Mickey Mouse II/The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2/Hugo (Game Boy Review)

Mickey Mouse II
aka The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2
aka Hugo
Platform: Game Boy
Developed by Kemco
First Released April 26, 1991

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I expected this to be little more than 1991 equivalent of an expansion pack to the original Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. Well, the Game Boy one, at least. Nope. This is a whole new beast. It’s also one of the best selling Game Boy releases, which proves that sales figures are not indicative of quality. This time around, the level design is so boring. The puzzles are too.. unpuzzle-like. There’s very little room for improvisation, and the close calls that I dug so much in the first pair of Crazy Castle games are replaced here by hoping the game actually responds to your requests to activate your weapon. Yea, the input lag is much worse this go around. It’s probably more noticeable because Crazy Castle 2 utilizes having enemies camp right by doors. There’s doors this time. Get used to screens that look like this:

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It just absolutely kills the flow of the game. Later in the game, Crazy Castle II relies very heavily on doors with nothing in them. Mind you, there’s zero consequences for this. In theory, they’re red herrings that send you on a wild goose chase that adds an element of planning and strategy. In execution you’re going to pass by every door through natural gameplay progression. And it fails logically too, doesn’t it? It’s blind chance that the doors will either contain something or be empty. There’s no way to deduce it by design or by logic. That’s not a puzzle. It’s a coin flip.

There’s hammers, pick-axes, etc that you pick up in the rooms. Once you have them, you get unlimited usage of them for the rest of the stage. But, again, it doesn’t really add to the “puzzle” because the levels aren’t designed to require a whole lot of thought process. You just go to the next thing. It’s so bad.

And, since enemies remain in place inside the rooms, wherever an enemy is when you enter a door, they’re still there when you exit. So, that the whole “enter the rooms” gameplay mechanic is functionally useless and serves only to pad things out. How padded? The first NES Crazy Castle was 60 levels. The first Game Boy Crazy Castle was 80 levels. I beat both in roughly the same amount of time. This one, at 28 levels? It took me about double the time, even though this has only just-over a quarter of the amount of levels. Granted, my total playtime was broken-up because this was so boring that basically anything else would be a suitable substitute for my attention. I even went swimming at one point, and I hate swimming.

Oh god, make it stop. This game can have pipes that feel like they take FOREVER to get from point A to point B. I suppose that’s why there’s no timer.

Also keep in mind that (1) The levels are much longer. (2) I died a lot more than I did in the previous two games. Though I wouldn’t say it’s because the game is harder. It’s just jankier. Things like taking pipes that transport you several stories down into an enemy you couldn’t have known was there, or especially when you have to just walk off a ledge and fall down several stories.

Oh god, there’s a last boss. And it’s a Jank Supreme with pickles and mayo. Oh, and you know the empty rooms? There’s one of those in the boss chamber that then becomes the passage to Minnie after you beat the boss (three shots does the trick. Easy peasy). Is that supposed to pay off the empty rooms? Because it doesn’t.

So what else can I say about Mickey Mouse II, Bugs Bunny II, Hugo, or whatever else this wants to be called? It’s boring. It’s a slog. This review was a disaster for me to write. I don’t think there was a whole lot left they could do with the formula from the first game. I understand that keeping the series going meant tweaking the rules and adding more enemy sprites. Hell, it could have worked, but having the doors be glorified closets, always the same shape, that often don’t contain anything? Well, that was a stupid design choice that hurt quite a lot. But what hurts even worse is that the stages often feel too linear. There’s really no “puzzle” and instead levels feel like you’re being queued, with the only challenge being the occasional leap-of-faith. Then again, I suppose “Bugs Bunny Slow Grindy Castle of Agony” wouldn’t sell over two million copies.
Verdict: NO!