'Epic Mickey' draws on Disney history

When veteran video game designer Warren Spector spots a pamphlet for a never-erected extension of Disneyland's Main Street U.S.A. inside the Walt Disney Co.'s archive vault, his eyes seem like they want to burst out of their sockets through his oval-shaped glasses. The expression is not unlike the cartoons that power his geeky enthusiasm.

The last time the "Deus Ex" designer was here three years ago, he plunged deep into the depository with his colleagues in search of inspiration for "Disney Epic Mickey," a daring action-adventure game starring Mickey Mouse set for release Nov. 30 for Nintendo's Wii. He found it in drawings and paintings created long before Donkey Kong tossed his first barrel.

The archives where Disney stores most of its historic memorabilia are more like sterile little museums than one giant magical vault. Artifacts are tucked into every nook — from the mammoth original concept drawing of Disneyland to crumbling reference sculptures used for "Fantasia." If this was Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, Spector would be Charlie Bucket.

"When Disney asked me if I was interested in making a Mickey Mouse game, I tried to play it cool," said the lifelong fan. "Really, inside, I was like, 'Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. OK. OK. OK. OK. I'm in.' Then, when they said they were getting the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back, I was done. There was no way anyone was going to make this game but me."

Oswald, the wacky predecessor to Mickey created by Walt Disney but lost in a 1928 contract dispute with Universal Studios, returned to Disney's control in 2006. In the game, the rabbit serves as the warden of Wasteland, a warped version of Disneyland populated with forgotten characters and twisted theme park attractions that Mickey must navigate.

The gameplay within Wasteland alternates between 3-D lands that task Mickey with using magic paint and thinner to create paths and brush off baddies and 2-D levels modeled after bygone cartoons, such as "Steamboat Willie." Throughout his quest to stop the evil Phantom Blot, Mickey is presented with moral dilemmas that will affect the game's outcome.

Unlike simplistic past games featuring the Mouse, such as 1990's "Castle of Illusion" and 2002's "Magical Mirror," Spector set out to craft a dynamic Mickey game that would pay homage to the 'toon while equally appealing to both longtime Disney devotees and children who probably don't revere the rodent with the same enthusiasm as previous generations.

During excursions to California, Spector and his Austin, Texas-based team from Junction Point Studios sought the foundations for their wayward Wasteland denizens in the archives in Burbank and Glendale, home to Disney Imagineering, the creative division of engineers, designers and artists responsible for the look and feel of Disney theme parks and resorts.

He and his crew were motivated by such specimens as a cast-aside sketch from the animated film archive of a husky Captain Hook, which inspired the game's maniacal animatronic version. Instructions for an old Jolly Roger toy tucked inside a folder marked "Peter Pan" in the Imagineering library became the blueprint for a virtual pirate ship showdown.

"It just sort of explodes," said Spector while recently retracing his steps in the archives. "I've often felt like a pachinko ball. I go in looking for something specific and then — ping, ping, ping — all of a sudden, I'm chasing down something I didn't even know existed, so that's probably one of the reasons why the game took as long as it did to make."

Spector said Disney brass warned him to stay away from including characters already being mined elsewhere. He was fond of "Alice in Wonderland" and Tinker Bell but opted against stepping on the toes of Tim Burton or the burgeoning Fairies franchise. However, there are a few nods to "Tron" in the lively Tomorrow City, the game's take on Tomorrowland.

One early "Epic Mickey" concept centered on the Mouse weaseling his way into the actual Disney archives. It was scrapped. Another idea ditched during the game's development had Mickey transforming into a snarling rat when players made mischievous choices. Spector ultimately focused on a retro rendition, but he insists that his Mickey is different.

"When people look at our Mickey, they don't recognize the changes," said Spector. "The reality is there are hundreds of subtle changes between what people actually think of as Mickey, and what we put on the screen as Mickey in our game. We've been true to people's memories and also come up with something that is unique, fresh and modern. I love our Mickey."

Spector stretched out Mickey's limbs, filled in his eyes and returned his face from modern-day tan to old-school white. Such decisions didn't go unguided. Animators and other folks from across Disney divisions formed a so-called Mickey Creative Council, which made certain that Spector and his design team didn't tarnish their beloved corporate symbol.

The result is poised to position the 82-year-old character as the next Mario or Master Chief. Spector said the realm of Wasteland is actually larger than what gamers will experience in "Epic Mickey," and he has several ideas for additional adventures, though new treasures unearthed in the Disney archives could steer possible sequels in other directions.

"Just walking around the archives today, I've seen things, found things and spotted files and folders that I didn't know existed," said Spector. "If we get to do another game, I'll be back here with my team doing a bunch of research that is going to completely change any story I might have had in my head when we started thinking about this a long time ago."

http://www.disneyepicmickey.com/

Apple Bans Android Magazine From App Store

A magazine app from Danish company Mediaprovider has been rejected from Apple's App store because it featured exclusive content about the Android operating system, Media Watch has said.

Although Google's platform is in competition with Apple's, it stirs up accusations that Apple's censorship is too far-reaching and hypocritical. There's already an Android news app available in the App Store called Androidworld Reader, as well as various apps that have content about other operating systems. But Mediaprovider's Brian Dixen told Media Watch that his app, Android Magasinet, was rejected primarily for its Android-focused content.

"It's funny really because I don't think we would sell many magazines on Android through Apple App Store, but the question is where this is going," said Dixen, who thinks that Apple is too heavy-handed with its censorship.

Dixen has had other apps published in the App Store with no problem, he said. Both iPhone Magasinet and Gear, apps that deal with iPhone info and news about consumer electronics respectively, are both available for download.

Apple also blocks all apps that contain any kind of nudity, even those that are educational.

This isn't the only area in which Apple has been criticized for its censorship. The iPhone ignores all language that Apple has deemed foul in text messages as well.

Apple confirmed on Monday that its App Store now has more than 300,000 apps. That means that since the store's inception in 2008, more than seven billion apps have been downloaded.

Both Apple and Google helped boost smartphone sales this year. Worldwide mobile device sales are up 35 percent this quarter. The Android platform is the number two operating system with about a 37 percent share of the market. iOS comes in at number three with about 16 percent of the market.

Wi-Fi lifeline reaches remote Himalayas

It used to take teacher Mahabir Pun more than two days to check his email from his home in the remote Himalayan village of Nagi in western Nepal.

The 55-year-old would walk for seven hours to the nearest road before taking a three-hour bus ride along precarious mountain tracks to the only town in the area with an Internet connection.

Today, all Pun has to do is log on to the wireless network he has set up over the past few years, catapulting more than 100 impoverished villages in Nepal into the 21st century.

The technology has transformed lives in some of the most inhospitable places on earth, where there are no roads or hospitals and where most people scratch out a meagre living as subsistence farmers.

It allows communities to access vital medical expertise via videolink, stay in touch with loved-ones abroad, and even sell their yaks, goats and chickens online on www.nepalwireless.com -- a sort of e-Bay for local farmers.

"We chose areas where no commercial Internet service provider would ever go," says Pun, who estimates that around 70,000 people can access the network.

"When we started, almost no one in rural Nepal was using the Internet. Now we have connected more than 100 villages. But that is nothing, there are thousands more villages like these in Nepal."

It all started when Pun travelled to the United States in the 1990s to study for a masters degree. The Internet was just becoming popular, and one of his professors suggested they set up a web site for his home village.

It was one of the first Internet sites to mention Nepal, and by the time he returned home, Pun was being bombarded by messages from people around the world who wanted to visit the 800-strong mountain community.

"At that time, not even businesses in (the capital) Kathmandu had websites, but Nagi did," he told AFP in his native village, 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) up in the Himalayas.

"I was getting emails from all sorts of people including doctors and college professors, and they all wanted to know what they could do to help our village. So I invited them to come and volunteer."

Pun decided his students should learn about this emerging new technology, but the school could not afford to buy a computer. So he asked everyone who came to bring a component, and set about teaching himself to build one.

He organised a collection centre in the backpacker district of Kathmandu, and managed to put together around a dozen makeshift computers, building them in wooden crates and distributing them to schools in the area.

But it was not until 2002 that, with the help of volunteer students, a plan was formed to hook up the village to the Internet using a wi-fi connection from the nearest major town, Pokhara.

There were myriad challenges. No one had ever tried to build a wi-fi network at such a high altitude before, and a series of relay towers had to be built to beam the signal through the narrow valleys.

All the construction materials had to be carried up the mountain by hand along with the solar panels needed for power. The highest stands at 3,600 metres, and is manned by a yak farmer who has to check the connections daily.

Mains electricity had still not reached any of the villages, and to make things even more difficult, Nepal was in the grip of a bloody Maoist insurgency and Nagi had fallen completely under the control of the leftist guerrillas.

"The Maoists had eyes everywhere. They used to come and ask lots of questions, but they didn't know much about the Internet," says Pun.

"All the parts we used were totally illegal. If the army had come here more frequently, they would have put a stop to it."

Once again, Pun asked his foreign volunteers to bring what they could to help -- customs officials, he reasoned, would be unlikely to suspect Western backpackers of smuggling in contraband communications equipment.

Nagi was the first village to be connected, and by September 2003, five villages in Myagdi district, around 200 miles (300 kilometres) north-west of Kathmandu, were accessing the network.

Now, Pun operates two networks that connect more than 100 villages to the Internet -- a significant achievement in a country where just 6.3 percent of people have online access.

In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay prize -- widely viewed as the Asian equivalent of the Nobel -- for community leadership.

But he is determined to avoid the world of "conferences, resolutions and commitments," and has said he only accepted because the 50,000-dollar prize could help put more villages online.

To keep costs down, Pun travels around the country by public bus and works from a tiny office in his family home.

The local Internet service provider charges a discounted rate of 45,000 rupees (640 dollars) a month for the connection, with the cost shared between dozens of villages in the area.

In Nagi, they have set up a paper-making business to raise funds, and Pun is working with the government to create a new trekking route he hopes will bring much-needed tourist dollars to the villages.

In the packed computer room at Nagi school, the impact on the community is clear.

At one terminal sits 63-year-old Amar Pun whose three children, like many Nepalese, have moved abroad, unable to find work in their home country.

"They send news of their lives by email and I send back news of the village. It feels great to be in touch, I love hearing from them," he says.

Teenagers chat on Facebook to friends in neighbouring villages, watch Nepalese pop music on YouTube and look up the latest gossip on their favourite football players.

In the village clinic, health worker Rupa Pun connects every morning to a Kathmandu hospital using a webcam, allowing patients to be seen by doctors hundreds of miles away.

"It used to take sick patients two days to get down into the valley for treatment. They had to be carried in a basket or on a makeshift stretcher," she says.

"Before, we could only treat minor illnesses here. Now the doctor can give his diagnosis and send the right drugs up here if we don't already have them. It has made a huge difference to our lives."