If there was ever a game that deserves the “kiddy” epitaph, Magical Mirror is it. Unlike some games that simply have a graphical style that some would associate with children’s entertainment, Magical Mirror also has gameplay that is squarely aimed at youngsters. That’s not to say that adults couldn’t enjoy the game, but I suspect that the number of adults who can will be very limited. As a game for kids, especially young ones or kids with little experience playing video games, Magical Mirror is above average though.

The gameplay itself is primarily point and click via a dynamic on-screen cursor. The game starts when Mickey gets up in the middle of the night and enters the mirror on his dresser (it’s clear that he’s dreaming the entire game). From here, you progress through the game by clicking on things. If you move the cursor on any area of the screen that will cause an action, the cursor lights up or changes appearance (doors cause the cursor to turn from a hand into a door, for example). Often when you click something, Mickey will go through some absurdly long animation where he conveys that he’s thinking. Sometimes it’s a visible action, but things often seem to take far too long. The only break from this comes in the way of the “trick system”. As you progress through the game you can collect stars that fill up your trick meter. During certain animations, the screen will start wobbling and a certain number of stars in your meter will highlight red, giving you a few seconds to find the correct thing to click on. If you click on it in time and have enough stars in your trick meter, you can cause some “trick” to happen. This is generally how you progress through the game.

I did encounter a few mini-games while playing that contain really basic real-time gameplay, but they were few and far between and not all that satisfying. However, they would make the perfect introduction to real-time gaming for a younger child. Aside from the trick system, the gameplay feels a lot like Resident Evil, only without the things that makes Resident Evil worth playing. There is never a sense of threat in the game, much less an actual threat. There is no real time control to keep you engaged as you move around the environments. Magical Mirror can link up with Magical Quest (GBA), but the connection is limited to transferring a few non-vital items from the GBA title to Magical Mirror.

For extremely young children the game features a “kids” mode. This contains sanctions that make the game even easier (free trick points), and it gives a parent the ability to use the second controller to guide their child through the game, but saving is disabled and there is an hour time limit (why these limitations were placed on kids mode, I don’t know).

Graphically, the game isn’t stunning from a technological point of view, but it does have some artistic merit and a few technical tricks. The game has a cartoon appearance, but it isn’t cel-shaded. Although the graphics are real-time, the camera is often not moving. It usually doesn’t move until you activate a trick. The frame rate appears to be rock solid, but it wouldn’t be much of an issue given the game’s limited motion anyway.

The sound effects are good and should be especially pleasing to really young kids. (I’d love to give specific ages, but I’m not some kind of Ph.D. on kids or anything.) The sound is basically cartoony in nature with over the top traditional cartoon sound effects throughout. The music is surprisingly well written and varied. The music is mostly melodic rather than atmospheric, which is a big plus to me. Capcom’s teams often have good musicians on board.

I can’t really say that Magical Mirror is a bad game, because it isn’t. However, I can’t recommend it to most gamers either because it likely won’t appeal to them. Parents looking for a game for children may find that it is far too short (although a young child would play it much longer). If you think that you’ll have the patience to play a point and click adventure that doesn’t have a very steep difficulty (although it can be difficult to max out the game by finding all the secrets), then by all means check it out. You can always rent Magical Mirror since it shouldn’t take more than one or two rentals to beat it, even if you rent the GBA title Magical Quest at the same time for the connectivity.