Reviews from

in the past


I've always been a sucker for Mickey games that take him out of his element and into more Wonderland inspired worlds, and this is no exception, though I think it's kinda undermined by it's own ambition. It's an obvious attempt at ribbing Castle of Illusion's themes, but with more involved gameplay systems and stage gimmicks. It works, but it's a weird mix of 'underdeveloped' and 'overdesigned'.

Magical Quest sets itself apart from Illusion by extending the game's brand of fantasy closer to fairytale than Illusion's glassy dreaminess, with worlds that convey a sense of adventure akin to Ghouls n Ghosts and such. It's mostly standard castles and beanstalks, but then there's some really fucked up places like the tree with living intestines and a fire world that is really just a hybrid of GnG's 2nd and 3rd stages. Good stuff. The enemy design is where it feels least polished, though: The bosses for the first two worlds are all clearly Pete-inspired, but that tapers off as you get into worlds 3-5, with regular-ass hawks and shit. And then world 5's boss is just, Pete in snowboarding gear?? It's funny as fuck, but like, so confusing. How many of these enemies are just regular dudes under Pete's control? How many are just Pete himself? I don't get it. I'm a little more partial to Illusion, where the enemies are their own thing but sometimes copy designs from random movies, like Alice in Wonderland, Pete's Dragon, Pinocchio, etc

Can't say I felt for the music very much - fine compositions, but Capcom's soundfont is very raspy and farty to the ears. Just kinda stock SNES vibes to me, perfectly fine but not very resonant.

Much of the difficulty curve can feel haphazard, as can the quality of the level design. 3 hits before death never feels like enough of a safeguard, and when that's not screwing you over, it's the plethora of Capcom-certified bottomless pits. Bosses were the part of the game I liked the least, honestly: They all have way too much health, weird collisions, and cumbersome arenas. Ironically, the one boss I really liked was the final Emperor Pete fight.

It's solid and very high-concept for a '92 licensed game, but also kind of a mess of ideas that make for a more frustrating time than expected.

Als Kind gespielt aber nie weiter als zum Boss der ersten Welt gekommen. Schön aussehender Plattformer, der allerdings viel zu schwierig beginnt.


Fantastic platformer with a lot of charm.

I've been saying it for years, the quest is too damn magical

Jogo padrão de plataforma, mas, ótimo e divertido, com fases criativas, uma dificuldade aceitável, no nível de qualidade Capcom/Disney nos anos 1990.

Platformer bem “padrão”, mas bonitão.

As a kid Magical Quest was probably the first game on SNES that actually made me go "wow this looks really nice", and to this day it still looks pretty to look at with a very very good soundtrack. Capcom seemed to always know how to get the best out of hardware.

The highlight I would say is probably Fire Grotto where you get the Fire Fighter suit, I think you could easily make an entire game out of that moveset and do a lot of things with it. Here they still managed to do that with only four(more like three and a half imo) stages to work with like snuffing out fires, pushing blocks, making platforms in the ice stage, etc. The "Bionic Commando Who Can Jump" moveset with the mountain climbing gear in Pete's Peak is also really cool once you get the hang of it.

Also, massive props for actually making the difficulties switch up the stages a bit instead of just artificially making the game harder by making the enemies do more damage or cutting your lifebar down.

The game unfortunately feels rushed near the end, as Pete's Peak and Snowy Valley both lack sub-bosses and feel like they end really quickly in general. Snowy Valley in particular seems to end before its music gets to loop more than once.

The boss of Snowy Valley is also fucking terrible, one of those classic examples of boss design that I love so much that's just a giant hitbox that goes all over the stage that's a guaranteed trip to the continue screen on your first run since you don't know where he's going. Real shame too, cause I think the bosses in this game are good for the most part.

One of Capcom's better Disney games for sure, would even argue it's an underrated banger for the system.

Muitíssimo divertido e cativante, e um pouco frustrante também.

A pretty decent platformer, nothing amazing, but it was fun when I was a kid.