The Illusions of gaming – looking back at Disney platformers

During the 80s and most of the 90s, console games were designed to appeal to a young audience, while home/personal computer titles were – usually – meant for an older public. Still, as most gamers know, this doesn’t imply in the slightest that console titles were simpler or, god forbid, kid-friendly. Ninja Gaiden or Contra are still widely regarded as the benchmarks for hair-tearing impossible to complete games, the pinnacle of “Nintendo Hard”. As for Disney platformers, they were generally a very safe bet for kids of the 80s and 90s back in the 90s: their name was attached to some of the best titles around, both for 8 & 16-bit consoles.

The house of Mickey chose to work with talented developers, like Capcom and Konami on Nintendo, while also keeping a close watch on the products’ quality. The Illusion series (released in Japan as “I Love Mickey Mouse”… yes) is, arguably, the pinnacle of quality platformers in the 90s, a series exclusive to Sega consoles.

Emiko Yamamoto – from Castle to Kingdom (Hearts)

The first Disney licensed games to be planned by Sega were two platformers: the first was a tie-in for the anniversary of the movie Fantasia, for its then newborn 16-bit console, and the other a yet-to-be-defined title with Mickey Mouse as the protagonist. The Fantasia anniversary game ended up in the hands of an external studio, Infogrames, and was not only marred by development woes but also cursed by legal problems, which led to it being released after Castle of Illusion and having quite a short shelf life.

Castle of Illusion, instead, went on to be one of the best platformers on Sega Genesis/Megadrive. It was the first time Disney had conceded its world-famous mascotte to star in a game, only after a particularly lucrative deal was drawn up by Sega and certain reassurances were given. Developed by a small internal Sega team, headed by designer Emiko Yamamoto, working under the watchful eye of a Disney producer who gave precise directions.

Among the requests made by the megacorporation: Mickey couldn’t die (hence the lives are called “tries”), there would be no violence of any kind and the overall style had to be kept in line with classic Disney imagery. Despite all these caveats, Castle of Illusion successfully fascinated young audiences with colorful 16-bit graphics that turned many kids’ heads in 1990, and the inspiration Yamamoto took from classic 40s Mickey Mouse cartoons and Snow-white, among others.

Mickey is tasked with saving Minnie from the hands of the evil witch Mizrabel, by collecting all seven gems of the rainbow and using them to reach the witch’s castle for the final showdown. Since it was meant to be a family experience, it comes as no surprise that Castle is pretty easy and takes little more than 30 minutes to complete. Still, should the “normal” game be too difficult, there’s a practice mode that features only the first three stages in super easy mode, after that it just kindly advises the player to try the “normal” mode.

Mickey is equipped with the infamous non-violent “butt attack”, but can also throw apples and other objects found throughout the levels. Each room that Mickey explores has its own theme, like the toy room or the dark forest. It really feels like visiting a magical unpredictable world. Even after 30 years, the graphical effects look especially good, the team managed to push the Genesis’ graphical capabilities to its limits with transparencies and parallax scrolling.

Shigenori Kamiya, one of the pioneers of synthesized music in Japan, was the music composer for both console versions of Castle, with the Megadrive tunes having a slight advantage, perfectly suited to the magical atmosphere. Looking back on it now, Castle weirdly clashed with the rest of the line-up that would result from Sega’s post-Sonic edginess: It was a fairly straightforward family-friendly platformer meant to showcase the power of the console while offering solid gameplay and a quirky magical atmosphere. At that time, Sega was still only about what “Genesis does”.

Yamamoto and her team were proud of their work and, after going on to work on the sort-of sequel Quackshot starring Donald Duck and, later, the fantastic Lucky Dime Caper on Master System, they would reunite one last time, in 1993, for the direct sequel to the original Castle of Illusion.

World of Illusion, another Sega Genesis exclusive, stars both Mickey and Donald, working together to escape the dangerous magical realm where they’ve been trapped by the evil magician Pete. This time Disney’s pressure wasn’t as strong since the team had proved pretty capable of handling the subject matter with grace and experience.

The inspiration from Disney movies is still present, featuring several characters like the mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland and Madam Mim as the final boss of sweet land. Still, it wasn’t gonna be just a simple retread of the first game. The best feature implemented by Yamamoto’s team is how Mickey and Donald are two different characters, with the levels adapting to the different styles of play, while also functioning as difficulty levels.

Instead of the rather useless “practice mode” featured in Castle, playing as Mickey works as the “easy” mode, with Donald’s run being slightly harder and taking the player through different stages. That is not all: the 2 players co-op game is also different from the single-player experience, requiring to work in pairs to overcome certain obstacles. It is definitely similar to how Nintendo, during the Wii period, would implement co-op in their Super Mario titles. While each playthrough is shorter than the original Castle of Illusion, finishing the game at least twice to see everything, makes World the longest Illusion game yet.

Gone for good are both the throwing and butt attacks, instead Mickey and Donald share the same magical (non violent, obviously) mantel sweep to dispose of enemies. For some reason, the attack seems to sometimes not being enough to instantly dispose of enemies, which could make sense if the player was engaging harder enemies with more health, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It might have something to do with the range of the attack itself, even though it is never entirely clear how and why. Consulting the manual doesn’t solve the mystery, since it just recites “sometimes it takes more than one sweep with the cape to make the enemy disappear”. Luckily it is not a problem that gets in the way of the gameplay. The player can grab health-restoring items and one-ups, there are also cards to be collected; a full 52 deck grants an extra life, which is something I don’t think I managed to do once in my years of playing.

As a whole, World of Illusion feels more mature and less uncertain, proof that Yamamoto’s team had grown in years of experience working on the platforming genre. Every trick used for Castle (and in Quackshot) is upgraded and improved, the gameplay rhythm is overall more intriguing and better balanced for every kind of player. The flow is especially grandiose, with each level naturally rushing into the next, feeling more like a single picture, rather than various little puzzle pieces pieced together to make the gameplay flow.

The mountain level, the (fantastic) underwater level, the hedge maze: every set piece is memorable and enriched with great level design. Yamamoto’s team would – sadly – disband after the release of World of Illusion, she went on to work full time for Disney as a producer, since then she’s been dedicated full time to the Kingdom Hearts series.

Yoshio Yoshida – the 8bit platformer veteran

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse was also released in 1990 for Sega Master System/Game Gear, but developed by a different team. This one is Yoshio Yoshida’s brainchild, the designer also responsible for one of my favorite game parodies ever, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World. Yoshida kept close contact with Yamamoto’s team but, in the end, Sega decided that each game should feel unique, even though sharing the plot and overall look and feel of the gameplay.

The Master System version does indeed feature different levels, enemies and bosses; still, the only real notable difference in playing is that Mickey can’t collect projectiles, but he can still throw everything found lying around: chests, rocks, etc. This, along with the sprites being smaller, entails that the game is slightly more difficult than its 16 bit counterpart. A design feature that I remember hugely appreciated back in the day – and still do – is being able to choose the order in which to tackle the stages, instead of following a strict path. A zero-cost design choice, sadly missed in the Genesis version, that brings that small drop of personalization and variety to the gameplay flow.

The stages are all colorful and filled with original ideas, with the library probably being my favourite: the cup of tea that Mickey swims in, the book bugs, the letters that split into smaller letters when pounded on. The confectionery level – unique to the 8 bit version – is also a stand-out, with chocolate seas to traverse, candies to pound upon and a big chocolate block boss to defeat… with blocks! The clock tower, on the other hand, brings strong Castlevania vibes which are always interesting in what is otherwise a cutesy Disney platformer.

Even if it is slightly harder, the 8-bit Castle of Illusion does stay pretty much within the limits of platformers of the time, featuring similar longevity to other Illusion titles: a thirty minutes playthrough basically. The final level will undoubtedly test even the more experienced players’ reflexes. As opposed to the simple final bosses of the 16-bit version, the 8-bit Castle sports two slightly harder bosses that have to be beaten without any health pickups.

Even though the game looks and feels to be aimed at a young audience, perhaps even younger than other platformers on the Master System, its balanced difficulty is pretty similar to other platformers like Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Yoshida’s team would return one more time to work on a unique 8-bit sequel.

Land of Illusion is the second 8bit game in the series, released in 1993, again for both Master System and Game Gear. This is where the series branched out with unique titles for the less powerful SEGA consoles, therefore the story goes for a different classic fairy tale vibe. Mickey falls asleep while reading a book and is thrown into a medieval world where he will meet many other Disney characters like Goofy, Daisy Duck, Donald Duck. In order to defeat the evil Phantom – from The Black Cauldron – that has enslaved the land, our hero has to travel through different levels, in a mostly linear fashion, in order to collect various items that will help him in the quest.

Graphically, Land uses several of the sprites from the previous game and doesn’t seem to improve anything from the previous title; the animated sequences between levels are a pretty nice touch though. Not that I think Land of Illusion really needed to feature a story that is pushed along by cutscenes but, it doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay. It is, still, slightly perplexing that the developers went to the trouble of designing and animating sprites for many different Disney characters, only for the purpose of making them appear a couple of seconds at the end of certain levels.

Gameplay is identical to its predecessor, with level design being slightly less varied and colorful and, thus, closer to that of a classic 2D platformer of the eighties. That familiar feeling gets stronger when one is confronted with all the classic level styles in Land of Illusion: ice level, underwater level, desert level. There is, unfortunately, little that can be defined as unique like in its predecessor.

The items that Mickey collects in order to progress grant new abilities, adding a tiny bit of variety to the gameplay, even though coming into play only after a good chunk of the game. Mickey can climb walls, swim underwater, shrink by drinking a potion. If the gameplay had been carefully designed around these new abilities from the first level, Land of Illusion would have been a very different kind of sequel, but they end up being sadly underused.

There is some backtracking involved when collecting a new ability, but it is just a small portion of a level required to open up the path to the subsequent stage. This is no metroidvania, for sure. Land has a system of checkpoints since the levels are longer, but, overall, the difficulty is pretty much on-par with Castle, with most of the levels being relatively easy, only to get brutally hard at the end with a labyrinthine stage that has to be completed before the clock runs out.

Mickey starts with only two stars as health, he can collect another three during the game as a sort of small RPG-like element. He also retains the same attacks from the previous titles, “butting” enemies and throwing items. Even though featuring a developed plot and abilities to unlock, Land ends up being a much more plain (and forgettable) platformer than World of Illusion. Yoshida’s design experience in platforms is clearly on display but he sadly missed the opportunity to build and innovate on the predecessor’s classic gameplay.

Still, even though less memorable for its stages and ideas, Land still manages to be playable and fun. It’s really a case of “if you liked the first one, here’s more of that”. The only true disappointment is the anticlimactic ending in which Mickey gets kissed by Minnie, the princess, as soon as the end boss is defeated and well, “THE END”. He never even gets to wake up from the dream so I guess… it was all real? We’ll never know. Or care.

Sega & Aspect studio together at last

Legend of Illusion, released as late as 1995, first on the Game Gear and then later converted for Master System, would end up being the final game in the series. At least, for the next 17 years. It was designed by a different team (which included Yuichirou Yokoyama, designer of Sonic CD), with Aspect studio joining Sega in development, the same people who had already worked on Deep Duck Trouble in 1993, another 8-bit platformer starring Donald Duck and a sort of sequel to The Lucky Dime Caper.

The three years difference and the title being in the hands of a new team are factors very easy to note almost immediately,since, while it mostly plays like Land and Castle of Illusion, it feels like a platformer from another series altogether. The graphics have been redesigned from scratch, from the Mickey sprite to everything else, only the chests have been left untouched from the original game. This time our dear mouse is a humble cleaner, tasked with saving the kingdom because he is, of course, the chosen one.

The plot connects every level in which Mickey progresses in a linear fashion, with no backtracking of sorts. Gone is the “butt attack”, the focus is instead on throwing unlimited projectiles: bars of soap and, later, rocks. Another new move is the possibility for Mickey to grab an item (a block, usually) out of the air, a move that is required maybe two times in the whole game. But the player would do better not to forget about it since it is essential to beat the final boss. Another new feature is the “sort of” inventory system, similar to the one in Super Mario Bros 3, where the player can store health-restoring items when they are not needed: they will be used automatically when Mickey’s health runs out.

As much as I would like to say otherwise, it is easy to note how Legend of Illusion’s design feels rushed, like all its little nifty ideas were glossed over because of hurried development. The sidescrolling shoot ‘em up level where Mickey rides a dragonfly, for example, is a neat little touch but ends up being a really short diversion, never coming back again after it ends. The same goes for the endlessly scrolling level, which is trying to give the illusion that Mickey is running (not a very good one, at that), and features the same sequence of enemies repeated twice. After that, the level just ends with no boss fight, leaving us to wonder what was that all about.

The bosses are all generally pretty easy, they usually repeat a couple of moves ad nauseam without any minimal variation whatsoever. Overall, Legend is probably the easiest Illusion game, at least on 8-bit: there’s no big difficulty curve, not even in the final level. Everything stays pretty easy and manageable, even the fight against the final boss is quite underwhelming.

All that said, the final Illusion game of the 90s ends up being a bit of a mixed bag: on one hand, it is graphically gorgeous and the gameplay is still, for the most part, solid platforming action from the 90s. Unfortunately, on the other hand, it squanders its potentially interesting design ideas and seems, at times, to be content in just being forgettable.

In conclusion, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Disney platformers coming back in 2012, with the remake of Castle of Illusion and the Epic Mickey 2D platformer on the Nintendo 3DS, which feels closer to an homage than a true sequel. While they are both above-average platforming experiences, they seemed to fail to recapture that magical period and feeling of wonderment.

The Illusion series proved that Sega was more than capable of releasing solid licensed titles and, of course, developing seriously entertaining platformers that, while not in direct competition with the Mario series, could impress on their own terms. Disney also made the right choice in producing games with a younger audience in mind but that, as was the style at the time, could also be played by young adults. After the 16-bit generation was over, Disney decided to create its own publishing company, Disney interactive, which meant that the focus would soon shift on simpler titles for young players, with Sega losing the licenses altogether for their later consoles.

The Illusion series, then, still stands today as a wonderful consolation for the world-weary player. The great design of most of its titles in the series still shines brightly, offering a reassuring cocoon from the world outside and when the current videogame industry get a bit too much. Mickey is still waiting there for us with open arms, to take us into the magical land.
Once upon a mouse…

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