Potato Potato Potato

On January 1, 2024 the 1928 animated short film Steamboat Willie directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and produced by Walt Disney Studios entered the public domain. The film was a breakthrough as being one of the first to use synchronized sound and introduced the characters of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

For creativity to thrive, artists must be able to profit from their creations, intellectual property is a thing, and copyrights, patents, and trademarks matter. Simultaneously, creativity doesn’t live in a vacuum, and for society to grow copyrights and patents have terms that expire. When the term ends the work falls into the public domain for others to use.

Unlike copyrights and patents, trademarks can last forever as long as they are used and renewed. To that end, we acknowledge that the names Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Walt Disney, and Disney are all active trademarks of Disney Enterprises, Inc. and have refrained from using them in the game. Similarly, we have avoided using the iconic opening sequence of Mickey at the wheel as Disney has been using it as a logo.

Frames were extracted from the animation which was NOT sourced from Disney+, as it would have been a violation of their Terms of Service. The images were manipulated, modified, slices, diced, and julienned. All sounds elemets are original or in the public domain. No sound from the original animation was used (for reasons).

Work on this project began on January 1, 2024 and was live streamed via TikTok @Jaredx2.

This is just a silly little game. An ode to what repurposing “found graphics” can mean in our complex world.

Jared Bendis

This game is being released under the Lemming Labs brand which is division of ATBOSH Media Ltd.

Coming soon for Android and iOS…

In the meantime you may enjoy the HTML5 version here.