Mickey Mouse, Land of Illusion – Sega Game Gear

Land of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is a great game. Let’s get that out of the way first. I owned this game as a child on the Master System and loved it.  Playing through it again on the Sega Game Gear has been a joy. I was worried that my childhood fondness for this game may have in some way clouded my judgment of whether this was actually a good game.  Quite often I revisit a game I enjoyed as a child only to find it isn’t quite as good as I remember, but that’s not the case here.

From the very beginning

it’s clear that this game is a polished, well made game.  The graphics are colourful and look incredibly impressive running on Sega’s 8-bit handheld. It’s almost as if you are playing a Disney animated cartoon. Sega has a great history of excellent Disney games and this is no exception.

Upon starting the game

We are treated to a brief moment of storytelling. The basic premise is simple. The evil Phantom has stolen the magical crystal  and sadness has overcome the village. Mickey must set off on an adventure across 14 levels to defeat the Phantom, regain the crystal and restore happiness to the village. Story wise, we’re not dealing with a masterwork in fiction, but it’s perfectly adequate at setting the scene for the adventure to come and there isn’t really a need for a deeper story.

Gameplay 

Land of Illusion is pretty simple. Initially in the early levels, the objective is to simply make your way to the end of the level with little exploration or any real challenge.  Enemies are easily dispatched and the exit is easily found. To exit a level, a small magic potion must be found which will reveal the door.  After a couple of levels however, things start to get a little more interesting.  In order to progress in later levels, certain items must be found. For example, Tiny Caverns requires the ability to shrink, Craggy Cliff requires a rope.  These items are acquired through boss battles and back-tracking through some of the earlier levels. The back-tracking is minimal, but it makes for a more interesting and slightly longer game as the levels are not necessarily the same when you return, sometimes actions in later levels affect the earlier ones.

Land of Illusion is not a difficult game, however

I still found I was suffering a few cheap deaths here and there. Mickey can take 3 hits before dying which is fine, but sometimes it can be easy to miss-time a jump and take a hit from an enemy. In the later stages, there are some frustrating jumps that are certainly made more difficult by the size of the Game Gears screen but these jumps can be mastered with practice. They are certainly not up there with Donkey Kong Country for ridiculously difficult jumps!  Boss fights are pretty simple once you have the pattern down.

So, final conclusion:

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is a fantastic game.  The gameplay is varied, the level design is excellent if a little on the short side.  The graphics are lovely and look fantastic on the Sega handheld and even better on a modded system.  There can be occasional frustrations with some hard jumps and cheap deaths, but these flaws are more than outweighed by the good points.  This is a game every Game Gear owner should have in their collection if they don’t already!