eu acho esse jogo muito foda, mesmo conseguindo ver diversos erros como a gameplay sendo meio travada e o level design esquisito, Castle of Illusion é bonito e divertido!
sério, eu joguei esse jogo por meados de 2007 e esse jogo era bonito até pra mim que tinha 5 aninhos na época (lembrando que em 2007 nós já tinhamos Halo 3, Uncharted e Resident Evil 4).
acho que vale a pena ser revisitado, mesmo com seu level design confuso e controles esquisitos, afinal, a atmosfera (trilha sonora em conjunto com a arte) são bem mágicas e nostálgicas!

Castle of Illusion es un plataformero que lo hace bien en todos sus apartados, con una dificultad muy equilibrada. Podemos acabar con nuestros enemigos saltando encima de ellos (no todos) o lanzándoles manzanas (para Disney, en estos tiempos, el arma definitiva es la manzana) Esto último es interesante porque no son infinitas, las vamos recogiendo, y a veces es importante las manzanas que tengamos disponibles para superar partes mas fácilmente. Lo saltos son precisos, visualmente es genial, la música... Muy recomendable.

A game lodged into my childhood memories is a decent platformer where you can play as Mickey Mouse. There's a lot of creativity in each level; dodging spiders in a massive spider-web, going upside down in the toy world, going into a giant jar of milk and jumping through a massive land of milk and cake, that sort of thing. It really shows the potential of a 16-bit Disney game. Each stage's gimmick seems to be contained to its own level, which is a little disappointing. It's also pretty short (RIP to anyone thinking "Rainbow Gems" means 7 levels), though with only two continues, I can't say this game is a breeze to just play through. I couldn't beat it as a kid, that's for sure.

Gráficamente una delicia. Muy colorido y sobre todo mucha variedad de ambientación entre niveles. Variedad tambien en el recorrido que hay que hacer para superar los niveles, desde el tipico scroll lateral de A a B, pasando por escalar un nivel verticalmente para coger una llave y luego bajar a toda pastilla hasta la puerta de salida. Laberintos acuaticos, niveles bastante verticales, etc.
2 maneras de acabar con los enemigos, con proyectiles que vas recogiendo o saltándoles encima. Esta última manera es bastante satisfactoria, ya que si mantienes el botón de salto sales despedido muy arriba y se usa para el plataformeo.
Buenos jefes finales después de cada nivel.
Algún pico de dificultad, pero nada muy loco.
Como curiosidad, la bruja mala que secuestra a Minnie es de aspecto igual a la de Blancanieves (en sus dos formas)

A fun and colorful, if simplistic, entry in the pre-Sonic era of the Sega Genesis.

B

PB: 25:08

(This is the 26th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Quick word on the challenge I'm doing. This will be needless for those of you who are looking for a review of the game, but it's still something I'd like to mention quickly for those following along (those +-0 of you).

The Sega Genesis obviously launched in Aug 1989 in NA already, so it's not like Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is the first 16 bit game to come out since I started this, nor is it even the first Sega Genesis game I've played. So far I've played Batman and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for the system.

But we're now in November 1990, and this game actually released on the same date as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which would be November 21st, 1990. That console, as is well-known, is the best-selling 16-bit home console, so that's why we're starting to really get into 16-bit territory here, and I am incredibly excited to try out a bunch of classics for the first time from an era many still call the best for console games - if not games in general.

Is this game, developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis, the highlight of the era already? Some say it's right up there with Super Mario World as one of the best platformers of this time (SMW also released on November 21, 1990) but to spoiler my conclusion a little bit, I don't really think it's close. This game is fun but has plenty of flaws, so let's get into it.
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STORYTELLING
The story is explained at the beginning and in the manual. Minnie is kidnapped by the evil witch Mizrabel (great name btw), because she is jealous of Minnie's beauty. So Mickie makes his way to the Castle of Illusion to save Minnie. An old man there tells him that he needs seven gems of the rainbow to rescue her. Why? Who knows.

There will be an epilogue as well but no other form of storytelling in between from what I can tell, so nothing worth talking about here.

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is very simple and basic. You move from side to side in this 2D platformer and can either jump on enemies or shoot projectiles (often fruit) at them. If you jump on them, it catapults you up and enables you to reach otherwise unreachable platforms. That's definitely the most unique part about this game's gameplay.

Levels are heavy on platforming and the likelihood that you will fall to your death increases with each level you pass. One cave level where the next platform was so easily miss able if you jump a milli-second too early was especially frustrating.

The game starts you off with three health, 3 lives per continue and 2 continues. Your i-frames after taking a hit only last a second or so, so it's very easy to die within seconds. Since hit frames are sometimes too big, enemies sometimes just pop out of the ground with almost no forewarning and a jump on the enemy's head doesn't get recognized properly (you get damage for missing it), you often lose health unfairly. This is precisely where any comparison to a game like Super Mario World is just not reasonable. I'm playing Super Mario World as we speak and the difference in quality is so high that it actually surprised me quite a lot to see people actually comparing the two.

I've also encountered a bug where I somehow jumped over a tree during a boss fight and couldn't go back to the other direction, meaning that I was stuck.

Gems are acquired by beating bosses after the end of each level, which aren't too difficult, but I failed the second one twice because my jumps on his head just didn't register for some reason. I decided to abandon the game some time after the third boss because while I was doing platforming on tiny tiny platforms, I realized the game didn't immediately register that you let go of the forward button, which made me slip off the platform and fall to my demise.

Apart from these issues it's not a very difficult game, but there is also nothing really exciting about it. There is plenty of stuff you can argue for here apart from its gameplay, and I'll likely agree with you, but I must say that this was not that fun to play.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Sound design was mostly pretty good and I liked how a lot of actions actually got a sound to accompany them, like even jumping or throwing stuff, which doesn't happen in a lot of platformers I've played recently. The music was fine overall but I can't say I liked it that much. My favorite track definitely was the one used for the boss fights but the soundtrack just didn't get me into a playful/whimsical kinda mood like I would have expected.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Lots and lots of colorful, bright worlds are present in this game, with plenty of variety between them. To mention something a little more lowkey, I liked how the clouds outside kept moving even if you were standing still and how much detail was put into the horizon, even if it's not something a player will really focus on a lot.

But simply graphically, this is definitely one of the best one's you will find from this entire year.

ATMOSPHERE
I didn't always feel like the music used for a particular level necessarily fit the mood, but overall the colorful levels and their overall designs managed to do a solid enough job of putting me in the mood of playing a Mickey Mouse platform adventure. If someone is reading this: Sometimes I feel silly seriously critiquing a game like this, at the end of the day it's a game for children that isn't meant to be taken apart this way. Right? I don't know, I'm definitely going to be glad when a lot more mature games start coming up on the playlist.

CONTENT
There is some fine content here for platformer enthusiasts. This game should take about 3 hours for your average gamer and lead you through a variety of different worlds. But the game overall has pretty basic gameplay and plenty of frustration to come with it, even if there certainly is much worse out there in that regard.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Mostly the levels are designed pretty much as you would expect. The difficulty is definitely lower than for many comparable platformers. Most of the time you just go into a specific direction and are offered with very little choice in how to deal with the dangers. Move, kill or avoid, beware of gravity, find the exit at the end of the screen.

Some levels also include underwater sections, and these just frankly sucked. A piranha would usually wait for you in there and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to move past it without taking damage.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
The worlds are definitely lookers here, and there even is one part where you have to trigger a button to flip the level over. Your character can then still walk upside down, while all others fall down. Nothing major but a nice changeup. Other than that, this is a pretty basic licensed platformer, though it does look pretty good graphically for its time.

REPLAYABILITY
Apart from trying to beat your high score, there also are some secrets to discover, which might warrant a second playthrough for you.

PLAYABILITY
The game works well at pretty much all times, but I did encounter one bug and I disliked how letting go of the forward button would only register like a second later.

OVERALL
The game looks great for a 1990 game, and certainly it was a big deal when it released. You'll be hard-pressed to find a review below 9/10 back in the day. But in today's day and age, we have a game that simply shows its flaws and can't wow in the same way with its strengths. And turns out, its flaws, at least to me, are worse than in many other games I've played from this year recently. And if we just compare to Super Mario World, we can also see that a big difference in quality exists on pretty much every level. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is fine and should probably be played if you're looking to go through gaming history like I am, even if in a much more condensed way. Why? Because the ratings tell me you shouldn't look into my thoughts too deeply. But at the same time, I've played too many comparable games to really feel bad about standing where I do on this game.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- J. M. for VGCE, Issue 24 (Jan 91): "Castle of Illusion is, quite plainly, one of the most fabulous run-and-jump games ever created."
- Sushi-X, Issue 17 (Dec 90): "Music... a 10+!"

This game is gorgeous even decades later. It does a great job of recreating the look of old Disney cartoons, and because of that it feels like more than your standard half-assed cash grab that many licensed games end up being.

Platforming is pretty fun, there's a creative variety of level themes and ideas that keep things interesting. Music is decent but not amazing.

This a bit too simple for me to consider a great game, but I'd still recommend it.

Esse jogo tem cheiro de infância. Eu lembro de ficar incontáveis horas na frente da televisão junto da minha irmã mais velha, tentando passar de chefes e fases que pareciam impossíveis pras duas crianças à época.

A nostalgia me impede de avaliar o jogo como outra coisa que não uma obra prima, ele guardou em cada uma das fases um pouco de uma parte da minha vida, um período em que as coisas eram mais simples, onde tudo ainda era muito místico e muito novo. A música me acompanhou por mais de 20 anos e, apesar de só voltar a jogar e terminar ele hoje, sabia de cor a trilha sonora da fase da floresta.

Paguei uma dívida com o meu eu criança e hoje ele dorme feliz e sorridente por ver o final desse jogo tão divertido.