Just an outline of his ears is enough. He is one of the most recognisable characters in the world, but Mickey Mouse is about to get a makeover.

More precisely, he is being “reimaged” to enhance his appeal to youngsters of the video game generation who have been nurtured on the slick computer-generated graphics of the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks.

For decades, the Walt Disney Company has kept Mickey Mouse’s look and character largely unaltered, afraid that even the smallest change might harm a brand that earns the company $5 billion (£3 billion) a year in merchandising sales. However, as US sales of Mickey merchandise have declined, a rethink was in order. So, the squeaky-clean rodent is to be “re-imaged” to acquire a cunning and cantankerous streak when he appears in a new Disney video game, Epic Mickey, next year.

The move is part of an effort, understood to still be in its early stages, to rethink the character’s image, from the way he walks and talks to his appearance on the Disney Channel and what his house looks like at Disney World. Epic Mickey, designed for the Nintendo Wii console, is set in a cartoon wasteland inhabited by forgotten and retired Disney creations. Players can opt to be a co-operative, helpful Mickey or a more destructive version that starts to resemble a rat.

Warren Spector, of Junction Point, a Disney-owned game developer working on Epic Mickey, said that it would be edgy and unexpected. He said: “By putting the mischievous Mickey in an unfamiliar place and asking him to make choices — to help other cartoon characters or choose his own path — the game forces players to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, players must ask themselves, ‘What kind of hero am I?’. Each player will come up with a different answer.”

Graham Hopper, general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, said that the game “takes Mickey back to his creative roots”. In many ways the new Mickey does appear to be a return to the original character in the 1928 film Steamboat Willie, in which he appeared as something of a rabble-rouser, prone to fisticuffs.

Disney said that the re-imaging is about connecting Mickey to gamers aged 13 to 34, who would not normally be targets for Mickey merchandising.

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