Castle of Illusion (Sega Genesis / Mega Drive) - Full Game

Other playthroughs:
Castle of Illusion for 8-bit (SMS/GG):    • Castle of Illusion (Sega Game Gear) - Stag...  
Land of Illusion (SMS/GG):    • Land of Illusion (Sega Game Gear) - Stages...  

Nope, i'm not joining the bandwaggon of Ducktales and Castle of Illusion remakes, but I admit I'm kind of interested in the remake of the Sega classic. Since I haven't played this version for a very long time I decided I'll refresh my memories so I can properly review the new Castle of Illusion game when it comes out. The version for Game Gear and Master System was the first video game I ever owned and therefore holds some nostalgic value to me.

The story is the same to the SMS/GG versions: the witch Mizrabel is jealous of Minnie Mouse's beauty and mousenaps her. Mickey doesn't hesitate a second and sets off to rescue her from Mizrabel's Castle of Illusion. You jump 'n run through five very varied and beautifully drawn stages to finally confront the witch. This was one of the early titles in the library of Sega's 16-bit console which is even more impressive.

Mickey's main defense is his butt. He buttstomps enemies to defeat them. In addition to the SMS/GG versions he can also throw objects such as apples or marbles depending on the stage. you carry them like ammunition. in the 8-bit version you pick up rocks or barrels instead to throw at enemies instead. a slight difference, but I prefer to pick up rocks instead of having ammunition.

Castle of Illusion is a simple platformer. run from one side of the screen to the other and avoid obstacles and enemies. there are no power ups and the level design is straight forward. that's not a bad thing. it's an early 16-bit game and not every game needs to have unnecessarily complex game mechanics to be good.

the music is disney-like fun and catchy as well as not repetitive and as mentioned the graphics are fantastic. there is multi-layered parallax scrolling, the graphics and animations are detailed and the backgrounds are very varied. this comes at a price, though, as the stages are few and the game is short - mainly because the cartridge had very limited storage of only 4 MBit. it is also incredibly easy. the game has normal and hard difficulty, but the only difference is that you start out with three or two points of health, respectively. I found the challenge level of the 8-bit version better.

Castle of Illusion for the Genesis or Mega Drive set the bar very high and had a great influence on disney games that followed. It also spawned a series of disney games for Sega platforms with games like World of Illusion or Land of Illusion for SMS/GG. Personally, I appreciate what influence this version of Castle of Illusion had on future games of its kind. however, somehow I like the 8-bit version more. how so? i think it's the difficulty or lack thereof in the 16-bit version. it feels like a tech demo with almost no real obstacles whereas the SMS/GG game feels like a real game even though, of course, the graphics are terrible compared to the mega drive game and i also like that there is an additional stage with a boss on 8-bit consoles before mizrabel.

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