(images taken from the GameSpot review)
This is post 5 of the searchlight project and the 4th lost flip-phone game post. As I do more posts, you'll start to see just how much we've lost from that era. It will happen with Android and iOS games too. If you have any you like, I recommend backing them up asap. They won't be online forever. But...getting back on topic.
Crazy Castle is a game series I know little about. Hell, I thought that that the Castle of Illusion games were apart of it before I began my research. All else I knew was from an AVGN episode I watched forever ago where he went over the many games in the series. Spoiler, he hated all of them.
If you aren't that familiar with the series I'll give you a briefing. I gotta warn you though. Most game series are at least somewhat comprehensible. Not Crazy Castle. It's a complete mess.
It all started in 1989. Kemco released Roger Rabbit [ロジャーラビット] for the NES. It starts to get confusing literally as the first game released. The game got localized, Roger Rabbit was removed and replaced with Bugs Bunny. The game was then released as Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. But then Kemco remade it on the game boy, but they replaced Roger Rabbit with Mickey Mouse. Then localized than and swapped Mickey Mouse to Bugs Bunny. BUT THEN, in the PAL region (i.e. Europe) the game was released Hugo, now based off the troll from his series namesake. It gets even more confusing as the years go by, switching out protagonists with Ghostbusters, Woody Woodpecker, Garfield and Kemco's own Kid Klown.
It's an absolute clustertruck. Brakeman, an author on The Avocado blog has done a deep dive into all the inconsistencies and attempted to sort out this mess. I will link his post below. The AVGN even attempted to figure out why the series was so confusing and it ended up with him beating the snot out of Bugs Bunny himself.
Now, the part I am resuming at is the final chapter in the series. In 2004, Mitsui Comtek, a Japanese company obtained the license and made what is known as the last Crazy Castle game. Only titled Crazy Castle it was released on J2ME systems. And then it was lost.
Crazy Castle was also the only game in the series to not use a licensed protagonist.
According to the sole page I can find of this game, a GameSpot Review, you play as a princess looking for a prince. You are led through several levels collecting keys, avoiding thieves, monsters and going through pipes + doors to get more keys. Other than that it follows typical Crazy Castle gameplay. Avoid enemies, get keys, progress, etc. No word on story at all. The GameSpot reviewer found the game repetitive and chided it, stating that the only decent thing about it was the music.
The only other proof I have of is a video by YouTuber Gilby1385. It's a slideshow of screenshots from the game. I asked where he got it from, he doesn't remember. It contains screenshots that just as easily could have been taken from the GameSpot review but there were also some that were not.
All other references I can find on the internet are derived from those two pieces. The Wikipedia page for the series has the game listed, added back in 2010. That arguably counts as a third source, but that user did not cite where he even found the game. It could have been possible he was using the GameSpot page.
Every other reference is just mirrored (IGN, StrategyWiki, etc) from the Wikipedia page.
The one consistent fact about this game was that it was developed by Mitsui Comtek.
But in typical Crazy Castle fashion that information may not even be accurate. Through miscommunication and people copying other people I believe some of this game’s facts are not true. Allow me to explain.
The game developed by Mitsui, right? Well let's look into them.
Mitsui is a 'keiretsu' from Japan. Simply put, it is a collection of smaller companies unified under one banner. Mitsui & Co. is a company part of the group which deals with all sorts of electronic products. From there on, there are Mitsui offshoots in many other countries including a GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, a German type of company) and more. They have offices all over the place which then count as separate companies. It's different from how, say Microsoft will have regional offices in other countries but still report to Redmond.
Well all the sources say the game was developed by Mitsui Comtek, right? Let's look into them.
Mitsui Comtek was a subsidiary of Mitsui that was based out of Silicon Valley. I'll link their website around below but there's no information about any game development there. Most of the news surrounding them at this time was regarding investments. Simply put I can't find any information Mitsui Comtek was ever even engaged in game development. I've checked their site map, news from 2003 - 2006, and anything even tangentially related to gaming. I've found nothing. I cannot find any proof Mitsui made this game.
But sure, there are plenty of companies that make one game and never do it again. Well, if you look at the title screenshot of the game it doesn't even list Mitsui Comtek. It lists Mitsui Corp. as the developer. Not Comtek. So where did this info Comtek even made the game come from? The GameSpot page doesn't list Comtek. Only the Wikipedia page does. You know, the one that was added back in 2010 with no citation?
So who made this game? I think the likely answer is that it was developed by some currently unknown 3rd-party developer linked to Mitsui Corp. I believe that Mitsui Corp just published the game and did not develop it. I believe if we had a copy it would explain who really developed it. Either that or the game was developed by some Mitsui off-shoot I've never heard of.
If it was Mitsui Corp. then which subsidiary made it? There's many of them across the world. Shoot, we don't even know if the game is western of not or what country it was released in. GameSpot has reviewed non-western games before. There's nothing to say this game was released in English either.
Let's add even more confusion.
This might not even be part of the Crazy Castle series, just tacked on because people didn't know. Look at the Google Play Store. There's plenty of "Hello Neighbor 3", 4, 5, etc. Years from now it's highly possible that these knockoffs may actually be thought to be part of the main series. It's what I could have happened with this game. It was a knockoff, went the lost media route and then people just sort of retconned it into the Crazy Castle series. It would certainly explain why nobody has it.
But alas, with such little information I cannot disprove this game as a knockoff and unofficial.
It's not like Crazy Castle was some completely unknown series either. Why would Kemco license it out in the first place? And then why would they agree to not use a popular character in it? At the same time they were releasing Crazy Castle games with Woody Woodpecker in it. Why just hand it off to some company? Why not keep using the Woody Woodpecker license and make a flip phone game in that style?
I'm sure we are all familiar with how confusing pre-smartphone mobile systems are. Well at this point we don't even know if this game was a J2ME or BREW game either. Argh! The GameSpot reviewer never made the distinction and Gilby1385 stated it was a 'mobile' game.
With Gilby1385 not having the game, not remembering where he got those screenshots, the developers of the game not known, information scarce and possibly incorrect there are only one lead I can pursue.
Contacting Avery Score is out of the question. I haven't been able to find any oher social media accounts he may have had. There isn't a way to directly contact him on GameSpot either. His account is inactive too, his last review almost 20 years old. I can only hope that by some chance he sees this. Even if he doesn't have the game he could at least confirm which phone he had it on, thus confirming if this was a BREW or J2ME game.
The only other lead I can think of it trawling through the many Mitsui pages in 2004 and hoping to come across a press release or offhand reference for the game. I will not be pursing that currently as I would like to focus more on other Searchlight games. Perhaps in the future I will revisit this.
Other than that nobody has this game. No archives, no download links, nothing!
The fact nobody even has this strengthens my knock-off theory. Nobody has it because it's a rip-off and unofficial game. Few people cared about that stuff and even less saw the need to archive it. Even if we say it was released to little attention, surely at least someone would have documented it. With King's Field Mobile and Alone I could at least prove those existed. I had references, reviews, videos, even official pages but Crazy Castle? I have a blog, GameSpot review and a YouTube video, and the blog cites the video.
That leaves us here. Crazy Castle is a lost game which is so lost details about its origins may not even be accurate. Hopefully one day it surfaces though I am not holding out hope for this one.
