Ultimate Guide: Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse

When Mickey Mouse brought his star power to Sega’s platforms, the Master System wasn’t left out – and arguably, got the best game of the lot. Venture into the castle with Nick Thorpe

The Mega Drive version gets all the love, but Nick argues that the Master System version is the better game

If you’re Mickey Mouse, life must seem pretty good. Vera City is the nicest world Disney can draw, you’re famous and beloved the world over, and Minnie is head over heels in love with you. Mickey has the peaceful happiness that we all want in our lives. The only problem is that peaceful happiness is much better at the end of the game than the beginning, so the jealous witch Mizrabel turns up to kidnap Minnie so she can steal her beauty. As you’d expect Mickey is miffed about the scenario, and he gives chase, reaching the Castle Of Illusion where an old man lets him know that he’ll need to collect seven coloured gems to build a rainbow bridge to Mizrabel. Of course, he’s got to get through a series of themed illusions to do it, setting the stage for the game

– a classic rescue plot, befitting a classic cartoon character.

While the plot of Castle Of

Illusion relies on old standards, the developers were actually relatively inexperienced. Designer Emiko Yamamoto of Disney was working on her very first videogame, while key Sega designer Yoshio Yoshida was fresh off his first project at

Sega, Alex Kidd In Shinobi World.

Yamamoto and Yoshida were serving as game designer and assistant game designer respectively on the Mega Drive version of Castle

Of Illusion, developed alongside the Master System game, and basic concepts are shared between the two games. Both are platform games with the same plot, in which Mickey can attack by throwing objects and butt-bouncing off of enemies. The music, composed by Kamiya Studio, is also shared between the two versions.

The rest of the staff was different by necessity, and the Master System team was hardly devoid of talent – despite the status of the Mega Drive in Sega’s plans at the time, the Disney project required the correct approach on every platform. Developers included

Phantasy Star artist Takako Kawaguchi and Michael Jackson’s

Moonwalker planner Tomozou

Endo, as well as a host of promising new developers. The result was a completely different interpretation of the same initial concepts. Stages, such as Toy Town and The Library, share conceptual commonalities with their Mega Drive counterparts, but every single aspect of the execution from graphic design to level layout was built from scratch.

Whereas the castle itself was merely a storytelling tool on the Mega Drive, on the Master System it acts as a menu screen. Castle

Of Illusion offers a semi-linear experience, with the player given the choice to tackle the three initial stages in any order, and the same for two further stages once these have been completed. Once you’re actually in those stages, further differences are revealed – primarily, on the Master System Mickey is capable of carrying and throwing only a single item at a time in much the same way as Super Mario

Bros. 2, which means he’s