Fantasy Zone (Master System)
Fantasy Zone sets itself apart from other horizontal shooters of the time in 3 key ways. First, your spaceship is a cute little craft with large yellow feet and tiny wings. Second, destroying enemies isn’t just about survival or earning points since you need the money they drop in order to improve your ship. And third, this horizontal shooter actually lets you fly to the right or the left as much as you please. Even if you tried to compare it to contemporaries like Twinbee and Gradius you wouldn’t have a complete picture of the experience, and because of that, Fantasy Zone stood out enough that for a bit its star Opa-Opa would even be the face of Sega.
Fantasy Zone on the Master System isn’t as vibrant or detailed as the arcade release, but it still plops you into bright and colorful realms where you’re free to fly about in the small spacecraft Opa-Opa. While later games would say the Opa-Opa spacecraft is sentient, the manual for this Master System release tells you that you’re a fighter pilot inside named Opa-Opa who is fighting against an alien invasion across many worlds. Eight worlds have been invaded by mercenary forces recruited by the Menons, the manual making sure to mention they’re using misappropriated foreign currency to fund these efforts. This mention of the financial backing is more than a fancy way to say they have minions on the payroll though, as defeating enemies will often lead to them dropping large coins you’ll need to collect if you want to be capable enough to take down the bosses on each planet.
Most of the stages in Fantasy Zone focus in on the goal of destroying enemy bases, but the exact appearances of these bases changes with each level. In one it might be a flying spherical creature while in another they’ll be attached to the ground and look like volcano vents. You’re free to fly to the left or right as mentioned, the side-scrolling stage looping on itself so you will eventually find the bases and can get to work taking them out. Initially you will only have a basic laser and a simple bomb though, the laser forward-firing and the bomb lobbed below your craft. Even in the earliest stage you’ll realize the bases have quite a bit of durability, it taking a considerable amount of damage to destroy them, but luckily you can hammer the fire button pretty quickly and wearing them down isn’t too long a process. Still, it’s easy to see the incentive to improve your weapons, but you also need to worry about your own safety as most bases will be spitting out aliens to defend them.
Almost every world in Fantasy Zone has unique aliens flying and floating about, some reappearing but you will have to deal with strange new creatures in each locations. Many come in formations, moving across the screen like a big barrier, but others will open fire on you or feature unique techniques like moving based on your position so they can pester you while being hard to hit. The enemies are just as strange and colorful as the planets, so you might be avoiding a group of geometric shapes only for a squad of big nosed creatures to seemingly walk across the sky to complicate things. The enemy variety makes the base hunting process dangerous but manageable, although the game will slow down at times as it struggles to process more enemies on screen than it can easily handle. Luckily most baddies go down quickly even to a basic shot, but their movement patterns and attack types will definitely ensure you have to work a bit to earn your money and are always at risk of going down due to the fact that Opa-Opa only can take a single hit before losing a life.
Once you’ve got enough money you’ll want to keep your eye open for a red orb that drops in from above, the word “Shop” plastered across it pretty indicative of its purpose. Grabbing it will pause the action as you view a screen full of potential purchases, Opa-Opa having many options and some aren’t just pure upgrades. Movement is definitely important to your survival so you might want to buy bigger wings or the strong engines, your agility increasing proportional to the price but at times, moving around too quickly could just cause you to smash your head into a different alien, so gauging your ability to handle yourself will be key to picking the right movement gear. Movement gear is actually the only equipment that will stick around for a while. There are replacements for your laser like a wide beam that can hit more foes at once and the 7-Way Shot that is great for covering the screen in attacks but also can deal heavy damage to large foes, but eventually your weapon will run out so you need to make good use of it in the short time you have it. Use it efficiently enough though and bases can crumble without much work and you can even obliterate bosses before they’ve had much time to strike back. Bombs are similarly useful but restricted, the player only acquiring a single bomb per purchase but they have a variety of useful variations. The Heavy Bomb drops a huge weight below Opa-Opa for incredible damage while the Fire Bomb instead sends surges of heat to the left and right for similarly high damage attacks. You need to be more careful when using special bombs if you don’t want to waste them, but dying causes all purchases to disappear so you don’t want to be too stingy either.
Where all this starts to come together is in the game’s handling of lives. You are given three lives at the start for free and can purchase more, but these are definitely a precious resource since retaining power-ups is key to overcoming foes quickly, collecting a lot of cash, and taking down the bosses without too much trouble. Fantasy Zone’s bosses all feel fairly unique save some overlap between how you damage the initial log creature and a large mechanical fish later on, but the odd frowning yellow face on the front of the box has you trying to shoot between its orbital barriers while dodging bullet rain and one fight involves an enormous square face that breaks into many pieces and then tries to seal itself shut around you. Most bosses require a unique approach and a quick bit of learning, but for the most part they are fair and manageable and even when they start to request a lot of dexterity and quick laser use, the stronger weapons can help you bring them to a quick end. The right bomb can almost invalidate certain boss encounters if used properly, but you’ll be taking a risk spending your money and attempting to use them so it’s more a reward for good thinking. Unfortunately, if you die against a boss, you don’t get to visit the shop before the rematch nor do you have time to earn more scratch to buy useful equipment, meaning repeat attempts will be harder, although funnily enough the final planet’s boss rematches do actually give you a chance to go shopping after each death. This does mean Fantasy Zone can be suddenly tough and some of the enjoyment is jeopardized by needing to face bosses in a weakened state, but the adventure overall is short so pushing back through to make another attempt isn’t a long investment and you will carry with you the knowledge needed to better retain your useful upgrades.
THE VERDICT: The strange and colorful planets of Fantasy Zone on Master System are populated with enough unique enemies to make each level feel distinct while staying relatively manageable, but the shop system definitely proves its usefulness by speeding up base and boss destruction as a reward for your efforts in collecting coins. It is a shame that dying to most bosses will force your rematches with them to happen at your minimum strength, but things do still feel somewhat achievable if you can dodge and fire quickly enough and most bosses will fold to the right tricks. Experimentation isn’t impossible thanks to the game’s small set of levels making it possible to get back to where you left off if you do lose all your lives, meaning you can enjoy Fantasy Zone’s strange battles with aliens and helpful economy without too much frustration.
And so, I give Fantasy Zone for the Sega Master System…
A GOOD rating. It is a bit obvious that the main area for improvement in keeping Fantasy Zone a consistently clean experience would be allowing some way to spend and earn cash after losing to a boss, but the weapons you can purchase can make a huge difference in how things unfold and the game being willing to hand you bombs and lasers that can wipe out foes in an instant if used right does make it easy to turn this eight planet adventure into a swift sequence of expertly handled battles. The variables are appropriately limited, you don’t have too many bomb or laser options to pick from so experimentation isn’t too much of a process, and there are even hidden tricks to help get around some limits if you really need a bit more help in making it to the end. A few bosses probably could have been better off with less health if you are going to be forced into fighting them with no gear, especially since they do tend to get more dangerous as they near death so you almost need to make sure not to trigger their new techniques unless you can guarantee you can quickly dish out enough damage to kill them before they unleash the new trick. This does help Fantasy Zone maintain some of its difficulty though, the enemies during normal stages not slouches per se but again, you are provided the means to overcome many easily so finding the right balance was always going to be a bit difficult. Fantasy Zone does remain enjoyable because of its small scope but good degree of player agency, Opa-Opa even able to sometimes just cleanly run away from incoming enemies if you don’t think you can deal with them at the time.
Undoubtedly, Fantasy Zone does try to make itself more of a value purchase by hiding it’s short length behind restricting your ability to continue, but those limits don’t drag down the experience enough to ruin it. More often than not you can fight your way to new levels on your next attempt or learn how to handle your weapons and bombs better to ensure you reach the tougher stuff, the money you earn from kills giving you the room to develop Opa-Opa into a capable fighter even if the upgrades are not permanent. Fantasy Zone didn’t have to choose between having difficult moments or giving players a good deal of strength, so if you’re looking for a horizontal shooter that has some clear and well realized ideas to set it apart, you’ll certainly find that here.