When I bought my first SEGA Genesis, I was a graphic artist at Sprouse Reitz, a dying five-and-dime chain that ultimately disappeared in 1993. I bought it used. The guy who sold it to me threw three games, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, and Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse.
I was well into my thirties and an avid arcade gamer, so I knew all about Golden Axe and Altered Beast. I'd played them when they first appeared in arcades. Castle of Illusion, on the other hand, meant nothing to me. What did I care about Mickey Mouse, I was an adult.
My attitude changed when I tried the games. Golden Axe was good, but short. Altered Beast, like so many arcade games, grew old the moment I no longer needed to worry about running out of quarters.
When I finally got to Castle of Illusion, I experienced an epiphany. What a game! The graphics were amazing for their time, bright, colorful, cartoon-like, and happy. The game looked like a Disney cartoon, albeit not a particularly well drawn one.
The gameplay, on the other hand, was superbly well tuned. Mickey jumped when you told him to jump. He threw apples at enemies and butt-bumped anyone who got in his way as he explored an enchanted forest, a Toyland, a giant clock, and an underground waterway as his hunt for the abducted Minnie Mouse led him closer and closer to the eponymous castle.
In recent months, I have considered buying an old Genesis just so I could play Castle of Illusion and maybe a few other old friends.
That thought came to an end five minutes ago, when I received an email from SEGA PR announcing the release of an updated Castle of Illusion on Live Arcade and PlayStation network. And when SEGA says updated, SEGA means updated.

The Genesis version of Toyland looked like this: As you can see, the graphics were bright and clear and very true to Disney. In 1993, this was cutting edge stuff.
The level was fun. You guided Mickey as he climbed ramp after ramp in a very, very tall and somewhat narrow level. To get to the top you needed to dodge or destroy toy soldiers, toy airplanes, and the occasional jack in the box. Fun stuff.
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The updated version of that Toyland looks like this. It appears that SEGA has kept the game mechanics intact while bringing the graphics into the 21st Century.
It looks good, but the proof will be in the playing.
I have to admit, I am excited. Back when I was a practicing journalist, I used to fight hard to get that game included in "best of" lists all the time. I think its connection to Mickey Mouse has worked for and against it, depending specific editors. The thing is, strip away the Disney magic and the jump in graphics for its time, and Castle of Illusion is simply a well-crafted side-scroller. It was well made, no doubt about that, but there have been many, many well-made games over the years.
Since the release of Castle of Illusion, no one has pulled off Mickey quite as well in my mind. SEGA wasn't able to recapture the magic World of Illusion. SEGA went on to license Fantasia, and boy was that a disaster. Graphically, it was probably the most beautiful and artistic game to appear on the Genesis. Gameplay-wise, it felt like a thinly veiled attempt to euthanize Mickey.
Objects blocked the player's view of Mickey at inconvenient times, Mickey hesitated before jumping, etc. The game was beautiful, but it wasn't fun.
I was very poor when I bought that game. My wife said I could buy it as a combined birthday present and Christmas present, so I went o Babbage's Machine and bought it the week it came out.
The next day, I took it to the store manager and said, "This is a terrible game; I want to return it." He said I could only return it if it had a problem, and then he would replace it. When he looked in my eyes and realized that he was going to have to leave the store sooner or later and I was a crazed threat to his safety, he refunded my money. I think every impassioned gamer has a story like that.
Anyway, in my mind no one has ever quite captured the success of Castle of Illusion. Capcom took several shots at Disney bliss and never quite hit the target.
Virgin Interactive pulled off a real coups with Aladdin.
Sony Imagesoft, a company that never seemed to do anything right before the launch of PlayStation, released a phenomenal game called Mickey mania that not only took level queues from various classic Mickey cartoons, it emulated the evolution of Mickey artwork. The game started with a Steamboat Willie level and wound its way forward. Brilliant game, but as hard and inaccessible as Castle of Illusion was inviting.
In recent years, the brilliant Warren Spector, who started out working on Wing Commander games before taking the lead on such classics as System Shock and Deus Ex, produced the Epic Mickey series. I loved the look and the feel and the story of Warren Spector's games, but I felt like the game mechanic of drawing and dissolving objects got in the way of the adventure.
(A note, friends, Warren Spector is among America's most elite game creators. He belongs in the same pantheon as Sid Meier and Will Wright. I may not have liked his Micky titles as much as Castle of Illusion, but without System Shock, we may never have had BioShock, and his game Thief pretty launched stealth games even though it wasn't the first game to incorporate that mechanic.)