Castle of Illusion (8-bit)

North American Master System box.

Castle of Illusion - Starring Mickey Mouse is a Mickey Mouse-themed platform video game developed and published by Sega for the Master System in 1990 and then ported to the Game Gear on 1991-03-21. Although it shares a title with the Genesis game released the same year, it is a completely different game. In the story, Minnie Mouse has been kidnapped by the witch Mizrabel and taken to her castle of illusion. The player controls Mickey who is trying to rescue her. Mickey must proceed through five dangerous levels of the castle, avoiding obstacles, and collecting the seven Gems of the Rainbow in order to reach Mizrabel's final room. The Game Gear port is essentially the same game just with less visible on the screen and slightly poorer graphics.

I played this game to better acquaint myself with the Master System's catalog of games. Since this was ranked fairly high, it was one of the first I played. I beat it on 2019-09-06.

Status

I do not own this game, but I have beat the Master System port.

Review

6	6	7	5	4

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game has pretty good controls for a platformer.
• The game has great pixel art and good animation.
• Though it doesn't incorporate any music from the Mickey Mouse franchise, the music was fitting and enjoyable.
• There is a nice amount of variety between the game's levels and the various secrets gives the game a little replay value, which is nice considering there isn't much else to it.

Bad

• There are a couple sections of the game that require rather frustratingly accurate jumps, but most of the game is quite enjoyable.
• I didn't like how enemies respawned so quickly when you left their area of the screen.
• You get nine continues to beat that game which is unnecessarily generous and pretty much makes for a guaranteed victory for any competent player.
• Another damsel in distress game. Ho hum.

Ugly

• The game rather shamelessly uses DuckTales as a template. The control scheme is very similar, the items are similar, you even search for chests and collect money for no reason other than points.
• By using the same title and box art, Sega tricked a lot of customers into thinking they were buying the equivalent of the Genesis version of the game.

Media

Box Art

All regions and platforms use this artwork just with variations to the graphic layout. It's expertly painted, unfortunately, it uses the same art as the Genesis port which is a totally different game.

• 

  North America, Master System.

Documentation

• 

  North American Master System manual.

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  European Master System manual.

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  Brazilian Master System manual.

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  North American Game Gear manual.

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  Brazilian Game Gear manual.

Videos

• youtube.com/watch?v=BE-rFtBnvjY - Longplay, Master System.
• youtube.com/watch?v=yn1bHWfS7kA - Longplay, Game Gear.

Links