A good example is the blur effect they added in the library when you walk behind a set of spectacles. Even when you do have to replay a part (like the water section in the castle) there are enough little details added to keep you interested. However unlike Ducktales these sections are short meaning you are never held up for too long. Mickey Mouse is generally fun to play with only a few frustrating sections that might anger you a little. The subtle tweak and new ideas are just enough to elevate the gameplay above the original title and give you something a bit more interesting to do. While this can be occasionally jarring (a control switch is necessary between digital and analogue) it helps avoid the same trap that Capcom fell into. The now dead Sega Australia team even took it further, with levels switching to full 3D periodically. Just like Ducktales there has been a large graphical overhaul. With that disappointment behind us, it is time to turn to Mickey Mouse. The cutscenes, while basic hit the mark with excellent voice work and there are plenty of unlockable extras if that is your thing. This is a bit of a shame really because the rest of the package is well put together. Neither change of element is fundamentally wrong (updating the graphics or gameplay), but when you put them in isolation it just doesn’t work. The lesson here is, if you want to update the graphics in such a dramatic way? You need to update the gameplay to match. You will not want to, so you will probably give it all up. If you fail at the level boss? Well it is back to the start then to do it all over again. Despite being easy, it does however take a long time to do and you might die due to boredom along the way. Collecting the 8 coins for example isn’t a fun experience because you are moving through almost the same exact screens to get to each one. Hence the game becomes a hard slog through long levels without much to do. Simple jumps will be missed, huge enemy hitboxes will be clipped and mistakes will be made simply because you are not paying attention because everything is so dull that you will just want to get through it. When you die, you will die because of the design choices, not really your own skill or lack thereof. What this does is causes a great deal of frustration even though there is no really challenge to what you are supposed to be doing. Only now the spiders take up half the screen and getting on top of them is guesswork at best. Bouncing across a series of small spiders was a fair enough challenge back in the day and the same experience is evident here. What this means is there is no real precision possible, even though the game still demands it. This means Ducktales is still a pixel perfect platformer, now taking place in giant blobs of samey environments. No real changes were made to the gameplay, checkpoint system or level of difficulty. While that might seem to be a matter of taste, the issue runs deeper than that. The sprite-work is excellent as the screens show, but the environments are simply hideous. The graphics were redone for this effort but ultimately it was not in a positive way. As such the bar was set quite high.Ĭastle of Illusion mostly delivered, Ducktales did not.įirst to the ducks and the most obvious problem I had with the game. For Castle of Illusion, I wanted my whole childhood to be relived in a orgy of visual delights. For Ducktales I just wanted a good game that showed me what all the fuss was about. This created a different level of expectation for each title going in. Mickey Mouse on the other hand? I played the heck out of that game and can still hum some of the tunes in more quiet moments. We were a Sega Master System family and my only experience with the title was at a friends place with very limited play time. To explain my own nostalgia goggles, I never really played Ducktales back in the day. However they also tend to have a lot more money and that led me to pick up both games. But the kids that watched them are now thirty +, cynical and looking for deeper game experiences (for the most part). Ducktales and Mickey Mouse are certainly kid’s cartoons. You also have to be careful about who you target the game at. It can also be a dangerous thing as developers try to balance the needs of the old crowd with todays more … well less to be honest, accomplished gamers. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing for gaming, as these two releases demonstrate.
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