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The second involves collecting specific items scattered throughout levels, such as apples or marbles, that he’s able to throw. Mickey has a handful of ways to fight against the enemies, starting with crushing the opposition under his posterior. True or not, this game could’ve use a few more levels. Strangely, unlike the first three stages, the fourth and fifth levels actually reward two gems each, one somewhere in the middle, which makes me wonder if the developers had originally planned on creating two more levels. Doing this will allow Mickey to cross a slightly-too-wide gap where Minnie Mouse is being held by the witch Mizrabel. Many of the Genesis games that I previously wrote about also require only a handful of hours to complete, but they disguise this shortcoming through replayability and/or difficulty.Ĭastle of Illusion is a fairly standard 2D platformer starring, unsurprisingly, Mickey Mouse, who travels through five not-too-short and not-too-long levels before fighting a boss and, upon defeating the foe, collecting one of seven Chaos Emeralds Gems of the Rainbow. While Castle of Illusion is a strong platformer with beautiful graphics and fun mechanics, it’s a short game that’s only difficult in a few spots. Yet the game is often highlighted as one of the better Genesis exclusives, a sentiment that I mostly agree with. Pointless digs aside, Sega adding Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is an awesome addition to this compilation, especially because, as I later learned, there haven’t been many re-releases in the years since. And as we know, modern Sega has both time and money in excess. It’s difficult to say if Nintendo would bother, but given the half-assed job that Sony did with the PlayStation Classic, I can’t imagine they would. The only stumbling block to this is the time and money required to obtain the licenses to begin with. The hardware isn’t expected to stay on store shelves for years, unlike many high-profile games, so the limited time licensing agreements work with the limited time that you’ll find the Genesis Mini at Target. When you think about it, adding licensed games to a micro-console makes a fair amount of sense. And then we have licensed games centered around a familiar mouse. It’s neat being able to view spines for all game cases, while switching the games themselves to match the selected language (German swaps Contra: Hard Corps for Probotector, for instance) is a fantastic idea. The life system uses hearts, with a max of 5, so the system is a bit forgiving.In typical ’90s Sega fashion, the Sega Genesis Mini doesn’t simply compile a collection of games into an adorably downsized home console and call it a day, but makes a few unique additions that elevates it above the competition. What I enjoyed most about the game is it actually has pretty damn solid boss battles for an early handheld, especially the final two. Avoiding enemies and making dangerous jumps are your primary task. Mickey can jump and he can pick up and throw objects. It feels a lot like early NES platformers. The gameplay of Castle of Illusion is your standard fare of 8-bit platforming. Creepy tracks accompany the castle levels and fun, uptempo tracks play during the forest and ice cream stages. It does ok in the sound department, with themes that match the stages well. Mickey has decent animations, I particularly liked his toe-tapping during idle stance and the way his tail wags when he’s crouched. Its landscapes and enemies are colorful and make full use of the Game Gear’s palette. Visually Castle of Illusion is one of the Game Gear’s better looking games. I like the artwork a lot, the creepy castle, face in the tree and the witch against the full moon backdrop do a great job setting the eerie tone. The 8-bit Game Gear version had decent reviews and sales but has had no remakes. Later Castle of Illusion’s 16-bit version came to Sega Saturn, PSN, XBLA and PC. They’re 2D platformers and have a multi-hit life system. Both games were developed by Sega and feature Mickey Mouse traversing various areas in an effort to rescue Minnie from an evil witch. An 8-bit version was made for the Game Gear in 1991 and plays somewhat differently. Since I have a small Game Gear library and there are also a limited number of decent games for the system I have chosen three of the better and more popular titles to review.Ĭastle of Illusion originally came out for the Sega Genesis. We will be doing Game Gear a bit different.
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