Hands on with Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, the Disney game monster mash-up for 3DS

The premise of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is rather complicated, so bear with me a moment while I try to explain exactly what the development team at Dreamrift is attempting to do.

The game is a continuation of Epic Mickey for home consoles, but not a port of the upcoming Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. Power of Illusion is instead a companion story in the series for 3DS.

It's also heavily inspired by Mega Drive game Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse - so much so that playing it feels like playing a reboot of that much loved title.

Consequently, though it will have "Epic Mickey" adorning its front cover when it hits store shelves on the 18th November, it actually plays nothing like it, save for a few gameplay ideas that spawned in the 2010 3D action-platformer.

It's only really once you've gone hands-on with Power of Illusion that everything starts to make a sort of twisted sense. The Epic Mickey franchise (much like Kingdom Hearts for that matter) was set up as an opportunity to explore Disney's library of cartoons.

But there's more to Disney than animation: it's made shedloads of games over the years, too, many of which have a cult following and a stir deep sense of nostalgia among the games playing populace. Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is Dreamrift's opportunity to explore some of these - most notably Castle of Illusion.

Everything of note you (may or may not) remember from Castle of Illusion is present. This is a methodical, thoughtful platformer, and it's refreshingly tough too. Mickey is by default a slow-moving character, and his greatest asset is his butt stomp, which he uses to defeat enemies and reach new areas.

He's also got access to paint and thinner, a gameplay element lifted from the Epic Mickey series, though not put to as good use here. You can fire these two elements at enemies, though they don't engender the branching moral choices that they did in the home console versions.

You can also use them to solve puzzles in the world by erasing or creating puzzle pieces to suit the situation, using the touchscreen.

Say you need to reach a ledge that's far away: the nearby axe on a chain that dangerously swings before you can be destroyed with a dab of thinner, then rebuilt without the axe with a blob of paint. This leaves just the chain and a way to cross the nearby chasm.

Pocket Gamer was also treated to a brand new level – Agrabah – and this was the point at which I became excited about Power of Illusion.

It felt like I was playing a ROM-hack of Castle of Illusion, rebuilt with levels from the Disney's Aladdin title on Super Nintendo. If you played those games back in the '90s, it's impossible not to feel nostalgic.

It's a totally different game mechanically, of course, but the fresh perspective transforms familiar ground. This sense of the past and the present working together was crystallised when I called on Scrooge McDuck mid-level, and he began hopping about on his cane to destroy nearby villains, much like in NES classic DuckTales.

The love for these old Disney games is really evident in Power of Illusion, and its director Peter Ong clearly has a lot of reverence for the classics it draws upon.

When I asked the PR rep whether the DuckTales reference was deliberate, she told me how much Mr Ong likes that series. "I know he'd love to make another one," she said.

However, these references are clearly touchstones - the core is very much Castle of Illusion, and it's over this that the biggest question mark hangs.

It's a labour of love, and the gameplay is fun for somebody who grew up playing those games. But it's less clear whether the old ideas will appeal to a new audience. The sedate pace, the high level of difficulty, the predictable AI, the 2D art-style, the references to other vintage games – it's a distinctly old-fashioned game, perhaps best played by old-fashioned folk.

Happily I am one of those old fashioned folk, and I'm keen to see more of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion when hits the Nintendo 3DS on November 18th in the US, and November 23rd in Europe.

Make sure to click the gallery above for brand new screens, and check back with Pocket Gamer next month for our full review.