Unusually for an early Nineties console title, Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse required not just one but three teams. Sega Of Japan was responsible for designing and coding the game, but just as importantly the project was directed by its sister company Sega Of America with regular input from Stephan Butler at Walt Disney, as the former Disney creative points out. “I was the producer on the Disney side,” Stephan explains. “I worked with Sega’s producer Jim Huether, primarily up at Sega Of America. Disney wasn’t directly involved with Sega Of Japan, but all three of our groups became close as we worked through the design elements and got the game to the point where it adhered to Disney’s standards.”
What Stephan describes sounds straightforward, but while Castle Of Illusion would in time feel just like playing a Disney animation, getting it to those lofty heights wasn’t at all smooth sailing until the approaches of its teams became aligned. “Sega Of Japan’s initial design was a typical platform game design, and it was surprised that the rules we had at Disney required that design to be changed,” Stephan says of the first draft. “However, the team in Japan ultimately did a great job of making its rendition of Mickey true to the spirit of the Disney character. At the same time it provided a platform title with some awesome gameplay, which was helped by the fact that it had developed a great engine.”
Going into more detail on the requirement for to depict Mickey in the Disney style, Stephan recalls a misunderstanding of the mouse’s modus operandi. “It was important that Mickey maintained his character,” Stephan notes. “That was
