Disney Goes Vocal on Epic Mickey 2

The creator of Wii platformer Epic Mickey has confirmed a sequel is in the works, and it will have a distinctive musical flavour.

Titled Epic Mickey 2, the game will of course again feature Disney's most loved mouse wielding his magical paintbrush, this time joined by the adorable Oswald in a nifty co-operative feature for two players. Unlike his successor, the lucky rabbit will carry a remote control that can command electricity. Together with Mickey's brush, they'll overcome new and trickier obstacles. Oswald will play a pivotal role in this adventure; he'll be a secondary player on a drop-in, drop-out basis - controlled by the computer in single player, and available any time for a friend to join in.

Another issue the team and players had with the original was the camera. Spector assures fans that there'll be "1,000 specific changes made to the camera" alone, so you'll use the manual controls as scarcely as possible.

One of the issues Warren Spector had with the first game was the lack of voices. He hopes to address this by featuring voice actors and original songs composed by Jim Dooley and Mike Himelstein, who wrote the music and lyrics for Disney's animated flick, Dorothy of Oz.

I love the co-op and next-gen stuff, but for me, when a character breaks into song, which they do on a regular basis in this game, it's magic.

… We couldn't ask people to care about this guy they've never heard of or no one has ever seen since 1928 in a Disney film. It was unrealistic to expect people to care in the first game, but now we know they care. We hear about it from players all the time. They really, really got into Oswald, which is hugely gratifying.

There's also talk of a rumoured 3DS Epic Mickey spin-off, but Disney have yet to confirm or deny these reports.