Developed/Published by: Sega
Released: 21/11/1990
Completed: 19th April, 2014
Completion: Rescued Minnie!
Trophies / Achievements: n/a

I have strong memories of Castle of Illusion as one of the games that people marvelled at in video game magazines of the time for being particularly beautiful and holding promise for what was then the “next generation,” so this weekend discovering that M2 had ported it to PS3 was too good to resist.

It’s interesting, then, that on playing Castle of Illusion—a “pre-Sonic” Mega Drive title—that the thing I find most remarkable is how much it reminds me that even by the time of the Mega Drive video games were… under-developed? It’s hard to explain I guess, but the thing I most remember of playing games in the 80s, particularly on the home computers popular in the UK, is that sense that developers either got to this point where they went “ok, good enough” or that they didn’t actually know that games could be better than that. It’s fondly remembered, perhaps, but Castle of Illusion has that half-baked feel where you can see some bits are done absolutely expertly—Mickey’s animation is lovely, the cut-scenes are sweet, and certain stages definitely have their moments—but there are other parts where you have to question why it was there that they stopped.

I mean, Mickey’s jump. It’s just the weirdest, floaty, awkward jump. One of those jumps where you feel like you’re pushing a bitmap around, not controlling a character. No “game feel” at all; something you notice in the many many bits where the ceiling is low enough that Mickey clonks his head over and over.

Or the enemies, who do that thing where they just move towards the right of the screen at a steady velocity, and respawn if you walk them off screen. No sense that they’re actual beings who are actually there. I’m definitely reminded as to how far ahead of the game Nintendo was with the Mario series compared to everyone else at this point; it’s actually crazy to consider that anyone would have played Super Mario Bros. 3 as a developer and then be happy to put this out. I’m not talking about world maps or secrets, the things that I suppose made Mario 3 feel so amazing at the time; I’m talking about making sure the jump feels good, the level design supports it, and the enemies feel worth jumping on.

The level design is weird too. The first two levels are completely linear, but then from level three onwards you can’t actually progress unless you explore (totally counter-intuitively in level three, too, as it involves you falling into water you don’t know you can swim in.) Indeed, the game’s wrapper—Mickey going in each castle’s door, one by one—is presented “in engine” which makes me think maybe these levels were supposed to be approached in any order, and to be generally non-linear, but that got snipped off at some point.

That’s total speculation, of course.

I didn’t actually have a bad time finishing this, however. There’s a pleasant enough pace, and once you’re comfortable with its quirks it’s very much your average early platformer (one that’s nice enough to get through thanks to M2’s good port and freely-available save states.) It doesn’t stand out to the point where you should particularly feel the need to play it, though.

Will I ever play it again? Nope.

Final Thought: I’m a bit sad this game isn’t as pretty or as good as I read it was in the magazines of the time. The vision of games I built in my mind from reading many, many more game magazines than playing games is something I come up against regularly now I have access to any game I want; even now I can look at the cover of Castle of Illusion and imagine something exciting, something just beyond my reach.