There I go, slagging on Castle of Illusion again. 3 comes across as the more advanced platformer. 3 in North America because, despite being from the same genre and sharing a few mechanics, the games couldn’t feel more different. It’s crazy to think that Castle of Illusion released a mere ten months after Super Mario Bros. Still, it felt unambitious, yet competently made and pretty. I genuinely had fun with Castle of Illusion, and it was a welcome palate cleanser after suffering through Altered Beast and the frustratingly difficult Ghouls’n Ghosts. If I’m coming across as mixed, that’s not entirely unintentional. The biggest pain is the half-decayed fish that populate the handful of submerged areas, which do target Mickey, but getting around them is tricky because the swimming controls are, well, not good. However, considering that enemies rarely pursue Mickey, it’s just as viable to skip attacking them entirely. 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. 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.
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