3RRSG Castle of Illusion

This was one of those games that I vividly remember from my
childhood. There was something about this simple Disney platformer
that captivated me as a little boy. Well, now I have finally hunted down
a copy of the game to play it once more. How does it hold up, now that
the little boy is in college? And what about it made it such a magical
game? And wait, don't licensed games suck? And a Disney game,
wouldn't that be too childish and not difficult? Ha, read on.

The story is standard fare. Mickey and Minnie were happy. But one day,
an evil witch named Mizrabel kidnapped Minnie and was going to steal
her beauty. So Mickey learns that he must collect the seven magic
gems hidden within the witch's castle of illusion. This is all revealed in
the opening intro. There are no story cut scenes (except a few lines of
good job and move on when you get a gem) so there isn't much story
to even speak of. But what is there is memorable.

The game play is very simple. Hope and bop your way to the end of the
level. Mickey can jump and then ground-pound enemies. He can also
collect items to throw at enemies like bubbles or marbles. He's only
got a few hits though, and a few lives. Then it's game over. Mickey
controls a little funny though. Like he stays in the air for a little too
long when he jumps. And he's not that fast. Other then that, the
gameplay is fun enough.

The cool part of the game is the level design. The castle of illusion has
all these doors and these are the levels. Mickey goes in a door to a
totally new world. The first one is a forest. It starts out kind of cute,
but eventually it gets dark and scary and the ghosts come out. And of
course the boss of that level is an evil tree. Then Mickey goes into the
toy world. The cool gimmick in one part of that level was that you can
reverse the gravity. Mickey would then walk on the ceiling. It was cute.
But nowadays some of the levels make me swear profusely because of
their difficulty.

The next level was a pain! It was a stupid water level with swimming
and hard jumps. And then there was a gremlin boss at the end that was
too hard for anyone's good. I remembered the gremlin from when I was
a little boy, though, and I finally kicked its ass. Then there's the study
room level where Mickey is shrunken, and within that level are
candyland sub-levels. Finally, it ends with a mansion-like level which
leads to a clock tower. The clock tower reminded me heavily of the
scrap brain zone in Sonic 1.

This all leads up to a final boss battle with the witch. Then you get a
nice little ending, and then a surprise twist at the end. As you can see,
the game isn't long at all. Probably takes like 30 minutes or so on
normal mode. There are three difficulties: practice, normal, and hard.
Practice mode cuts the levels short, and you only play through some of
the sections of them. Hard mode has less health and I think no
continues. I've never beat hard mode. I don't think I ever will.

That's because normal mode, while short, is still hard enough. This
game is harder then I remember it being. Or maybe it's just because I
don't play these types of games anymore? I don't know. In any case,
it's a fun gaming experience. It's just nice to look at the levels and see
what will happen next.

The graphics are nice, but no where near as vibrant and colorful as
Sonic 1. Like I said, the level design is awesome. The enemies are
interesting too. From toy soldiers, mushrooms, knights, bone fish, and
spiders, to some neat bosses. Mickey has a few nice animations to
him. When he's on a ledge he'll cower in fear like Sonic. He kind of
sways back and forth when he's just standing there. His little tail
moves about. So the animation is nice. But it's still no where near the
level of Sonic, which set high standard for the time.

Musically, some of the tracks are very memorable. I didn't dislike any
of the music. It's typical to what you would expect to hear. In the toy
level with the soldiers you get a tune that reflects the level with a
soldier like drum beat. There are no voices in this game and the sound
effects aren't that impressive. In fact Mickey's head makes a weird
noise when it hit's a ceiling. There is a sound test for you to listen to all
the tracks, so that is cool.

Replay? Well it's a nice diversion from homework or to just recapture
the olden age of gaming in about a half hour or less. It was the prime
example of everything gaming was at the time. Cute characters, fun
gaming, little amounts of bonuses, and nice 2D graphics. Now a days,
we've got games with hours upon hours of replay with bonuses up the
wazoo. Not Mickey. He was all about having a good time. I can't say I'll
replay this one too often, but I know I'lll dust it off because it is cool
and kind of difficult.

So as I returned to the castle of illusion I was glad to see that the
game play and the heart and charm of the game remained. I was a
little shocked when I realized how short the game was. But in the end,
this is a solid game for genesis fans. It's probably my favorite game
from Disney. They made a sequel to this game called the World of
Illusion, I think. And while that one was longer and had much better
graphics, this little gem is still a nice trip down memory lane. Long Live
Mickey!

Review by: Orochi Sonic