Just completed Land of Illusion on Master System. I opted to skip over the 8-bit version of Castle for now as I have vague memories of playing Land a couple times at my cousins as a kid.
As much as I’ve previously enjoyed playing Castle and World on Mega Drive, I’m gonna back up the consensus that 8-bit Mickey Mouse is the best. This was such a fun game, plus it looks great! It is easy to complete, but it isn’t without its challenges. I had to replay many sections a few times, and it still remained fun without ever getting frustrating — as I found Quackshot had a tendency to become. Definitely worthy of a full purchase back in '92.
I don’t have much experience of platformers on the console, but this feels like it should rank as one of the better examples. I enjoyed it way more than any of the Sonic titles on Master System – I'd even argue it's objectively superior. Also, the butt-bump attack is still way more fun than it should be! I'm also a big fan of Mickey sporting his retro 1950s design thanks to the design limitations being in 8-bits.
Lots of neat and interesting ideas here and variety to the gameplay. You gain special abilities as you progress and some of the later levels require you to use these without ever explicitly telling you or hand-holding.
I’ve seen some footage from the Game Gear version and, whilst it’s mostly true to the Master System, it isn’t a straight port. Some of the level design is slightly different - mostly seems to be confined to just shortening parts of the levels without removing entire sections. So might be same for the other titles that are on both systems. If you've got the choice to play Land on both, the Master System version seems slightly better of the two.