Preamble

Licensed titles are often a mixed bag when it comes to video game translations. Movie licenses in particular developed a bad reputation, but comic characters, cartoons, and even toys have often suffered from poor tie ins. Look no further than the sheer mediocrity of the recently reviewed Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which should be a supremely interesting property to adapt. Should one infer that titles originating with video game original properties are inherently immune to poor execution? Of course not, in fact, the less said about Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt the better. On the flip side, while not every game was perfect or even excellent (Fantasia was sadly an utter disaster), Mickey Mouse in the early to mid 1990s had an excellent run of very playable games. Not just the licensed games on the Sega Genesis mind you, as Capcom made some very good games for the SNES as well (and one decent game for the Genesis too).

While the Sega Genesis was blessed with many excellent games over its long lifespan, one of the most beloved games from hundreds of games in the library, was one of the earlier games (just over a year after the system was released in North America). Yes, I am talking about Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse, a timeless, licensed, platforming treasure released to nearly universal praise.

Story

The plot is simply charming, wait, let me rephrase, charmingly simple. An evil sorceress named Mizrabel has kidnapped Minnie Mouse for the sole purpose of swapping physical forms. After witnessing the kidnapping, Mickey, not one to taken any guff, rushes off to the Castle of Illusion to save Minnie. At the gates of the castle, Mickey is informed of Mizrabel's motives by a random old man of who's identity I remain unsure. Tasked with saving Minnie by attempting to collect the 13 treasures of Rul wait, no, 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, nah I'm just kidding, seven Gems of the Rainbow, which just so happen to correspond to the five levels of the game (not counting Mizrabel of course) with levels four and five pulling double duty with two gems each.

Configuration

Starting the game gives three options:

1. Difficulty
   • There are three different difficulty levels.
     1. Practice -- Starts with five power spheres, three tries, and four continues to beat the first three levels.
     2. Normal -- Starts with three power spheres, three tries, and 2 continues to play through all levels and rescue Minnie.
     3. Hard -- Starts with two power spheres, three tries, and no continues to play through all levels and rescue Minnie.
2. Sound Test -- Allows listening to any of the twenty five "in game" musical tracks.
3. Controls
   • There are three control schemes selectable.
     1. A and B for shot with C for jump.
     2. A for jump with B and C for shot.
     3. B for jump with A and C for shot
   • The controls are simple as mentioned, one button is jump and the other two buttons are for shot. Having no preference, I left everything at the default control scheme. As an early Genesis title, there is no support for a six button controller scheme (nor are there any compatibility issues when using a six button controller, an incompatibility which afflicts a minority of three button only titles). Directional pad left and right moves Mickey to and fro or even up and down during times you find yourself swimming. Pressing down ducks Mickey. Shot allows you to throw certain items once you find suitable ammunition. Start begins the game, skips story scenes, skip between-level scenes, makes Mickey enter castle doors faster, and also pauses/unpauses the game during play.

Gameplay

Game starts simply enough by Mickey entering into the "Castle of Illusion" to rescue his lady love. The castle itself is full of many doors, the first door Mickey enters is a lovely forest level. The animation, which we will touch upon in more detail later, is rather good allowing Mickey to control easily, if methodically, no one will confuse Castle of Illusion with Sonic, but making jumps is easy enough (with some longer jumps being challenging but fair) and you can control Mickey in the air well enough.

Each of the five levels are filled with foes and obstacles seeking to thwart Mickey's progress. As far as enemies, not filled as in "waves of minions" in the run and gun vein like Contra or Gunstar Heroes, but as in the Sonic way of every part of the scrolling screen will have manageable amounts to overcome. To avoid boredom, there is a nice enough variety, changing with each level's theme. Harking back to that initial Enchanted Forest level, Mickey will face off against saplings, mushrooms, flowers, butterflies, and spiders{1}. The second available door unveils a Toyland filled with toy soldiers, jack in the boxes, toy planes, and juggling clowns riding unicycles. The lovely selection continues, sometimes with prior threats rejoining the fray, but often with newer enemies too, such as the armored knights on level five, The Castle.

While not terribly aggressive, generally Mickey's foes are akin to Mega Man as they tend to respawn when you leave the screen and then come back. The good news? The various creatures are easy enough to deal with as they succumb to the typical one hit defeat or if preferred, cleverly navigating around the threat. Their attack patterns are simple and each entity is well animated making for predictable movements.

Regular enemies can be dispatched by one of three ways:

1. The jump and butt bounce upon them method (press jump button to launch yourself in air and then jump button again before landing to enter butt bump mode). Mickey can also launch himself higher by mastering the butt bump on enemy.
2. Throwing items with the shot button. Collecting apples, marbles, or candles (depending on the level you get different ammunition, but the effect is the same), maximum of thirty items collected either by individual units or bags of 10.
3. Sometimes you can swing by vine into an enemy and extinguish their life, such as the butterflies within the first level.

As with the normal goons to contend with, the bosses are likewise a mix of creatures, themes, and sizes. On that last point, levels one and three have bosses about the same size as Mickey (well, level one is technically a giant tree, but only the face detaches and attacks you), two and five are about twice the height of Mickey, with the level five boss additionally being noticeably larger in girth, and the level 4 boss is a "comes out of the liquid below" type that extends with his long neck to attack. Mizrabel, the final boss is about three Mickey's tall and impressively fills a large portion of the play area with her attacks. Again, animation is solid, and the bosses move with the comforting predictability of their programmed attack pattern. Once you figure it out, Mickey can sail smoothly through subsequent attempts. Since one cannot avail themselves of the "better part of valor" strategy with boss fights, it will hearten Mickey enthusiasts to know the unique entities at level's end can be disposed of by the old reliable butt bump. The only difference being instead of a single hit sufficing, numerous hits will be required to dispatch these villains. Even better, some bosses are weak to your shot attack for an added bit of strategy.

Besides ammunition, you can pick up stars, each one refills an orb (aka life, maximum of five orbs), Golden Mickey Mouse ears are also found hidden within levels and collecting them gives extra lives (aka Tries). According to the game manual, earning "more than" 40,000 points also gives Mickey an extra try. Each additional 50,000 points (again, not a typo, this is straight from the manual) will give Mickey additional tries. White gems can also be found hidden within the levels, useful for raising your score, likewise defeating enemies and collecting stars and ammo when you already have max power spheres and shot will raise your score even further.

Besides creatures to dispatch/avoid, as mentioned, there are obstacles to overcome befitting a platformer of the finest caliber:

• Jumps to make.
  • Especially with the occasional moving platform.
• Pits to avoid.
  • Sometimes wrapping you around leading to a longer journey.
  • Sometimes bottomless leading to death.
• Small maze like elements (level 3, The Storm, I am looking squarely at your first sublevel as I fell into every heavens to Pluto hole in the level except for the correct one for a good 20 minutes!!!!) to navigate.
• Some internal game physics based obstruction (jello and the reverse gravity switches in level two easily come to mind).

Everything is pretty linear, level one, which has three parts (plus the boss fight), and is mostly horizontal scrolling, but there are some up and down movements too. Mickey is free to move back and forth within each sublevel if you have missed an item, assuming it remains traversable from your current location, which is not always true. There are times you will miss a jump, fail to collect something in a sublevel, or trigger a level event where you cannot go backwards. Moving to the next sublevel or level automatically blocks any attempt to go backwards. Things get even livelier starting with level two as the platforming mixes horizontal platforming more heavily with vertical ascents and descents which allows the levels to breath a bit more. Feel less constrained, again, not as open as a Sonic level, but more complex than compared to something like the original Wonder Boy or original Super Mario Bros. Otherwise, levels one, two, three, and five follow the three subsections then boss fight pattern, but level four becomes even more daring with 7 parts then the boss fight!!!! It accomplishes this expansion by the lovely effect of moving in and out of teacups and milk bottles while traversing the library. Why level four is the oddball and not level five? I can only guess The Library with beverage containers had a more thematically compelling, in universe mechanism for adding additional sublevels compared to The Castle and its Clocktower sublevel.

Even with each level being made up of multiple sublevels, the levels overall are generally not very long. While the game is on the easier side, there is enough challenge and effort which forced repeat attempts to overcome. I tackled the game on "Normal" difficulty and found it fun and just the right balance of challenge to avoid frustration. As an emulation player, saved states did allow me the luxury of playing as long as I wanted and then continuing at a later time and/or date, which certainly helps when you want to play the game in short bursts as the Castle of Illusion does not have SRAM (battery powered), EEPROM saves, nor passwords{2}. Even still, doubt it would take a decent player more than two hours to beat the game. If you are an amazing, speed runner class of gamer, you should be able to beat Castle of Illusion in under twenty minutes!!!! Not even kidding.

{1} You did not hear this from me, but ghosts and bats show up in the third sublevel of The Enchanted Forest.

{2} Truly hope I got the difference between the two types of Sega Genesis saved game technologies correct. Essentially SRAM was cheaper and possibly even faster memory, but require a battery to power it. Since those batteries can die, you can actually lose the ability to save unless you crack open the cartridge and are knowledgeable and skilled enough to replace the battery. EEPROM did not require any additional power, but I believe was more expensive to add back in the heyday of 16-bit or even 8-bit for that matter, cartridge gaming. Hence why few games used it. The expense of adding the memory meant smaller cache sized was used and that meant less data could be saved or you had to switch to the cheaper SRAM and battery solution.

Now contrast with level two, the ToyLand, while still filled with the servants of Mizrabel (toys brought to life), everything pops with bright colors, imbuing the proceedings with an air of playfulness masking the menace of the challenges facing Mickey. No less dangerous of course, as the various enemies are more than happy to make your life miserable (man, the pun of the antagonist's name is just dawning on me) if given the opportunity. Their colors are once again properly suited for the level design.

As the various screenshots illustrate, the various levels are lushly layered, with impressive parallax scrolling layers for the backgrounds. Again, while only five levels long, plus Mizrabel's boss fight, the levels have good variety, even showing changes betwen sublevels to keep everything fresh.

The artistic design earns high marks with characters in the game actually resembling their Disney cartoon counterparts. While excellent pixel art and color use go a long way to establishing the design, let us not sell the animation short! Mickey in particular is lovingly animated in his resting pose, well, "dancing in place with a big smile on his face" pose might be more exact. Mickey's walking animation, swinging animation, bouncing on enemies with his butt to defeat them animation, throwing object animation, teetering on the edge animation, and later levels even have a swimming animation, all show the smoothness befitting the character's Disney animated roots. While maybe not Dave Perry levels of amazing (see Sega Genesis Aladdin and the 16-bit Earthworm Jim games for examples of his work) or maybe Tanglewood for an appropriately "retro modern" example, there is a sheen of quality in the movements of the characters overall. Everything just works well together.

Music and Sound Design

The music is suitable for a Disney game featuring Mickey Mouse with the aural soundscape befitting the thematic design of each level. Perhaps not the most memorable Genesis soundtrack, but neither does it suffer from poor voice samples (as there is no voice), nor poor sound driver implementation, nor does the soundtrack fall into the typical Genesis trap of requiring pulsating dance music to sound its best. Seriously, I love pulsating techno/electronic music, especially with that characteristic Sega Genesis FM edge, but techno/electronic music does not fit every game as a matter of auditory expression. I would argue the dynamic pulled off by the soundtrack is very good all things considered.

The music is often pleasant, jaunty even as Mickey, again, giving no bothers, just strolls through the enemies and obstacles until the end of the level. Sometimes there are spookier tracks to show the hidden menace and the boss fights certainly offer a more manic tone to augment the sense of urgency, after all Mickey cannot simply avoid the boss encounters, they have to be dealt forthwith.

Sound effects are simple and charming with the jump animation and throw animation having a simple chime, another chime used for killing enemies, and yet another for collecting items. Mickey even has a small sound effect for receiving damage. The enemies themselves are silent, but the bosses have some programmed sound effects for their attacking. All pretty basic stuff, but it works for the intentional straightforwardness of the game design.