Sega of America has released new screenshots and an extended version of a trailer teased earlier this month for Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. The game, described as a “complete re-imagining” of the original released in 1990 on the Sega Genesis, will join the already announced Ducktales Remastered for a summer 2013 launch on digital platforms, including XBLA. With any luck, this trend of Sega and Disney teaming up will continue and bring even more classics out of the vault.
New assets have surfaced that all but confirm the upcoming XBLA release of classic platformer Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. As unearthed by tipster @lifelower, Sega of America has posted a teaser trailer to its official YouTube channel, and what appears to be the game’s box art has today been hastily removed from Xbox.com.
An XBLA release of the Castle of Illusion, which first appeared on Sega Genesis and the Sega Master System in 1990, has been rumored since March, when the title received ratings from Australian and Brazilian classification authorities. Today’s teaser trailer suggests that Castle of Illusion is likely to release this US summer, although Sega is yet to make an official announcement.
Source: Lifelower
The side-scrolling Sega Genesis classic Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse may be coming to XBLA if recent classification ratings are any indication. Not to be confused with the recent 3DS release of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Joystiq reports that Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse has received digital ratings from the Australian Classification Board and its Brazilian equivalent.
While Sega has not made an official announcement yet, the trend of re-releasing classic games for digital download makes this rumor one to keep an eye on if you’re already a fan of the Illusion series or Disney Epic Mickey.
In a video interview posted over at the Sega blog, lead designer of The Cave, J.P. LeBreton, explains that devising the game’s puzzles presented a unique kind of challenge.
Double Fine’s LeBreton, who also worked on BioShock, explained that the trick is to find the good kind of “being stuck.” Providing just the right amount of information is paramount when designing any game’s puzzles. But he learned that a straight-up adventure game like The Cave presents additional hurdles at the user-testing stage.
“You don’t have clear metrics like you do with a game that’s based around combat, where you can say, ‘OK, they died this many times and they took this much damage, and we’d rather it be this way, so let’s put more health packs or whatever in the level,” he begins.
“With [The Cave], it was more just like, ‘Well, they were stuck in this area for a long time. A, are we OK with that? And B, what do we want to do about it? Do we want to give them a hint in this direction? No, that’s too much of a gimme; let’s figure out something else. Or let’s just leave it, because it’s actually good because it’s late in the game, or it’s the right kind of difficult puzzle for this kind of situation.’”
Sega currently has “no plan” to release Virtual-On or Virtua Striker, the second two entries in its XBLA and PSN retro arcade revival series known as Model2 Collection, in North America (NA) or Europe (EU), a recent tweet reveals. The revelation came just one day after Sega revealed that the duo would release on February 13 for 800 MSP each, without initially explaining if that date applied to all territories or only to Japan.
Sega also neglected to make any mention of North American or European releases when the first Model2 games (Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Sonic the Fighters) last year, but the publisher eventually made public its plans to release them in late November in NA and early December in EU.
That trio went on sale on XBLA for 400 MSP each, meaning the 800 MSP price point announced for Virtua Striker and Virtual-On is twice as much as their predecessors cost. Interestingly, the premiere Model2 XBLA releases were once planned to release at 800 MSP per game themselves, but Sega lowered the price following a bit of a fan backlash.
Source: Sega
(Thanks, @lifelower)
The Cave was developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Sega. It was released January 23, 2013 for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
The Cave will make you laugh. The Cave will make you curious. The Cave will make you confused. The Cave will make you think. Yes, The Cave will make you a lot of things as you solve puzzles that are only occasionally as frustratingly abstruse as they are clever. Unfortunately, one of those things Double Fine Production’s point-and-click-is-dead/long-live-point-and-click adventure game will make you is bored. Playing Double Fine’s XBLA adventure game will will inspire in you feelings of pride and contentedness during your moments of puzzle-solving clarity, but it will also inspire you to go play something else when you’re (frequently) stuck shambling along its mostly lifeless halls for the umpteenth time.
You’ll uncover the shady pasts and green-eyed and avaricious desires of the game’s seven playable characters — if you’re willing to play through the game three separate times — as you explore ever deeper while the Cave itself plays the dual roles of court jester and adjudicator. These stories are intriguing despite their simplicity, and the game will have you smiling and chuckling a bit when the Cave is narrating proceedings or morbidly recounting a character’s past. The experience breaks down, however, when you’re hopelessly stuck on one of the more perplexing puzzles without the benefit of the titular narrator distracting you from the tedium of your aimless wandering.
Originally reported to be coming in January, Double Fine’s The Cave now has a solid release date. Announced today by publisher Sega, and by creator Ron Gilbert via Twitter, The Cave now has a confirmed release date of January 23 on XBLA with a 1200MSP price tag. Equal parts sidescrolling platformer and point-and-click adventure, the game stars seven characters who venture into a mystical cave believing it contains the solution to their desires. Also, the cave can talk. The player will choose three characters to control, using their unique abilities to solve puzzles and explore special sections of the cave. You can find out more about The Cave from our preview here.
If you aren’t excited for The Cave yet, now is the time to start. This adventure from Double Fine will be releasing in January of next year, and its listing on Microsoft’s marketplace ensures it has passed certification. Fans of Monkey Island will notice Ron Gilbert’s creative humor in the trailer above.
The Cave is a 2D adventure game with seven playable characters, each with their own quirky stories and abilities displayed in the trailer. You pick three characters to switch between as you solve puzzles and fight bosses. You can even share these characters with two other players in online or local co-op. Depending on your chosen characters, your solution to a puzzle may be different than another player’s. As with any game from Ron Gilbert, you can expect some of these solutions to joke with reality. Broken vending machine? Dump some water on it!
With an expansive talking underground maze to discover, any fans of adventure games like Shadow Complex or Trine will definitely want to check this one out.
To see an Xbox Live Arcade game removed from the marketplace isn’t uncommon. By our counts over 30 have been delisted since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. Reasons for their removal vary. Some companies go south, some games have licensed technology or trademarks that have expired contracts, and yet others are delisted for other reasons. Six victims have recently been claimed by the delisting epidemic.
Sega Rally Online Arcade, a game we really enjoyed, was pulled some time late last month. It’s odd for Sega, who is so keen on Xbox Live Arcade, to pull one of their titles. We’re guessing that the contract(s) with the vehicle manufacturer(s) expired and it had to fall the same way as OutRun Online Arcade. Inferno Pool fell roughly around the same time. It’s developer Dark Energy Digital, closed its doors earlier this year allegedly due to poor sales of Hydrophobia. The game, which oddly enough is still listed on the marketplace, received polar reviews from critics and spawned a very public argument between the Hydrophobia creative director Deborah Jones, Edge magazine and Destructoid’s Jim Sterling.
Other casualties include Merv Griffin’s Crosswords, which no longer has so much as an xbox.com listing, Roogoo, and Screwjumper!, which also is without a listing. But perhaps the strangest delisting is that of Kung Fu Strike, which was released on September 5. The xbox.com listing now shows the game’s release date as June 12, 2012 and holds no available content for the game.
