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"A profound dichotomy"

This is one of my favorite games on the Game Gear. It's a great pick-up-n-play game in the best tradition of arcade shooters, whereas many other games take themselves more seriously and thus require more serious attention. Simultaneously, it stands among the most excruciatingly difficult games I've ever played.

As with most video games from the early 90s era, the story hardly matters. Yeah, we play as this Opa Opa Jr guy in his cute little spaceship with wings, and he has to defeat all the bad guys, but that's the most of what need be said here. It's an arcade style shooter. Doesn't need a story.

The game plays similar to classic Defender where you've got your ship facing left or right, the background scrolls by as you advance, and if you keep going left or right far enough you'll warp to the other end of the field of play. That kinda thing, except without a radar to track your position on the field, and the field can scroll up or down a bit in addition. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to destroy all the large enemy creatures in each level and then face off with a tough boss. As always, if you should happen to get killed during the course of your mission, the agency will disavow knowledge of your existence and take away all your power-ups. This tape will self destruct in five seconds...

The environments of Fantasy Zone aptly fit its title. Colorful backdrops of fantastical settings, each with an elemental motif. There's an earth level with browns and greens that paint a picture of mountain cliffsides, rounded hills, and mesas in a variety of sizes. The fire level has orange candles all over the place. The ice level has white snow cliffs and rounded snow dunes. The water level has pretty waterfalls (one of my favorites). The air level is full of clouds and vertical cloud banks. And the desert level has a fantastical and kind of artistic rendition of appropriate scenery (not sure how a desert is an element, but let's just go with it).

Filling up the foreground of our scene where all the action takes place are what I can best describe as "creatures" who move about, all mostly doing their own thing. There are small creatures who move in various patterns, and large creatures that float in the air, occasionally releasing a smaller creature or two. Small creatures are all bizarre caricatures. Smiley faced cactuses who lazily meander across the field, winged triangles that weave up and down, colorful spinning squares that circle around each other, eyeballs with blinking lids and eyelashes, puckered lips, a crazy face (eyes, nose, and mouth), a bunch of grapes... Then there are more bizarre objects that I can't identify. Large creatures include a flying hamburger-like thing, a pot of gold with a smiley face on it, a snowman, a water cooler with spigot, a large orange cloud with a face on it... All cartoony caricatures like the small creatures. The inhabitants of this "fantasy zone" are as fantastical as the environments they share.

Many of the creatures will not come after you but rather just follow their pattern, doing their own thing and also doing a great job of getting in your way. Some of the creatures will fire little bullets at you. The large creatures just float there doing nothing for the most part. They occasionally release a new creature onto the field. As time passes, some of these guys get a bit more aggressive, firing their bullets more often. As more time passes, their bullets travel faster. In short, the more time you spend clearing out a level, the harder it gets. Regardless of how many kills we rack up here, the small creatures never stop showing up. It's a never-ending onslaught of crazy action until we manage to blow up that last large creature.

The only thing here that makes much sense as a logical object in a space shooter is the player's ship, which is a winged module with identifiable canopy. The wings represent the ship's mode of propulsion, which can be upgraded to larger wings, a jet engine, turbo engine, and rocket engine. Your ship starts the game with a "basic shot" weapon that fires a double shot in the direction you're facing. Small creatures can be dispatched with one hit a piece. Large creatures take multiple hits before exploding. Among the weapon upgrades are a laser shot and 5-way spread, both of which have limited potential because they last for such a short time. Other weapon upgrades are more useful, such as a backshot (fires ahead and behind), homing shot, and special "flash attack" that needs to be charged before firing by holding down the fire button. You can keep those for as long as you're able to stay alive. In addition, you can upgrade your ship's basic bomb to a twin bomb, twin missile, smart bomb (obliterate all enemies on screen), and heavy bomb (which drops a ten ton weight on your current position much like Bugs Bunny would do in a Looney Tunes cartoon; the heavy bomb kills off enemies it hits).

Upgrades for your ship propulsion and weapons are bought at a shop that sometimes shows up. Fly into the shop, and you're brought to the shop screen, where you can navigate an easy menu to select engine, weapon, and other power-ups to purchase with money you've collected in the form of coins that large creatures drop when destroyed. Some of the smaller creatures leave coins as well when you destroy a group of them. Coins will fall to the floor of the field, and you have to collect them before they stop bouncing and vanish. The shop shows up nearby your starting position in the first level a short time after the game starts (enough time to destroy two large creatures and gather up some decent currency). Thereafter, it usually shows up right at the beginning of subsequent levels and sometimes later on after a good amount of time has passed. After we're finished shopping, we can exit to an equip menu and choose which items to equip on our ship. We can also access the equip menu any time by pressing Start to pause the game. This enables for a variety of strategies and experimentation with weapons and power-ups. Nifty! Nice feature here that I like very much.

In addition to engines, weapons, and bombs, we can buy a few miscellaneous power-ups. A shield that encloses your ship to protect it from enemy fire, an extra life, the expensive "flash attack", and auto-fire. That's right, we have to buy auto-fire. Without it, we have to press Button 1 for each shot we fire and Button 2 for each bomb/missile we launch. Auto-fire is something that should be standard fare in a shooter. I understand why it's not here (so that we can use the special "flash attack" by holding down the fire button to charge it), but I'm not very fond of the flash attack to begin with; perhaps it should've been replaced with something else. Games like this are at their most enjoyable when I can hold down the fire button for continuous fire while maneuvering my ship to avoid collisions. Having to constantly press the fire button is unnecessarily distracting at times. Besides, button mashing is also unnecessary wear and tear on the Game Gear unit's controls (I doubt many developers had this little detail in mind when programming their games back in the day).

After we've eliminated all of the large creatures in a level, the background fades out and the boss character fades into view. These boss match-ups take place against a drab purple background. Bosses are just as zany as the rest of the game. A large tree, a round guy with a face who fires exploding missiles, a large ice cube with an unhappy face, a squid-like creature, a floating blimp held aloft by balloons, and a totem pole. There's usually a steep learning curve here. The first time you meet a new guy, you have no idea what he's going to do, and then aww, we're dead! Try again with knowledge of his first move, and ohhh, that's what he does next? We're dead again! Try again, and... aww, we're dead again! Game over. Try again from the first level. Ain't that special. Some boss characters have a weak point that you have to hit in order to damage him; others are vulnerable to hits anywhere. In addition, some of these guys are invulnerable to some of your weapons (nothing happens when you drop a heavy bomb on Mr. Ice Cube, for example). A final note about boss encounters: You can't access the equip menu to change your weapons here. You're stuck with whatever you had equipped when you finished the level. How rude.

After completing Level 6, we're allowed to shop one last time and then we have to confront all six bosses in sequence again before meeting up with the end-game boss. If you ask me, this was entirely unnecessary. Do we really need to see all these guys a second time? What about replay value? Just give us a fun game, and if it's fun enough I'll come back and play it again. I kid you not. I have been known to play through a fun game many, many times after finishing it.

Before I continue discussing the game-play features, I should address the controls, visuals, and sound. Controls are all appropriate here except for the aforementioned auto-fire problem. By design we're given Atari 2600 Defender controls, which work intuitively (see Game Boy Advance Defender for more discussion on this). D-Pad maneuvers the ship in any direction, Button 1 to fire primary weapon, Button 2 to fire bomb/missile, and Start to pause/go to equip screen. Everything is as it should be. When you turn around, the scrolling of the field takes a short while to catch up with your movement as it slows down and reverses direction. This is kind of strange. I'm not sure if it's a control problem as much as a game-play problem. Might have been better if the scrolling of the field was more responsive. In true Defender style, the game lets you drift dangerously close to the side of the screen where unseen enemies can suddenly appear and ram into you. Ascending and descending is also often hazardous (as previously mentioned, the field scrolls a bit up and down in addition to left and right). During many of the levels the safest place to be is on the floor of the field firing homing shots that arc upward at the myriad enemies on screen (also makes it easy to grab coins as they fall). The ship's movement speed increases with engine power-ups you buy, with the turbo engine and rocket engine being a bit too responsive for fine maneuvers required to avoid collisions.

Visually, the game is well above average for a cartoony game, with a great variety of color in the vividly imagined backdrops and ever-present creatures. Many shades of color are used in the six elemental levels, including numerous pastels. Enemy creature movement and player ship movement are fluid. Effects are good laser bolts, homing rockets, little bombs that arc downward, missiles that arc upward and downward, a flashing effect for the special "flash attack", little explosions for enemy creatures blowing up. Each weapon has its own distinct visual effect. The variety of zany creatures in the game is impressive, and they're all animated (they have moving parts or change shape even while moving around on screen). This is a great looking game. I especially love the backgrounds. A spectacular fireworks display accompanies your ship getting killed, as if getting killed is an occasion to celebrate. This was probably inspired by Defender, which has a similar effect.

Music is almost all cute-sounding and bouncy. Remarkably happy tunes play throughout the levels, then a rather intense song plays during boss encounters. The boss music here is exactly what I'd expect for a battle with a tough boss. It expertly conveys that feeling of dread and going up against a superior opponent. As for the happy tunes, well... I think they're all acceptable, and a few of them are even catchy. They're all well composed with multiple instruments going. But more about the music later. Effects are mostly arcade style "bleep bleep" for firing shots, little explosions, a "plink" for collecting a coin, a "tink" for scoring a hit on a boss's weak point, and a cute jingle for defeating a boss while you scramble to collect the myriad coins he exploded into. The jingle that accompanies getting killed is appropriate here (if the fireworks aren't). In addition to being great looking, it's also a great sounding game with good effects (I've heard much worse in the effects department, so no real complaints here).

The dichotomy mentioned in the title of this article is that of game-play versus graphical and sound presentation. Visually, the game is just so cute! It's not what I'd expect from a mind-numbingly difficult shooter. Musically, it's also very cute with those happy tunes going in the background while we shoot all those zany creatures. Even the shop and equip screens have a happy tune playing. The only time it's not cute is during boss confrontations. That's the only time the presentation starts to take itself seriously. The cuteness factor is anathema to the extreme difficulty of the game.

And this is one of the most excruciating gaming experiences I've ever had. Just getting through the first level in one piece is a challenge. This is one of many shooters that take away all of your power-ups when you get killed. The difference here is that I collected and spent good money for those power-ups, which just makes it all the worse. To add insult to injury, weapons and stuff cost more after you buy them once, making it near impossible to get back your lost equipment. The basic shot, basic ship speed, and basic bomb with no extra power-up equipped (default for restarting after getting killed) is nowhere near enough to get by, especially against one of those mean bosses. I cannot imagine going up against the Level 4 boss (squid) with basic equipment. Speaking of the Level 4 boss, that's where the game takes a sudden dive into "ridiculously difficult". Everything up to him is at least acceptable (enemy presence isn't too thick, bosses are understandably beatable with the learning curve conquered). The Level 4 boss is where the nightmare starts. I had the hardest time of it back in the day when I struggled feverishly to beat him. Ironically, there's a ridiculously easy way to beat him before all the nastiness even begins. I wish I'd figured it out much sooner. Would've spared much frustration. So he's either ridiculously easy to beat (as I recently discovered) or ridiculously hard.

The Level 5 boss gets much worse. He's immune to a couple of your weapons, and... Honestly, I've tried everything on this guy. I don't see how the designers of the game expected anyone to beat him. It's quite a conundrum, with no easy way to stay alive that I can conjure up. I've given up on it. The dynamic at work here (and in other like-minded shooters) is "get killed once and it's game over." Yeah, we have a couple extra lives, but it's nigh impossible to recover after losing all of your weapons, money, and other helpful stuff. Those extra lives might as well not even be there. They get used up quickly, then we're back to square one starting the entire game over at Level 1.

Anyway, there's an interesting dichotomy going on here. I'd expect a game this cute, happy, and colorful to be much easier, and save the extreme challenges for a shoot-em-up whose looks and sounds match up with the intensity.

I've been playing this game with the invulnerability turned on, and it's loads of fun to shoot everything in sight, collect coins, and beat down the bosses with no fear of getting killed and losing my hard-won weapons and stuff. This is a rare occasion where a cheat improves a game for me. Usually I'm like, "There's not much point to it; there's no danger." But here it makes the game more fun. Playing it as it was intended to be played is nerve-wracking.

I learned something interesting from this game. During the early 90s when it first came out, I struggled hard with it and was frustrated with being unable to finish it. Having seen the final levels and final bosses years later, I have to say they're not as good as the rest of the game is. The first four levels are a lot of fun (earth, fire, ice, and water). The air and desert levels aren't as interesting in the backdrop department, although the music there is still happy and fun. What I realized is that maybe I got exactly as far as I needed to. I was frustrated with being unable to finish the game when the final levels weren't all that great to begin with. The next time I find myself badly stymied by a frustrating level in a game, well... maybe I got as far as I needed to. Food for thought.

It's hard to give this game a rating (it was more fun to write up my thoughts about it). As noted at the beginning of this article, it's one of my favorites on the Game Gear, but that's mostly because the invulnerability cheat improves it. Without that I'd probably give it a low rating. The first four levels are a fun ride, but what comes afterward drags it way down (especially if you're not using the cheat). Regardless, this "fantasy zone" sure is a head-scratching paradox of lovable visuals, cute and happy sounds, and extreme difficulty.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/10

Game Release: Fantasy Zone (US, 1991)