Castle of Illusion Longplay (Game Gear) [60 FPS]

Developed and published by Sega in 1991.

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Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse was originally released for Sega's 16-bit Mega Drive console in 1990 and I remember it was the pack-in title for consoles sold in the UK, at least before Sonic the Hedgehog was released.

With the 8-bit Master System console still available and Sega's mobile Game Gear platform recently released, there was still a market for games on these systems and Sega released an 8-bit version of Castle of Illusion a year later in 1991.

The game sees Mickey's girlfriend kidnapped and whisked away by the wicked witch, Mizrabel. Mickey sets off in hot pursuit, eventually arriving at the mysterious Castle of Illusion. To free Minnie, Mickey must first collect the seven gems of the Rainbow from several themed levels, before preparing for a showdown with Mizrabel herself.

As for the gameplay, it is a steadfastly "cutesy" platformer clearly designed to be family friendly, but this is by no means detrimental to the end product. Licensing Disney cartoon characters to feature in video games was a common trend during the 16-bit console era, and many of them were of very high quality.

Players are given the choice as to which stage they wish to tackle, so it's possible to leave a more difficult stage till later if desired. The levels themselves are divided into a series of interconnected rooms of varying size; the smallest rooms are typically a single screen's width is size, whereas larger rooms can scroll both horizontally.

As mentioned earlier, each level is based around a particular theme, such as a forest world, over-sized cakes and candy and even the inside of a giant clock-tower. Enemies and obstacles consistent with the level theme can be found within.

The enemies themselves can be defeated in traditional platforming game fashion by jumping on their heads, or to be more precise, by getting Mickey to perform a butt-slam on their heads - Mickey's buttocks must be as hard as concrete blocks...

In addition to butt-slams, Mickey can also pick up blocks and barrels and use them as ranged weapons by throwing them at opponents. To pick up a block, the player must push Mickey against the block until he grips it, at which point pressing one of the control buttons will grab it. Unfortunately, getting Mickey to grip the blocks can be quite awkward and you'll occasionally find he just continues running into the side of it; certain sections of the game require you to grab and throw blocks with precision timing and the fiddly mechanics can be somewhat frustrating.

Fortunately, the rest of the controls are decent and controlling Mickey is never too difficult. The only thing that takes some getting used to is the jump distance, which changes depending on how fast you were running before actually pressing the jump button; trying to leap across a wide gap without taking a sufficient run-up will see Mickey plummeting to his doom if you're not careful.

Fortunately, Mickey is quite a tough old mouse and is able to take a number of hits from enemies before losing a life. The amount of hit points remaining is indicated by the red stars shown in the bottom-left of the screen. Health can be regained by finding pieces of cake contained in bonus treasure chests scattered throughout the levels; a slice of cake restores a single health point, whilst a whole cake completely restores all health. Maximum health can be increased by finding star blocks, but these only appear on specific levels and can be easy to miss.

I was particularly impressed with the quality of the graphics and animation in this game, especially the main Mickey sprite. The attention to detail is particularly good and the designers managed to capture the essence of the cartoon character quite well.

The game features some simple but effective audio. Each level ha a background tune that fits in with the overall theme of the level, and there are plenty of cartoon-sounding effects when Mickey jumps or performs various actions.

I suppose that the main issue with the game is that it's not very long at all and can be beaten fairly quickly with practice. Even so, it's difficult not to be charmed by the overall presentation of the game and it's still a title that's easy to recommend, particularly to younger players.
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