The life system uses hearts, with a max of 5, so the system is a bit forgiving. 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. This remake of Castle of Illusion leaves us with mixed feelings. 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. Within each world there’s various platforms leading you to the exit but Mickey must also face the various enemies in each world.
Its landscapes and enemies are colorful and make full use of the Game Gear’s palette. To get through the Castle of Illusion and find the gems, Mickey must go through several doors that lead to various worlds from a magical forest to a haunting clock tower. 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.