungle, the second stage from The Great Circus Mystery.
- Lethal Lava Land: Fire Grotto in the first game contains a lot of lava pits to avoid.
- The Lost Woods: The second stage in both Magical Quest 1 (Dark Forest) and 3 (Spore Forest). A similar stage in 2 is taken up by the Jungle.
- Magic Knight: In the third game, where Mickey and Donald get Magician and Knight Outfits.
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: Played with in regards of Pete in Magical Quest 3. He is supposedly set up as the game's villain, but it turns out that that is only for the sake of the story and that in his heart, he really means well.
- Messy Pig: The boss of the first stage in Magical Quest 3 is an enormous pig who rides a hollow pumpkin suspended by crows.
- Moveset Clone: Mickey as the Ryu, with the Ken role being filled by Minnie in the second game (and the GBA port of the first game). Donald in the third game subverts this- while his base costume plays identically to Mickey, the costumes he obtains have different properties and mechanics from Mickey's equivalents.
- Multi-Platform: The Great Circus Mystery was the only game in the trilogy that was also released on a Sega console.
- A Genesis version of Magical Quest was supposedly in the works at one point (the boxart even appeared in a few print advertisements back then), but might have been cancelled.
- Mythology Gag:
- Mickey's climbing outfit in Magical Quest 3 is the outfit he wore in "Brave Little Tailor".
- References to the shorts are scattered in the first game. The sentient flames in the Fire Grotto level recall "Mickey's Fire Brigade" and the fight with the giant eagle in the mountain level is quite reminiscent of "Alpine Climbers".
- One-Winged Angel: The final boss fight of the second game has Pete turn into a dragon for the second phase of the fight.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: Cannon Dog, the mini-boss of Stage 3 in the third game, can be defeated with any costume via the use of clever tactics: the Knight outfit can deflect the cannonballs using Mickey's shield or Donald's "holed-in-barrel" move, the Climber outfit can throw the cannonballs back at him, the Magician outfits will make the cannonballs fly back at the mini-boss if you hit it with your spells.
- Oxygen Meter: While all three games have limited air underwater, only the third has a visible meter.
- Portal Book: Huey, Dewey, and Louie are trapped inside a magical book by King Pete in Magical Quest 3. Mickey and Donald then enter the book to rescue them.
- Proj-egg-tile: The Turkey Mini-Boss of the first level in the third game will sometimes lay a bouncing, damaging egg.
- Promoted to Playable: Donald gradually gets this. In the first game, Donald only appears in the title and during the ending cutscene. In the second he has a slightly bigger role of giving Mickey and Minnie their first costume. In the third, he's now the second playable character after Mickey, replacing Minnie.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: In the first game's remake and the second game, the difference between playing as Mickey or Minnie is purely visual, the only significant change being that some of Minnie's in-game dialogue in the first game's remake and the second game is slightly different from Mickey's.
- Recurring Boss: Only in the first two games.
- In the first, three Elite Mook s appear as minibosses in the form of Bat, Boioioing, and Cro-Magma. Bat fights in a manner similar to Firebrand, although not as annoying. Boioioing appears to be a Dance Battler, using his grass skirt as a boomerang and his attached bungie. Cro-Magma breathes fire and uses his hammer to launch the player into the ceiling spikes.
- In the second, the minibosses are all the Weasels. Juggler juggles torches, Driller uses his jackhammer to drop rocks and spikes, Spinner uses a pillar of ice and the tide.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: In the first game, the boss battle of Pete's Peak is set against a blood-red sky.
- Save the Princess: Or rather, Save Your Dog. The plot of the first Magical Quest game revolves around Mickey trying to rescue his dog Pluto from the evil Emperor Pete.
- Sky Pirate: A literal example, with the fourth stage of the third game taking place inside an airship, aboard which Mickey and/or Donald battle enemies dressed in pirate garb.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: A recurring setting in the trilogy as the penultimate level.
- Sneeze of Doom: The lion boss in The Great Circus Mystery sneezes his mane off for one of his attacks. The player can defy this by using the sweeper outfit to vacuum his mane.
- Sorcerous Overlord: In all three games, Pete, the Big Bad, is a tyrant with vast magical powers ruling from imposing castles.
- The Spiny: There are some enemies in the game series that can't be harmed by jumping on them, such as the walking flames in the third game.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Provided by the Sorcerer costume in the first game. Justified because it's magic.
- Sequential Boss:
- In the second game, Pete starts his fight by summoning skeletal mooks and launching plasma spheres. In the second phase, he becomes a dragon, setting fire to the ground.
- In the third game, the first phase of Pete's fight has him use drop pillars and summon fiery mooks, while the second phase has him equip a staff and a shield.
- Underground Level: Each of the three games has this kind of level mixed with another video game setting: The Magical Quest had Fire Grotto, which mixes this and Lethal Lava Land; The Great Circus Mystery had The Caves, which mixes this and Prehistoria; and Disney's Magical Quest 3 has Shell Ocean, which mixes this and Under the Sea.
- Updated Re-release: The GBA port of the first game adds Minnie as a playable character, multiplayer minigames, and unlockable items for use in the Magical Mirror GameCube game. All three ports also feature a save option.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Pete's castles in all three games serves as the final challenge for the players.
- Wicked Weasel: They serve as recurring mid-bosses throughout the second game, Juggler in Stage 1, Driller in Stage 4, and Spinner in Stage 5. Juggler reappears as part of the Boss Rush.
- Wily Walrus: In The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, the boss of Snow Valley is an anthropomorphic, ice-skating walrus who tries to run over Mickey.
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Every time a boss is killed in the first game, a spectre of Pete emerges and flies off. These turn out to actually be pieces of Emperor Pete, and join together for the Final Boss battle.
- Wintry Auroral Sky: The first game's ice mountains have this in the background.
