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! |
Opa-Opa becomes evil and is hunted down by Space Harrier and his dragon, Uriah. |
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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