Disney don't have a clue these days when it comes to video games. Presently they are closing good console game developers like Black Rock (Split/Second, Pure) and re-focusing on social games and smartphones. Yet the entire last decade or so hasn't yielded too many gems from the Mouse House. Film cash-in games are woeful in general these days and Disney have provided few exceptions to that rule. But it hasn't always been this way, as you'll know if you had a Sega Mega Drive in the early 90s. Back in those halycon days, some of very best games were made by Disney. Admittedly, saying Disney themselves used to make good games is misleading - after all the likes of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, its sequel World of Illusion (two player co-op with Donald Duck!), Quackshot (above) and decent film tie-ins like Aladdin and The Lion King were often made in-house by Sega (or in the case of the SNES Aladdin, by Capcom). They were some of the best platformers of the day and remain among the best uses of Disney licensing period.
A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.
