E3, the big entertainment expo, is underway in LA, with games and hardware galore announced to satisfy the desires of the twitchy-finger demographic. Video games are bigger than movies, but still get short-shrift from Big Old Media; if it's not on a gigantic screen a charismatic star, it's considered kid-stuff. Then again, sometimes it sounds ike kid stuff:
But it's not aimed at toddlers. "Epic Mickey" is - dare we say it? - dark and gritty, at least from the descriptions of an alternate world created by the sorceror Yen Sid (get it? Wonder if his first name is Tlaw) and bedeviled by a power struggle involving Scrooge McDuck's old nemesis, the Phantom Blot. Disney geeks happy over the choice of Mickey's sidekick: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, described as Mickey's half-brother. (Oswald came first, and the loss of the character in a copyright battle led to the creation of Mickey.)
This may be a return to Mickey's old character - the clever, resourceful, danger-loving mouse, not the easy-going domesticated fellow whose friends were far more interesting. There's more at E3, including the announcement of Microsoft's new motion-controlled Xbox add-on and Nintendo's 3DS system; check out Engadget for more details.
