World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (Sega Genesis Review)

World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released December 14, 1992
Designed by Emiko Yamamoto
Developed by Sega
Included in the Sega Genesis Mini

What the heck happened to this sequel?

Castle of Illusion is a bonafide gaming legend. That’s why alarms were going off in my head that nobody really talks about the sequel all that much. It didn’t get a big budget remake. It’s not spoken of with the same reverence. There were only two possible outcomes for this review: either I’d declare World of Illusion to be historically overlooked or I’d say “I get it.” Well, I get it. World of Illusion is a surprisingly boring game. The sense of whimsy and wonder from the original is completely gone, and all that’s left is a slow, dull platformer. I’m in a state of shock over here, because the entire team from the first game returned for this sequel, but it has no memorable moments and even goes back to several set-pieces from the first game and its excellent Sega Master System little brother. Remember the spider-webs? They’re back, only not as good as before!

One of the biggest problems with World of Illusion is the choices of colors. Only a couple levels are colorful and joyful. The rest are washed-out and muddy looking.

Castle of Illusion was a children’s game, but like the best games aimed at a younger audience, it could easily be enjoyed by players of all ages. That’s not the case at all with World of Illusion. It’s really just a game for young kids. The fact that you get up to eight hit points per life tells you that. The most damage I ever took was three, during an ultra-slow-moving auto-scrolling section. Mickey and Donald get a striking attack of sorts in this game: they wave their cape at enemies, sprinkling them with magic dust. What I found strange is that some enemies are spongy, while identical-looking enemies might be finished in a hit or two. I wondered if there was some invisible meter that measures how potent your fairy dust is. Late in the game, enemies become too spongy, but it doesn’t exactly increase the challenge they present. They just become busy work. I reached the point where I jumped over enemies rather than slay them. Combat isn’t remotely fun or rewarding, so why bother?

It’s not like there’s no decent set pieces. I appreciated that riding the cork into space didn’t take forever. But the core gameplay and level design is too dull.

The big hook is the game unfolds slightly differently depending on which character you choose. For World of Illusion, Donald Duck is along for the ride, and although he plays nearly identically to Mickey, each stage has a unique set piece exclusive to each character. The level layouts become different as well. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed the Donald pathway more than Mickey’s, but I was still just mostly bored. There’s no challenge at all to World of Illusion, and unlike the first game, it doesn’t feel like the level design is particularly fine-tuned. I figured that was done to accommodate the co-op play. I was sort of right, but since the game unfolds a third way if you’re playing with a partner, that isn’t entirely to blame. The events that happen feel like there’s no logical reason for them to occur when they do. Nothing is built-up in World of Illusion. It’s supposed to feel like one continuous adventure, but doing that takes away from any sense of progress.

Visually, the underwater sequence is like a lower-res version of Donkey Kong Country’s swimming stages. I was never a fan of Donkey Kong Country’s underwater sequences, but I’d prefer them over this. Mickey’s is very slow, very plodding, and very low on thrills.

None of the set-pieces really made me sit up and say “okay, now it’s starting to cook.” When I found out the game has two branching paths that change depending on which character you pick, I didn’t imagine it being entirely different levels. Like, the transition level in the underwater level sees Mickey climb Bald Mountain. “BALD MOUNTAIN?! NOW YOU’RE TALKING!” I said, but there’s no encounter with the Chernabog. Just a few of the fire sprites and a couple lightning strikes. Donald doesn’t even get that, as he instead hops across life preservers in a beach setting. The gimmick is supposed to be that Mickey and Donald “get new spells” as they complete the game, but that’s just a framing device. It doesn’t really factor into the gameplay. You’re not casting spells while you play to, say, create the magic carpet. The level starts and you cast the spell and, poof, carpet. Same with the air bubble for the swimming area.

The closest the spells come to being “real time” are when you use them on cards to create a bridge. But again, it’s a framing device. It feels more like you’re talking to the cards than you are enchanting them. Active spell-casting is not incorporated into the ACTION in any way, shape, or form.

Sigh. This is a game that never gets out of first gear, and I’m not entirely sure why. It could be something as shallow as the appearance, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think the addition of combat ruined the game. It was a lot more fun when you were hopping on enemy heads and doing a butt stomp. Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather play this than Fantasia, but this feels like a major step backwards from Castle of Illusion. And that’s especially weird because this offers all the replay value and hidden secrets that I whined about being missing from that first game. It can’t possibly be the pace that caused my boredom, right? The original Illusion had a slow pace too, and World of Illusion has the run button! And yet, World of Illusion feels much slower and much less imaginative. I really never shook the feeling that this was a game aimed at YOUNG children. Like, under 8 years old, and I don’t happen to have anyone in that category to test that theory. Sasha, my 8 year old niece, was the best I could do. But at this point, Sasha is an experienced gamer, and even she thought World of Illusion was too simple.

In the fifth level, Donald gets a hedge maze while Mickey gets one of the most slow and miserable auto-scrolling sections I’ve experienced in a game.

The co-op mode gave me an excuse to dust-off my Genesis Mini and ask someone close to what I felt was the target audience for their opinion. Sasha took the reins as Mickey while I played as Donald. I appreciated that the set pieces play out a third way in co-op, but two players doesn’t improve the World of Illusion experience. There are some co-op set-pieces, like gaming’s worst-ever mine cart sequence where you have to alternate jumping on it. This segment goes on FOREVER. Some say that there’s children from 1993 still stuck in that cart. Mind you, besides that AWFUL section, the two player mode was probably the best designed of the three possible pathways, with a lot of changes made to accommodate the two players. For example, in the first level, there’s teeter-totters that you jump on, which launch a log into the air that comes back down on the teeter-totter and flings you to a higher platform. In the two-player mode, one player must launch the other to the higher platform, then you drop a rope down to them. So, a slow game becomes even slower. How keen.

Since we played co-op on the Genesis Mini, I don’t have any screens, so I’ll take this moment to say that World of Illusion has the most dull haunted ship level this side of the Genesis Ninja Turtles.

It became clear really fast that World of Illusion is optimized for the co-op mode. And it does a good job of avoiding the typical frustrations that come with co-op platforming. Instead of scrolling a player off screen being lethal, a little bubble with “HELP!” appears so the “primary” player can scroll towards them. I have to concede that World of Illusion is one of the rare co-op platformers from this era that really does a damn good job of creating reasons to have two players. Hell, the one truly original, imaginative section in the game, a level themed around Christmas, only happens in co-op. For a very brief moment, this felt like a sequel to Castle of Illusion instead of an off-brand ripoff of it. But, for four out of the five worlds, even the 8 year old was bored, especially compared to Mickey Mania or Magical Quest. In fact, she was invested enough in Magical Quest to beat it on her own. She’s capable of loving Mickey Mouse games a LOT more than me.

The section themed around Donald walking through a gigantic pop-up book fails so completely. It’s a solid idea. I mean, THAT IS the Paper Mario franchise, isn’t it? But with these graphics? No. It just doesn’t work. It looks like any other part of the game, so the whole “you’re walking through a book” whimsy is not coming through.

With World of Illusion, Sasha wanted to quit early on, during the mine cart section. So did I, and I’m happy we didn’t, since the rest of the game hovers around “decent but bland.” It at least rose to the level that I had to think about my verdict a little harder. Ultimately, both of us did a Siskel and Ebert thumbs down to the rest of our family when we finished. So badly done was World of Illusion that Sasha, all of 8, asked if it was made by different people than Castle of Illusion, which she enjoyed very much last year. “Are you sure?” she asked with complete sincerity when I confirmed to her this was a genuine sequel from the same team. I think a big part of that was World of Illusion is nowhere near as colorful or vibrant as Castle of Illusion. Actually, the game is kind of ugly. It really feels like a sequel nobody wanted to make. Even the bosses are dull, lacking in both challenge and sense of scale.

You know that trick games do where they paint the background to make the actual boss look bigger? It doesn’t work here. The scale of the action doesn’t match the facade they created.

It’s not that World of Illusion is actively bad. Well, maybe a little with the inconsistently spongy enemies. Seriously, sometimes it feels like the magic dust doesn’t work at all. It’s very confusing why identical enemies sometimes take two hits and sometimes it’s four to five. I never could make sense of it. For a while, it seemed like it was tied to how close I was to them, or maybe if they had an enemy in front of them that I already beat, it would take longer. But there’s no meter or on-screen indicator that says that you have to wait for your power to increase. Not that it matters, because even when the enemies are taken down in one shot, the whole “whipping a cape” at them feels weak. The best thing I can say about World of Illusion is it made me better appreciate what Castle accomplished. It has a slower pace too, but it feels inspired. This feels like something done to fill a release schedule.
Verdict: NO!
BUT, if you’re entertaining a young child who isn’t deeply experienced with video games, I think the co-op might actually be a great learning experience. They might need help with the mine-cart part early in the game, but otherwise, this would be a perfect 2D platforming introductory game for a child 5 to 7. I’m still not giving it a YES! but I could see how I might have if I’d been able to play World of Illusion with a child relatively new to gaming.

“Tickle tickle tickle!”