An extremely charming, polished, and varied little platformer, paying tribute to the original 1990 games in the right ways (do we need a more complicated story than "Minnie has been kidnapped by an evil witch?" No. Does it make any sense that a bottle in the library level would lead to a world where everything is made of candy and desserts? Also no, but that's how Sega did it in 1990 so that's what we're doing) while having the confidence to completely reimagine the level designs in ways that would never have been possible on 8- or 16-bit hardware (I generally enjoyed the 3D sections, though I know not everyone agrees). Extremely short, even more so than I had remembered (I wish that every gem had at least gotten its own set of levels, even if that's not how the original game did it either), but that makes it a good one- or two-sitting play. A damn shame that Sega Studios Australia was shut down just before this game was released; would have liked to see them do more remakes in this vein.

Reviewed on Oct 25, 2023


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