Mickey's dream self (kind of like astral projection) leaves his body and passes through a mirror in his bedroom. Once on the other side, he tries to return to his bedroom through the mirror, only to break it into many pieces, which scatter about the dreamlike mansion Mickey finds himself in. To return to his body, Mickey must find the mirror pieces.

Magical Mirror is your basic Point-and-Click adventure, not unlike The Dig, Full Throttle and the Discworld games. With the controller, you move the cursor about to move Mickey, use trick points, keys or to just open doors. Unfortunately, though, Mickey only moves to certain points in the room, which basically leaves you with very little in the way of options. To start the game off, you'll find a star holder, which once filled can be used to perform tricks to gain certain items. Tricks are events where a ghost or something magical in the environment tries to do something to Mickey. At the correct time, clicking the cursor on a certain item or Mickey will end or change the event. If you complete the series of events without running out of trick points or a missed pointer click, you gain an item. Mickey can earn more holders for more complicated trick series and can refill his trick bar with the stars floating around the mansion.

What the game boils down to is a simple fetch-quest, where the player goes from room to room, collecting items and keys to satisfy "puzzle" solutions. But to be honest, none of the puzzles are all that difficult or imaginative. It's apparent that this game is meant solely for the younger age bracket. To punctuate that, the game comes with a Kids Mode and parents have the option to plug in a second controller and help their children. There are a few mini games and you can use the GameCube to GameBoy Advance link (with Disney's Magical Quest) to add to the limited play depth.

Graphically, the game looks adequately accurate to a 3D version of a Disney cartoon. The rooms and furniture are colorful and have the soft, rounded edges and all around goofy design that's familiar. Mickey is animated accurately. The problem with the graphics is that they woefully underachieve what the console is capable of. None of the locations use any GameCube's lighting or texture capabilities to their fullest. While the age bracket this game seems to be aimed at may not mind, it doesn't speak well for the developer's capability. Also, when Mickey discovers new items, his preset animation doesn't even show the item in his hand until the camera angle changes, which leads me to believe that someone was taking shortcuts in making this game.

Audiowise, the game captures Mickey Mouse fairly well. Sound effects and vocal bits are pretty dead on, but they tend to get repetitive even after a little while. The music is simple and upbeat, but tends to be the same throughout most of the game except for the rare mood change.

If you're a parent looking for a game that your young child will enjoy, you'll want to pick this one up. The graphics and audio presentation won't be much of a deterrent to the enjoyment of children gamers. Older gamers will want to skip it as the repetitive and unchallenging gameplay will grow tiresome quickly.

- - Kinderfeld