Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (1990)

Preliminary: Great Sound and Look so far, a bit laggy during big jumps and swinging on a rope cuz of all the elaborate graphics in background and foreground, but overall just a nice vibe. Neat gameplay where you collect what you can throw, tho I wish you could punch when out of projectiles. The controls feel a bit delayed or, I dunno, slidey? Hard to explain. As I finish the first level, tbh I expected more from this, it's all cute enough but just feels like it's missing something, and slippery controls/movement. Cute ending sign tho

Day 1

The actual level music is quite lame. And not a big fan of this forest theme. But I saw there will later be a Toyland area, and I liked a lot of the music/sound effects in the Sound Test part of setup

That first boss was enjoyable enough, a bit repetitive cuz not necessarily hard just takes a lot of hits. Never a fan of that. I like that you get info about your Technical Bonus and whatnot at the end of levels, and it's overall a nice End of Level screen. I didn't get a screenshot of it tho. I am excited for Toyland level!

I like that you can bounce off enemies as long as you're precise enough with your button press. Wish they set up more opportunities to bounce off multiple enemies in a row. This feels like it's missing something still, despite the things that are reminding me of a favorite of mine--Kingdom Hearts (those purple heart thingies and the Toyland reminds me of Traverse Town gizmo shop or w/e that good training spot is )

I wish you moved faster and that you jumps were less glidey/slippery. Maybe I'm just eagerly awaiting the Super Mario World run feature :-p

Pro-tip: the up-down symbol thingies that flip over the level actually are useful, you kill all the enemies on the screen with it :-p

My thoughts on the 2nd boss were, a) I was disappointed by Toyland's lack of, well, tiny toys in background like that Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa's toy-themed level (or was it a different game? with scissors being as if you are super small compared to them), and b) I wish you could hit the bosses multiple times when they are vulnerable, to make them less repetitive and blah. Ah at least I got a screenshot of the level end screen this time

Boo back to a drab level setting again. (Dark Forest this time). The levels are definitely getting more tedious here and the usual early platformer frustrating puzzles. The water rising part of "level 3" of the Dark Forest area (the temple-y vibe) reminds me of the Crash 3 temple-y levels where the water rises periodically. I'm getting past halfway for sure, but kinda wanna play some OSRS now for the night hmmm Darn OSRS Ironman account slowing me down for my backlog.

Yay! Finally a fun boss! I liked the Dark Forest ("Area 3" boss). Just about good timing and fast-paced compared to the prior two. And I'm digging this Library world, again reminding me of Kingdom Hearts, plus actually having me be "small compared to normal objects" which like I said I always like. And now I'm in some milk bottle luscious world?

Ahhh I'm already on the Library area's boss. Seems I might be finishing this tonight >.< Oh me and 90s games. They definitely hook me.

Ok I already noticed some similarities to Castlevania, primarily those knights that throw things at you, but these gears seem straight out of Castlevania III! Haha. Ok and now the pendulum platforms too, has to be.

Pretty little false ending after what I thought was the final boss but was confused cuz he didn't look like a witch haha

Ugh this [actual] final boss is not just hard but also tedious. I don't like that there's no way to harm her when she's at the top area. Never a fan of waiting periods in action-platformers: give me the fast-paced action!

Cute little ending. Like most of the game, I expected something more, but cute enough

Look: 8/10 Cute. Good for 1990 cuz it's Genesis and harkening the next gen. But not spectacular

Sound: 7.5/10 Some good tunes but tbh kinda disappointed with that. Expected more based on the Sound Tests.

Play: 8/10 Slippery and clunky, but a good fun action-platformer. And I just played it all in one 2 hour session so. Ha. Can't complain that much. I probly should've split it into 2 days and played some OSRS...

Feel: 8/10 Always love franchise-based games and this has an overall unique and special feel, with seeming references to Castlevania and influences on Kingdom Hearts.

Attachment: 8/10 Good game, just felt like it lacked something to put it over that edge of 4 or 5 star. Definitely worth a try tho! And I can get people's love for it who have nostalgia for it!

Overall: 7.9/10

Completion: Main Story

Playtime: ~2 hours

I finally was able to get sometimes off and managed to beat Castle of Illusion. a game that, In my opinion, is over hyped as being top tier for the Genesis. I agree that it was one of the greatest early platformers on the Genesis, but playing it made me appreciate Super Mario Bros. 3 so much more.

I love the animation, the art style, and the background design which shows the Genesis capabilities early on, but this game gets way less fun the more I played, and then it started doing cheap death traps that other Med games from the time were doing for continuously renting the game, and moving far away from overall quality of the game.

I'm starting to question, how did Sega manage to gain ground and sell consoles when most of their early releases were so painfully average.

(This is the 26th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Quick word on the challenge I'm doing. This will be needless for those of you who are looking for a review of the game, but it's still something I'd like to mention quickly for those following along (those +-0 of you).

The Sega Genesis obviously launched in Aug 1989 in NA already, so it's not like Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is the first 16 bit game to come out since I started this, nor is it even the first Sega Genesis game I've played. So far I've played Batman and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for the system.

But we're now in November 1990, and this game actually released on the same date as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which would be November 21st, 1990. That console, as is well-known, is the best-selling 16-bit home console, so that's why we're starting to really get into 16-bit territory here, and I am incredibly excited to try out a bunch of classics for the first time from an era many still call the best for console games - if not games in general.

Is this game, developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis, the highlight of the era already? Some say it's right up there with Super Mario World as one of the best platformers of this time (SMW also released on November 21, 1990) but to spoiler my conclusion a little bit, I don't really think it's close. This game is fun but has plenty of flaws, so let's get into it.

STORYTELLING

The story is explained at the beginning and in the manual. Minnie is kidnapped by the evil witch Mizrabel (great name btw), because she is jealous of Minnie's beauty. So Mickie makes his way to the Castle of Illusion to save Minnie. An old man there tells him that he needs seven gems of the rainbow to rescue her. Why? Who knows.

There will be an epilogue as well but no other form of storytelling in between from what I can tell, so nothing worth talking about here.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is very simple and basic. You move from side to side in this 2D platformer and can either jump on enemies or shoot projectiles (often fruit) at them. If you jump on them, it catapults you up and enables you to reach otherwise unreachable platforms. That's definitely the most unique part about this game's gameplay.

Levels are heavy on platforming and the likelihood that you will fall to your death increases with each level you pass. One cave level where the next platform was so easily miss able if you jump a milli-second too early was especially frustrating.

The game starts you off with three health, 3 lives per continue and 2 continues. Your i-frames after taking a hit only last a second or so, so it's very easy to die within seconds. Since hit frames are sometimes too big, enemies sometimes just pop out of the ground with almost no forewarning and a jump on the enemy's head doesn't get recognized properly (you get damage for missing it), you often lose health unfairly. This is precisely where any comparison to a game like Super Mario World is just not reasonable. I'm playing Super Mario World as we speak and the difference in quality is so high that it actually surprised me quite a lot to see people actually comparing the two.

I've also encountered a bug where I somehow jumped over a tree during a boss fight and couldn't go back to the other direction, meaning that I was stuck.

Gems are acquired by beating bosses after the end of each level, which aren't too difficult, but I failed the second one twice because my jumps on his head just didn't register for some reason. I decided to abandon the game some time after the third boss because while I was doing platforming on tiny tiny platforms, I realized the game didn't immediately register that you let go of the forward button, which made me slip off the platform and fall to my demise.

Apart from these issues it's not a very difficult game, but there is also nothing really exciting about it. There is plenty of stuff you can argue for here apart from its gameplay, and I'll likely agree with you, but I must say that this was not that fun to play.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

No voice acting. Sound design was mostly pretty good and I liked how a lot of actions actually got a sound to accompany them, like even jumping or throwing stuff, which doesn't happen in a lot of platformers I've played recently. The music was fine overall but I can't say I liked it that much. My favorite track definitely was the one used for the boss fights but the soundtrack just didn't get me into a playful/whimsical kinda mood like I would have expected.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

Lots and lots of colorful, bright worlds are present in this game, with plenty of variety between them. To mention something a little more lowkey, I liked how the clouds outside kept moving even if you were standing still and how much detail was put into the horizon, even if it's not something a player will really focus on a lot.

But simply graphically, this is definitely one of the best one's you will find from this entire year.

ATMOSPHERE

I didn't always feel like the music used for a particular level necessarily fit the mood, but overall the colorful levels and their overall designs managed to do a solid enough job of putting me in the mood of playing a Mickey Mouse platform adventure. If someone is reading this: Sometimes I feel silly seriously critiquing a game like this, at the end of the day it's a game for children that isn't meant to be taken apart this way. Right? I don't know, I'm definitely going to be glad when a lot more mature games start coming up on the playlist.

CONTENT

There is some fine content here for platformer enthusiasts. This game should take about 3 hours for your average gamer and lead you through a variety of different worlds. But the game overall has pretty basic gameplay and plenty of frustration to come with it, even if there certainly is much worse out there in that regard.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

Mostly the levels are designed pretty much as you would expect. The difficulty is definitely lower than for many comparable platformers. Most of the time you just go into a specific direction and are offered with very little choice in how to deal with the dangers. Move, kill or avoid, beware of gravity, find the exit at the end of the screen.

Some levels also include underwater sections, and these just frankly sucked. A piranha would usually wait for you in there and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to move past it without taking damage.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

The worlds are definitely lookers here, and there even is one part where you have to trigger a button to flip the level over. Your character can then still walk upside down, while all others fall down. Nothing major but a nice changeup. Other than that, this is a pretty basic licensed platformer, though it does look pretty good graphically for its time.

REPLAYABILITY

Apart from trying to beat your high score, there also are some secrets to discover, which might warrant a second playthrough for you.

PLAYABILITY

The game works well at pretty much all times, but I did encounter one bug and I disliked how letting go of the forward button would only register like a second later.

OVERALL

The game looks great for a 1990 game, and certainly it was a big deal when it released. You'll be hard-pressed to find a review below 9/10 back in the day. But in today's day and age, we have a game that simply shows its flaws and can't wow in the same way with its strengths. And turns out, its flaws, at least to me, are worse than in many other games I've played from this year recently. And if we just compare to Super Mario World, we can also see that a big difference in quality exists on pretty much every level. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is fine and should probably be played if you're looking to go through gaming history like I am, even if in a much more condensed way. Why? Because the ratings tell me you shouldn't look into my thoughts too deeply. But at the same time, I've played too many comparable games to really feel bad about standing where I do on this game.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

• J. M. for VGCE, Issue 24 (Jan 91): "Castle of Illusion is, quite plainly, one of the most fabulous run-and-jump games ever created."
• Sushi-X, Issue 17 (Dec 90): "Music... a 10+!"

I always liked those classics 2D platformer games, but recently I got a brilliant SNES mini to play them at last. I played this one in its Master System version. When I was a child, I played the Mega Drive version a little, but they are both different games. I hope to play Mega Drive version soon too.

There is not too much to say about Castle of Illusion: it's just a fun 2D platformer. Controls are good and level's design is original and fun. That would be 3/5 stars. But what I liked the most were the presentation. Graphics are colorful and pretty good for Master System. It can be one of the best looking games of that age. Music is good too, pretty catchy. But the artistic design is the main reason I give 4 stars instead of 3. We'll visit an enchanted forest, a toy city, we'll swim in a giant cup of coffee... The game irradiates magic, and for someone who loves colors and magic like myself, that turned this solid and fun platformer into a magic and worth it adventure!

I don't really care about Mickey Mouse or Disney properties in general, but this game shows up in lots of best 2D platformer lists, at least for the Genesis. Always did find it a bit amusing how Sega systems kept getting surprisingly solid Disney games, when that sort of kid-friendliness was always a better fit for Nintendo.

Anyways, this is indeed a solid little side-scroller. Bright and colorful, cheerful and whimsical, simple and fun. You play as Mickey, who jumps high and slams his butt onto enemies (showing he really does give a rat's ass), and can throw projectiles (uh, magical orbs? I don't know). Everything controls well, and everything in the game is super-cute. The levels are designed well and have a nice variety in their challenges. There's not much to hate here, except for how short it is. The game's over before you know it, and doesn't really have anything to encourage replays. Worth at least one playthrough though.

Platform:

Genesis / Master System version. This is a review of 2 different games actually, but since it's only one entry in this game database, I'll try to incorporate both. The rating is thus an average of the rating of both.

Graphics/Sound:

MD: The Genesis version was back then praised for it's looks, but the character proportions are a bit different than original the Disney character.

SMS: Graphics and animation on the Master System are outstanding compared to other games in the library.

Gameplay:

MD: The Genesis version is a pretty standard platformer. It has an ammo system where you collect apples that you can then use as a projectile weapon. There is nothing really special about this game.

SMS: This is where this game really shines, especially in comparison to it's larger brother on the Genesis. It takes up a similar gameplay as in Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, where you can pick up stuff and throw it or use it otherwise. The story line is the same as on the Genesis, but all the levels are original. The levels are a bit more interesting here too, compared to the Genesis version, although not as visually impressive.

Difficulty:

MD: The controls feel dated, sometimes it's unnecessarily slippery or the inertia of the character is too strong. Once you get used to it, it's playable, and the difficulty is challenging but not too unfair.

SMS: I feel the controls are tighter here than on the Genesis, or the levels don't take as much advantage from falling off ledges and the like. It's a bit easier, I think, but also more enjoyable.

It's dubbed by many as one of the major platforming classics of the time, right up there with Super Mario World. The Genesis version is as such rather disappointing in comparison. It's still an ok platformer, but can by no means compete with the sheer amount of ideas in SMW. The Master System version, however is a very interesting platformer, that still plays well and I would recommend this over the Genesis version.

About the Game:

In Castle of Illusion, Mickey Mouse must save Minnie from the evil witch Gruntilda before she steals Minnie's beauty by teaming up with a wise-cracking bird and wait now I think I've confused myself...

I played Castle of Illusion a lot as a kid. Or, maybe I did... My mom was a Disney NUT back then and honestly I can't remember if it was me playing or me watching her play. What I do know is that as soon as the game is mentioned it's entire musical track takes front and center in my brain and I'm a kid again!

Gameplay:

Gameplay here is about as straightforward as it gets in the "Move right, jump and throw" sense. Your enemies are dispatched either by throwing a projectile based on the world you're in, or by tapping the jump button while you're in the air to perform a combative butt stomp.

Stages are varied, each adding increasingly difficult obstacles for you to deal with, and it never feels too difficult. Enemies are generally pretty simple to deal with, and most worlds end after two to three stages and a boss fight.

Controls are tight and responsive, and generally everything handles really well. One inconsistency is in regards to bouncing off enemies. One of the greatest joys in Castle of Illusion is flying off enemies' heads onto another enemy, and basically bouncing your way through most if not all of a single stage. Sometimes, however, you'll inexplicably "fall" through an enemy that you defeat rather than bouncing off them. This can do a lot to ruin a good run you're having, or at least severely throw off a planned jump. This is especially irritating when certain secret areas actually require you to use this bounce mechanic.

Presentation, Music and Sound:

When it comes to the 16-bit console generation, I feel like they really had it together from the outset. Sega knew they wanted to make a splash when they hit the scene in the late 80's, and as a result even their earliest titles looked fantastic. Castle of Illusion, despite it's dated UI, is no exception. Mickey is well animated with great little touches like the ledge animation, and the environments all look distinct and well drawn.

Another thing that most early Genesis games all had in common was their sound design, and when you play a lot of titles from 1989 to 1991 you'll start to hear a lot of similarities. That said, what Castle of Illusion manages to do with those sounds is pretty spectacular. The music from this game is still with me, and I could hear the tracks playing even before popping it in my Genesis for the first time in 20 years. The dream track from the spiderweb level in World 1 or from in the Tea Cup in World 4 is a standout. The sound effects are equally as, well, effective.

Fun & Relevance:

From Chip 'n Dale and DuckTales on the NES to Castle of Illusion on the Genesis, there was a time when licensed, particularly Disney licensed, games were simply the best. Case in point, this is the first of six Disney games we'll be playing before setting off to the 32-bit consoles!

Castle of Illusion is still a lot of fun to play, though ultimately it's fairly average in the scheme of things. I'll openly admit that the enjoyment I found here was heavily tinted by nostalgia, though I think that's fine. This is also the first game I got to watch my Disney-obsessed four year old beat (on Practice) so for that it will always be special... it also means I'll have to pick up another copy having fried mine...

Review:

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