Mickey Mouse was the thirteenth game by Nintendo Research & Development 1 in Nintendo's line of Game & Watch consoles. It was redesigned without the Disney license as Egg, which was the fourteenth Game & Watch console. Both versions were released in 1981.
In the original Mickey Mouse-branded game, Mickey tends to chickens in a chicken coop and has to catch the eggs. The game is played on a simple liquid crystal display and depicts Mickey Mouse, a chicken sitting on top of one of the coops, and the eggs in a frame-by-frame style. The background panel is in color and depicts the coops from which the eggs come as well as other stationary chickens and grass.
The Egg version is identical, except Mickey Mouse is now replaced by a wolf that is stealing eggs from chicken coops in a hen house. This version works much better thematically and is the version that Nintendo has remade and ported onto more powerful systems over the years.
Egg was converted to and remade in Game & Watch Gallery 3 for the Game Boy Color in 1999. It has the classic mode, which is identical to the original, as well as a modern mode. The modern mode takes a cue from the puzzle game Yoshi's Cookie since a blue Yoshi collects cookies as they come out of an oven. The modern version adds a bit of spice into the mix since bob-ombs will sometimes have to be avoided while the cookies are being caught.
Game & Watch Gallery 3 was available through emulation on the Virtual Console on Nintendo 3DS in 2014 as well as through the Game Boy emulator available to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers on Nintendo Switch in 2023.
On a side note, in the Soviet Union, both versions of the game were bootlegged as part of the Elektronika Microprocessor Games line. Mickey Mouse was copied directly under the Russian translation of Mickey Mouse, Микки Маус. Egg became Ну, погоди!, which is romanized as Nu, pogodi!, and is translated as Well, Just You Wait! in English. Well, Just You Wait! was a popular series of animated shorts in the Soviet Union, and later in Russia, that were produced by Soyuzmultfilm. The wolf from Nu, pogodi! replaced Nintendo's wolf and the hare from Nu, pogodi! replaced the chicken sitting on top of a chicken coop.
There are also a whole bunch of Soviet Elektronika consoles that used the Soviet bootleg of the Mickey Mouse microprocessor with different art, graphics, and themes. You can find out about them in a separate review located here.
Like all Game & Watch games, there is fun to be had with Mickey Mouse and Egg in short bursts. If you want to try it, I recommend the version in Game & Watch: Gallery 3. This way, you not only get a conversion of the original game from 1981 but a modern mode as well. The modern mode adds more advanced color graphics as well as a modification to the game formula by adding bob-ombs, which leads to a slightly less monotonous experience.
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