How Castle of Illusion influenced Cuphead’s ‘Simple Mode’

March 13, 2018 by George

Its no secret that Cuphead is highly influenced by a large number of games that were popular in the 90s. This weekend at EGLX, the heads of Studio MDHR, brothers Chad Moldenhauer and Maja Moldenhauer spoke about their popular game. One part of the event was a live Q&A, where someone asked about the decision of keeping bosses out of ‘Simple Mode’. For those not in the know, if you play Cuphead in easy mode or in this game called simple mode, you won’t get to play all the boss levels. Forcing players to switch to normal mode to get the full experience.

“this comes from our childhood. A lot of the good games we played growing up would close off certain things. In games like Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, you could try six or seven out of fourteen levels and you’d get a different ending. In this style of retro game you feel like you completed something if you put in the full effort. So the choice in our minds…yes, we wanted people to earn it. It felt much better than just playing it on simple mode and saying ‘oh yeah I beat it.'” – Chad Moldenhauer

I’m surprised they didn’t talk about Treasure Games, which if you played their game Alien Solider, seems to be a huge influence since its also mostly boss fights (31 boss fights, 25 stages!).

[Via: Destructoid]