- Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
During the NES era, Capcom made a name for themselves with their outstanding Disney licensed titles like Duck Tales and Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers. Around the same time, Sega also began developing Disney games for their consoles, beginning with Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse.
The story begins as Minnie Mouse is whisked away by Mizrabel, a character who’s very clearly based on the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. And so, Mickey must venture through five stages of her castle to save his gal pal. It’s pretty standard side-scrolling platforming, as Mickey has no direct attacks, but can jump on enemies to damage them. You need to remember to press either the jump button or Down on the D-pad to activate Mickey’s butt jump, otherwise you’ll land right on top of an enemy and take damage. If you hold onto the jump button when hitting an enemy, you’ll also bounce higher, with several areas requiring that you bop on several enemies in a row to avoid falling. You can also collect items to throw as projectiles, up to 30. The exact item depends on the level, ranging from apples to toy balls, but they all work the same way. Mickey walks a little slowly compared to other side-scrolling platformer heroes, but it’s something you can get used to. Mickey starts each stage with three hit points, though you can increase this to five max if you find any extra healing items.
Even though it’s a little basic, Castle of Illusion impresses with its levels, which are constantly throwing new gimmicks at you and are quite progressive for a game released in 1990. Most stages are fairly straightforward, but have extra items to find if you make detours or make some particularly skilled jumps.
The first stage takes place in a forest, where you need to outrun enormous boulder-like apples, then jump along floating leaves against enormous spider webs. (No spiders are present, thankfully.) The night falls later in the level, where you need to bounce on the heads of some spirits that look like they could’ve come from Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride. The second stage brightens up with a trip through world filled with toys. The first stage has you climbing up an enormous mountain of toy blocks as you bounce off springing jack-in-the-boxes. The second area has a section where you can flip the stage upside down, also causing enemies to get smashed in the ensuing gravity flip. The fourth stage is one of the most creative, creating a microcosmic world in someone’s house. Here, when you enter a milk bottle, you’re teleported to a land filled with desserts; when you jump into a tea cup, you swim through an ocean of tea, complete with floating sugar cubes. The final stage is a spooky castle straight out of Castlevania, complete with an enormous clock tower to scale; even the final boss fight against Mizrabel is just like battles against Dracula, as she’s an enormous, cloaked figure who shoots fire and flickers around the screen.
The visuals are excellent for an early Genesis game, not only with its environments but also Mickey’s many animations – he jogs along happily, he sways his hips when idle, he becomes visibly terrified when being chased by something, and teeters precariously on a platform edge. While modest today, touches like these are what set the 16-bit systems apart of the 8-bit ones. Altogether, Castle of Illusion alongside The Revenge of Shinobi as one of the most visually and mechanically impressive titles in the early Genesis library.
The game design is credited to Emiko “Emirin” Yamamoto, a producer at Disney who also helmed Quackshot Starring Donald Duck. This was one of the first games in her career that eventually spanned over thirty years, with production credits spanning many other non-Sega Disney properties like Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey. On the Sega side, the graphic designers include Rieko Kodama, famous for her work on the Phantasy Star series, and Takashi Yuda, who later did artwork for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sakura Wars, and was the director of Space Channel 5. The charming music came from Tokuhiko Uwabo, a regular composer among late 1980s and early 1990s Sega console games, as well as Shigenori Kamiya, who worked on other Disney Sega games.
Castle of Illusion was also ported to the Game Gear and Master System. While the quality of these downsized 16-to-8-bit ports was often inconsistent, this is an outstanding conversion that doesn’t directly adapt the game, but reconstruct a whole new one out of similar pieces.
While the visuals aren’t as detailed, this is still one nice looking game, with vibrant visuals that often looked even brighter than its 16-bit counterpart. While it features many of the same level themes, the designs are completely different, offering five original levels that feature many original challenges. For example, the dessert theme was only used in a few subareas on the Genesis version, but here it’s the theme of an entire level. You even get to select the order of the first three stages, unlike the original. The level design is a bit more open, with more alternate paths to explore that feature additional power-ups.
Mickey’s movement is a little faster, though you need to remember to hold down on the D-pad when jumping on enemies, as simply holding down the jump button won’t work, as it did in the Genesis game. You can no longer stock up on throwable objects, but instead can pick up various items like rocks and barrels and toss them about. This makes it look and feel a little closer to Capcom’s DuckTales and Chip ‘n’ Dale games on the NES. The boss battles are also completely different – for example, the first boss in the Genesis version is a large tree that sends its face rolling around the floor, while in the Genesis version, you fight a miniature tree instead, who spins around like the Tasmanian Devil. The chocolate bar boss in the dessert also disassembles itself chunk-by-chunk and reconstructs itself on the other side of the screen, identically to the Yellow Devil monster from Mega Man, making it seem like there was a Capcom fan on the development staff. At the end of the game, you even get to fight an enormous dragon before taking on Mizrabel herself. There’s enough original content here that makes it well worth playing in addition to the Genesis original and stands as one of the best platformers on Sega’s 8-bit consoles.
In 2013, Castle of Illusion was resurrected by Sega Studios Australia (formerly Creative Assembly Studios Australia). This was one of the several cases at the time were a Japanese property was remade by a Western developer (see: WayForward’s DuckTales Remastered, GRIN’s Bionic Commando Rearmed, Climax’s Rocket Knight, and so forth). This reimagines the Genesis game as a 2.5D platformer remade with 3D graphics in the vein of Namco’s Klonoa.
This is a stellar remake because reuses the concepts of the original game without being slavishly faithful to it. The controls feel quite a bit faster and smoother than in the 2D versions despite using the same moveset. The level designs are similar, but not quite the same. In fact, there are several new areas, some of which are optional segments that you can complete in order to find collectibles. One of the first areas has a section where you cross a bridge of cards across a vortex. Another reimagines the leaves and spider webs section of the Genesis game. While most of the game is side-scrolling, some areas occasionally allow free movement, like the sections where the apple chases Mickey like a boulder. Some of the boss battles have also been revamped taking this extra dimension into account. You now need to find a certain number of jewels to unlock subsequent stages, but as long as you’re even vaguely paying attention, you’ll likely collect enough without having to re-visit stages.
For a $15 downloadable game, Castle of Illusion looks fantastic, brilliantly adapting the style of the game in a way that feels fresh and modern, even in the years after its release. The gameplay is accompanied by a voiced narrator, who can be turned off if it’s too distracting, along with occasional spoken words by Mickey. Most of the music is fantastically adapted to orchestral-style music, though the boss battle music doesn’t have the same tension.
While this is an excellent game, and one of the better remakes of the era, core issue is the same as the Genesis game – it’s just far too easy, even moreso than the original. While there are some extra collectibles to find that unlock things like alternate costumes, as well as some time trials, there’s just not much left to see after the hour or two it takes to complete. But despite its brevity, it captures all of the whimsical design that made the Genesis version so enchanting. The Genesis game was included as a preorder bonus for the PlayStation 3 version, and while this is no longer available, it did appear on the Genesis Mini. Regrettably, Sega Studios Australia was shuttered right as Castle of Illusion was released, an unfortunate outcome for a clearly talented development team.
Screenshot Comparisons
Genesis
Master System
Remake
Genesis
Remake
