"Fantasy Zone" - Turbografx-16/PC Engine

Fantasy Zone is an arcade shooter developed and released by Sega in 1986, which you probably recognize for its colorful scheme and the name of its sentient spaceship protagonist, "Opa-Opa". For some reason even before I had ever heard about or had seen this game as a kid, I somehow already knew the spaceship's name was Opa-Opa, so it must be something that's in the collective consciousness somehow.

Perhaps this is our nearest common ancestor.

Anyway, Fantasy Zone is oft-regarded as one of Sega's classics, and heralded as one of the best games on the Master System (stiff competition there...). This and Twinbee by Konami are also stated sometimes to be the beginning of the "cute 'em up" genre-- that is, shoot 'em ups but cute, if you couldn't put that together on your own.

This 1988 port of that arcade game comes to us via Bits Laboratory, who I honestly can't find any information about even on the Japanese Wikipedia. They seem to have been part of something like a conglomerate of developers under a publisher called ESP, with other companies such as Game Arts (Grandia) and Treasure (Ikaruga, Gunstar Heroes). So I guess if they were hobknobbing with companies like that they must have been doing alright for themselves at the time.

Anyway, let's see how they did on this port.

The font on the title screen is certainly better than the western box art.

----- Playthrough -----

In Fantasy Zone, you start out on a horizontally scrolling 2D plane with a couple simple controls (after all, the PC Engine only has two buttons...)-- a d-pad for movement, a the 1 button for shooting, and the 2 button for dropping bombs (or maybe the other way around but close enough).

Death can be dealt in many forms when you're a tiny flying rainbow egg.

For the most part, your expectations are going to be met: you're flying back and forth and killing things before they kill you-- but the catch is that everything you kill drops a little money. At the beginning of the level, a balloon will fly down with the word "shop" written on it, and I'll give you one guess what it's for.

Buying upgrades for Opa-Opa makes him a little more resilient against the dangers of the Fantasy Zone, but he's still pretty flimsy-- one shot will kill him dead, pretty much regardless of what fancy toys you buy, but you can at least upgrade your shot type, your movement speed, your bomb type, and buy extra lives (a fact I didn't realize until I watched a long play of the game after I finished trying it out...).

Which seems like... you know, crucial knowledge in retrospect.

Most levels consist of a wide field you can move either direction in at your leisure, and enemies that spawn in waves one after the other on the sides of the screen. As you take longer in each level, the enemies that spawn will grow in number and difficulty, firing bullets when they didn't before and just generally ruining your day and making you wanna take some Opa-Opioids (wow what a joke).

Along the stages are enemy spawners, and destroying all of them will end the level. At the end of the level you'll fight a variety of different bosses which have tactics that are unique to them. Fantasy Zone really seems to flirt with the concept of being a danmaku (bullet hell) game, because many of the bosses fire a pretty large amount of bullets at a time that you have to dodge to shoot at them.

It's not so much a bullet hell as a bullet-related general afterlife.

The farthest I could get was stage 5, in my playtime, out of 8 stages. Watching a long play, I noticed that at the end the formula changes slightly and you get a boss-rush up to the last boss, but for the most part most of the stages pretty much stay on-formula, and I can certainly use my imagination having played plenty of shooters, so I felt I could go ahead and review this one.

BECAUSE IF I DIDN'T STOP PLAYING IT SOON--

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
Roundabouts an hour and a half.

How much did I beat?
5/8 stages.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

I picked up most everything about the game pretty much intuitively, from shooting enemies and killing them (a huge mystery) to spending coins in the shops to buy upgrades (also a giant mental feat). One thing I did not figure out was that you could actually scroll over to find more products in the shop, because they really make it look like what you're seeing is the whole deal. They should have had the other menu items just barely on the edge of the screen so you'd know that they were there...

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel? Too difficult?

This game can be pretty tough but it doesn't seem outrageous, at least not as far as I played it in. The powerups don't really seem to help as much as they should, however again, I was only able to use the first few because I didn't realize the other ones were there-- they seem like they are significantly more helpful than the ones on the first page.

One thing I noticed and questioned was just how fast speed upgrades make you go-- Opa-Opa becomes nearly uncontrollable with the higher levels of speed upgrades, so I don't really know why you'd choose to do that to yourself. Something like a shield upgrade would really have made more sense I think.

Pretty much the only thing you want to speed into is the coin drops, and even then you might want to be cautious. The dangers of capitalism are worse than simple monsters.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

There's a decent amount of levels and playtime here, I could certainly see getting an afternoon of fun out of this game if you're only playing to beat it. The few powerups I knew about were fun to experiment with and the others would be as well, and I imagine by the time you finished it you'd feel satisfied you had probably played enough Fantasy Zone for one day-- but I'm just speculating, here.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The music in this port leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion, compared to the arcade originals. Some songs are still pretty good, but especially the first stage theme is really a mangled disappointment compared to the original. They're okay for what they are, but they're really a massive downgrade.

The sounds in the game are also okay, not a huge step down from the arcade version, but maybe a little. They're pretty serviceable and hard to complain about.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

Almost. I like the aesthetic of the game and it's certainly very colorful and interesting, but something about the game is still lacking in character. I can't put my finger on why, but a lot of the enemies and levels still feel pretty generic and hard to remember to me. All in all, I like it, but it could do better to meet my impossible, completely undefined standards.

I could be more impressed, weird sun-ship-man, but I will not explain why.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I'm gonna say maybe. This one's pretty fun and entertaining for what it is-- shooting games are pretty much always fun anyway, and this one seems like it has pretty decent appeal. Still, it's pretty tough, and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, so you should know what you're getting into.

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