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Old Oct 23rd, 2011, 01:59 PM        Talkin' Shmups: Fantasy Zone

Hi guys my name is Ike and I'm gay for this series. Let me tell you about it.

1) First, what is a "shmup?"
"Shmup" is a contraction of the phrase "shoot-'em-up." It encompasses a variety of shooters, from horizontal sidescrollers like R-Type and Gradius to vertical scrollers like Star Soldier or (most of) the Twinbee games. More rarely, it may also be used to describe on-the-rails shooters like Space Harrier, Star Fox or Sin and Punishment, although generally not for light gun shooters like House of the Dead.

2) What's the purpose of this thread?
Shmups are my one of my favorite genres of game and I tend to play a lot of them. I would like to talk about more awesome shmup series in this thread but we'll see how this goes first!

3) What is Fantasy Zone?
Fantasy Zone is a side-scrolling horizontal shooter from the mid-'80s arcade scene, produced by Sega. The object of each game in the series is to fly around adorable, colorful backgrounds blasting the shit out of adorable, colorful enemies and harvesting their blood for money. The game's plot is that all of the money in the titular Fantasy Zone has been stolen by the evil Menons and is being used to fund the construction of the cutest Death Star ever.

There are 3 main games in the series that I'll be discussing, including relevant ports. There's also a fourth game, Fantasy Zone: The Maze, which is an unabashed Pac-Man clone and isn't technically a shmup and not really all that good so we'll skip it.

4) Why should I play this?
If you've ever played Williams' Defender series, you'll be at home with Fantasy Zone. The premise is every similar.

- This is one of the few early shmups that allows you full control over your ship's direction. You can move in eight directions at will and the screen will scroll to accommodate you. While some versions of Fantasy Zone allow you to scroll the screen up and down as well as left and right, most only allow you to scroll horizontally.

- Each planet loops around itself, so you can head right and left infinitely and you will eventually come back around to where you began.

- Every level has a set number of enemy generators that need to be destroyed in order to continue. These 'bases' require a larger number of shots to destroy at each new stage. In addition to the creatures they spawn, native monsters will fly onto the screen in set patterns to attack and will fire bullets. The creatures spawned by the bases tend to be more suicidal and will try to collide with you rather than shooting.

- Upgrades are not spawned by enemies, but are instead purchased at a Shop balloon that spawns once per level. In Fantasy Zone 2, the shops are permanent and can be revisited indefinitely. Additional ships are also purchased at the shop and are not awarded by score, like most shmups. Upgrades include faster engines, limited-time-use gun power ups, and special high-damage bombs.

- The hero of the game is named Opa-Opa, a living spaceship capable of interplanetary travel. This is him:



You will notice he has legs. Opa-Opa is capable of walking as well as flight. Moving him to the bottom of the screen will cause him to sprout legs. This is useful for several reasons. In addition to ducking low to avoid enemies flying overhead, it brings Opa-Opa to a complete stop. While in the air, Opa-Opa cannot come to a halt and will continue moving forward even while nothing is being pressed. As such, you cannot simply hover in the air and continuously shoot a base. It pays to get as close to a base as possible while firing, as it allows you to get more shots in more quickly, but you run the risk of colliding with it and losing a precious ship.

In addition to his wings, Opa-Opa is capable of outfitting himself with jet engines to increase his mobility. It is possible to upgrade yourself enough that you can loop the planet in about a second and outrun nearly every enemy, but this makes Opa-Opa unwieldy and difficult to control.

Opa-Opa comes equipped by default with a Twin Shot laser and small bombs. These can also be upgraded to such things as a "Wide" beam that covers an area about three times as wide as Opa-Opa himself, a Laser beam that continuously fires at high damage, or a 10 ton weight (featured in the photo) that can be dropped from the top of the screen according to Opa-Opa's position and will decimate any enemy in the game (including bosses.)

On to the games!


Fantasy Zone

The original Fantasy Zone was released in 1986 to Arcades in Japan. I believe it was also released in limited supply in North America. You can see the gameplay roots in action in this video:


The design ethic is pervasive throughout. True to its name, the Fantasy Zone is wrought out of the colorful, LSD-fueled nightmares of its creators. The arcade version is generally considered the best game in the series, although all of the games are strong, fun shooters.

The original Fantasy Zone received an assload of ports. If you've played the series at all, chances are you're most familiar with the Sega Master System home port. The Master System port is impressive for a number of reasons, not least of which being that it is not only one of the earliest games released for the system, but one of the best-looking.


saaayyy-guhhhh

Reasonably faithful for an 8-bit port, the Master System Fantasy Zone sports toned-down difficulty, a huge explosion of color and rad 8-bit music. If you own a Master System, and don't own this game, go pick yourself up a copy immediately. It's reasonably cheap, even for a complete copy.

Speaking of 8-bit systems, the NES also received a port. Two, in fact, if you count the Famicom port. The NES port was produced by Tengen, whose name you may recognize as having produced those funny-looking black NES cartridges. Tengen managed to maintain at least some of the fruity color explosion of the original, with mixed results. Although the first level looks alright, the second level is solid pink.


My favorite part about the NES port, however, is its box art.


Tengen's box art in general was rad as shit.

Here's the Famicom port for comparison. This was released in Japan by Sunsoft, makers of Batman, Blaster Master, and Gremlins 2: The New Batch.


Although it fared a little better graphically, I think the music's not as good.

In addition to these, Fantasy Zone was ported to the MSX, Turbografx-16, Sega Saturn, X68000, PC, and Playstation 3 / Xbox 360 as part of the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis collection. Notably, it received a 3D remake on the Playstation 2 as part of the Sega Classics pack, although the 3D remake is generally regarded as lacking. It runs considerably slower than the original, and the boss fights have been changed from sidescrolling sections to rear-view, Space Harrier style fights. Although a cool effect, it seems a little out of place.



Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa

Fantasy Zone II was released directly to the Sega Master System and never saw a true arcade release. Fantasy Zone II makes a marked departure from its predecessor by introducing Warp Gates and considerably ramped up difficulty compared to the SMS release of the first game.

The Warp Gates serve a few purposes. Whenever you destroy an enemy generator, it will either drop cash or spawn a Warp Gate. They allow for more variation in the stages, and a quick safe place to duck when you're being gunned down. But mostly, it's to extend the length of the game.

If you enter the Warp Gate, you will be transported to a new, previously inaccessible section of the stage, with a different background, a new set of enemy generators to destroy, and possibly a Shop cloud. The new areas, referred to as "Scenes," must all be cleared in order to gain access to the red Warp Gate, which will take you to the boss battle. Early stages have 3 Scenes; mid-game have 5; the later stages have 7. The increasing number of Scenes combined with the ever-growing durability of the enemy generators makes this game a much longer and more difficult endeavor than the original game. In my opinion, this is the most difficult game in the series.

Fantasy Zone II also leads off with an introduction containing a rather lengthy backstory for a shmup of its age:


Fantasy Zone II sports what are, in my opinion, the best graphics the SMS has to offer. The game runs beautifully, with minimal 'flicker,' which is when there are so many sprites on screen at one time that some will flicker and it makes them very difficult to see, which is deadly in a game like this, particularly with so much crap going on at any given time.


Shop clouds exist indefinitely in FZ2. They can be entered and re-entered at will. Also, their inventories vary from shop to shop, and up to 3 shops (including secret ones) may exist on one stage.

Fantasy Zone II also sports another unique addition: A health meter. Honestly, it doesn't help much. You can sustain two bullet hits by default, but you are much, much less likely to be killed by bullets than by something colliding with you, which is instant death. If you find the secret shops, it is possible to purchase Red Bottles to extend your health meter and allow you to sustain two collisions or four bullet hits. This is very expensive and not as helpful as it sounds.

Interestingly, Fantasy Zone II received a remake for the PS2 as part of the Fantasy Zone Complete Collection, a Japan-exclusive release containing every Fantasy Zone game on one disc. Known as Fantasy Zone IIDX, this game features enhanced graphics, made to mimic the Sega-16 arcade hardware. It also reduces the Warp Zones from the Scene mechanic to the Light and Dark worlds. The Dark world offers greater monetary rewards, but is much more difficult.

The game also introduces multiple endings, including one in which

Spoilers!






Super Fantasy Zone

Released in Japan and the PAL regions for the Mega Drive, Super Fantasy Zone returns to its roots and uses the more traditional gameplay style of the arcade original. SFZ does not use the Warp Gates of FZ2, and the Shop balloon has returned to its original style of spawning only once per level.

With Super Fantasy Zone, we are also treated to another long expository opening prior to gameplay:


While I feel that Super Fantasy Zone is the best entry in the series, there's really not a whole lot to say about it. It's got the same great, colorful graphics, the same frantically fast gameplay, the same cheery music and oddly dark undertones as its predecessors. It's closer to being a true "Fantasy Zone 2" in my mind than the actual Fantasy Zone 2.

Unfortunately, this game was not released in the US, so if you want a genuine Mega Drive copy you'll have to do what I did and import one. However, if you own a Wii, Super Fantasy Zone is available on the Virtual Console for (I think) about 10 dollars or 1000 Wii Points.



There's a detailed history of this semi-obscure, long-lived shooter series over at Hardcore Gaming 101. I strongly recommend reading up on it, as I've intentionally left a few things out, particularly the series' curious tendency to take a dark turn in the story toward the endings of its games.


Whenever I can muster up the energy to do it, I think I'm going to do similar effortposts about other awesome shooter series like R-Type, Gradius and Twinbee, if anybody gives a shit
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 12:45 AM       
a friend of mine had a master system and fantasy zone was the game that we played the most on it. i've always been a big shooter fan and have a tendancy to collect them, but i'm absolutely terrible at them.
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 01:37 AM       
One of my favorite shoot em ups was Aero Fighters, Gunbird, and Gunbird 2. All made by the same people. Their wacky last bosses and endings were awesome.
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 10:29 AM       
i'm awful at shmups but life force is totally fun, moreso with a friend and the konami code.

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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 12:00 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by mew barios View Post
a friend of mine had a master system and fantasy zone was the game that we played the most on it. i've always been a big shooter fan and have a tendancy to collect them, but i'm absolutely terrible at them.
Fantasy Zone is one of the only shmups I would say that I'm actually good at. I just got FZ2 about a week ago and last night I managed to get to stage 7 without dying once. That's pretty fucking crazy if you have any idea how ballbustingly hard that game is.

I do cheat and use a turbo controller but with how many shots it takes to kill some of the stuff in this game I cannot see how using a regular controller would make the game playable in any way without destroying your thumb.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaarg View Post
i'm awful at shmups but life force is totally fun, moreso with a friend and the konami code.

(Otocky)
Damn, that's like an early Electroplankton but with actual gameplay.
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 11:09 PM       
Having (finally) beaten Fantasy Zone 2 (using no continues, no less!) I went back to FZ1 in an attempt to clear it without dying. I managed to get to the jackass turtle boss during Stage 8's boss rush before biting it. This was on my 35th-or-so attempt.



whoo
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 11:11 PM       
All of my shmup experience has been from mame. Well, the arcade cabinet that I built and use mame on. There's something about being able to play almost every shmup til 1995 that came out in the arcade that is just fantastic. And unlimited quarters definitely helps.
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Old Oct 24th, 2011, 11:23 PM       
One of my dreams is to get a cheap, small computer and build a gen-u-wine MAME cabinet so I can impress all the ladies.
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Old Oct 25th, 2011, 07:24 AM       
i was thinking about this thread last night. well it popped into my head because i was thinking about KING'S KNIGHT, which counts... right?

that game is hard. fuck that game. i remember playing it when i first learnt that nes emulators had gamegenie options and i wanted to NEVER DIE in the game. anyway, i still didn't get past the last damn level - but it's pretty awesome, anyway.

i don't even think the game would be hard if i put forth enough effort, but it was hard when i was young. and it has stupid mazey things that require memorization. fuck you, rayjack.
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Old Oct 25th, 2011, 09:50 AM       
Yes, King's Knight counts. What a weird little game. I've had it for a few years now but I never got very far in it, so I'll have to pop it in when I have some free time :O
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Old Oct 25th, 2011, 11:25 AM       
yeah, some of the stages require luck/memorization (blocks come out of the ground as you approach, usually preventing you from escaping the auto-scroll). i think as a kid i only managed to finish toby and either barusa or khaliva's stages.

in the last level, you play as all four characters at once. assuming all four are alive. i think you may NEED all four to be alive to finish it. HARD.

i guess you can re-play individual levels before the last one, though, to collect more power-ups and "level up."

neat ideas, i just don't think they implemented them right.
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Old Oct 27th, 2011, 02:43 PM       
ooh, ooh! have you ever played kolibri? it's a 32x game (one of, what, three worthwhile 32x games?) in which you play a hummingbird and you go around killing other small animals.

it's pretty fun. it's beautiful!

it's not a fantasy zone/gradius/king's knight type deal, though, with auto-scroll. it's more of a free-roaming thing. bangai-o style, i guess, but... not that crazy.
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Old Oct 27th, 2011, 03:43 PM       
if you like bird themed shooters you might enjoy agony on the amiga also.

if there was a single game of the shooting genre that ceaselessly haunts me it would be the dreamcast port of mars matrix. i really want to be able to play it competently someday but it may be an impossible dream.

saint dragon is cool too :o
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Old Nov 21st, 2011, 06:06 PM       
goooooooood
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Old Nov 21st, 2011, 06:07 PM       
gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood
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Old Nov 22nd, 2011, 07:49 AM       
gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooood
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