Since I was about nine years old, I've gotten an almost unhealthy high from trips to Disneyland and DisneyWorld, making the trek to one or the other every other year, on average. My favorite rides are those that everyone else loves, too: Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion, among others. So when Disney announced that 2003 would see movies and videogames tied into the latter two, I was both skeptical and gleefully hopeful.

With Pirates of the Caribbean, we got one of the best movies of the year and a fantastic role-playing game that was frustratingly buggy. With Haunted Mansion, we have yet to judge the movie but can say without a doubt that the unrelated videogame lives up to Disney fans' expectations. Like the themepark ride, the game is definitely geared toward children but has a sprinkling of adult-friendly aspects. Its production values, graphics and gameplay are so solid, though, that foolish mortals of all ages will enjoy their digital romp through the Haunted Mansion.

It should come as no surprise that Haunted Mansion, being a kid-friendly game, is heavy on the platforming gameplay and light on the guns and violence. The game asks players to assume the role of Zeke, a hopeful applicant for housekeeper who looks remarkably like the cemetery groundskeeper from the ride. Unbeknownst to Zeke, the house is haunted, but he takes it all in stride when some friendly ghosts approach him and ask him to rid the mansion of the evil spirits that are making their afterlives miserable.

Ridding the mansion of these evil haunts involves traveling from room to room to capture ghosts with your lantern. In nearly every respect, it's like the gameplay in Luigi's Mansion for the GameCube, which used a similar room-by-room structure and a vacuum to suck up the horrifying spirits. But unlike Luigi's Mansion, which was popular as much for its great graphics as it was for being Luigi's first non-Mario title, the rooms in Haunted Mansion provide unique puzzles and gameplay elements each time around, which keeps the game fresh while you're rounding up the 999 unhappy haunts.

When Zeke enters each room, players must find a way to reach the light switch and turn it on, then capture the dozen or so ghosts and occasional bosses in the room. While it sounds simple, this sets the stage both for the relatively non-violent nature of the game and the original gameplay itself.

See, since Haunted Mansion is geared toward kids, Zeke will never actually "die." Instead, his energy level is a reflection of how scared he is, and when it reaches zero, he's simply "scared to death" and passes out on the floor. If players have an extra life (which are easy to accumulate), Zeke simply rises from the floor and continues his adventure. Apparently, though, Zeke is afraid of the dark, as well, so turning on the lights in each room increases his energy level for that area.

While you're finding your way to the light switch, though, ghosts will literally come out of the woodwork to try to stop you from reaching it. It's then your job to "shoot" them with balls of light from your lantern until they leave Zeke alone. From ghosts to spiders to banshees, the creatures are appropriately ghoulish but not so scary that a six-year-old will want to turn off the game, even if Zeke himself is scared. Instead, players will still be able to focus on the platforming elements required to make it to the switch.

In one room, this platforming involves activating a series of musical instruments, which then "possess" books to come flying from the bookshelves and form a moving staircase up to the light switch. In others, these elements become much more mini-game-esque. For example, the Game Room compels you to shrink in size and help ghosts play a game of nine-ball. By aligning yourself between the cue ball, pocket and the target ball, the ghost will aim for you and, if all goes well, chalk up a point for himself. In another room, you use the same concept to help a ghost throw plates at a maze of wine bottles, which then spill their contents on the floor and start the fire necessary to light the room. It's all very basic, and it's occasionally derivative from previous levels, but it's also very well implemented and surprisingly original in concept.

Once a room is illuminated, the game becomes more exploratory in nature, with Zeke needing to search the nooks and crannies to find the furniture containing the nasty spirits. Once the furniture is "activated," the suddenly non-aggressive ghosts come out and Zeke chases them around to suck them into his lantern. When a room is cleared, the next one opens up and the process of platform/mini-game, illuminate and explore begins again.

On paper, the game sounds repetitive and boring, but in practice, it's actually quite entertaining. With original mini-games and new puzzles in each room, Haunted Mansion will keep even adults playing until the 13^th hour on the Grandfather clock. For fans of the Disney theme parks, the game also provides a fun opportunity to explore some of the environments (including the cemetery) previously kept at arms length by the Doom Buggy's guardrails.

Speaking of the ride, if you've ever been on it, you've probably already started humming "Grim Grinning Ghosts" at some point during this review. Rest assured, the classic song has made it into the game, albeit in a mildly altered state. Haunted Mansion also includes some new tracks, each of which fits the mood of the game even if it isn't as immediately classic. The rest of the game's audio is also well done, with the actual Madame Leota as your guide and ghostly sound effects that are so recognizable yet kitschy that you'll swear they were created by Imagineers for the ride itself.

The graphics in Haunted Mansion are also unsurprisingly reminiscent of the ride, with wallpapers, pictures, decorations and character models straight out of the themepark attraction. What was a surprise, though, is just how good the graphics are. If you thought the graphics in Luigi's mansion were good, wait until you see these.

From particle effects and real-time shadows to player animations and environmental lighting, Haunted Mansion is a sight to behold. True, the game still has a definite cartoon-like feel, but it balances that kid-friendly approach with all the graphical bells and whistles that people raised on (or used to) the current generation of game systems expect. If Haunted Mansion the game is indicative of the special effects we can expect from the upcoming movie, then big-screen connoisseurs are in for a treat.

If there's an Achilles heel with Haunted Mansion, it's that the game is only single-player and doesn't offer much in terms of replayability. Saving is accomplished by approaching a Grandfather clock and making it chime, but once your progress is saved, there's no going back to replay a previous room. I'd love to go back and play the pool table, for instance, but unless I start a new game or avoid saving my progress from that point on, there's no way to do so. With mini-games and rooms this fun, it's a disservice to the game that players need to keep going forward.

As a title geared for kids, though, which seem to be few and far between nowadays, Haunted Mansion delivers where it counts. There's nothing too scary, too complex or too violent, and the puzzles and platforming are creative enough to keep even an adult playing through more than his or her fair share of rooms. If you've got a trick-or-treater or Disney fan in the house, Haunted Mansion is one game you don't want to miss.