Fantasy Zone - Season 4 Week 20

[vdub_bobby]

We're keeping the coin-op hits rolling! Let's play Fantasy Zone!

 

Post a score and let's get this thing rolling!

 

Please post any tips you may have - best tip gets 1 bonus point. No continues - only games played from the beginning count!

 

And if anyone has a link to the manual, please post it.

 

This week's competition ends in a weekish on Thursday (December 25) at approximately evening sometime PST. Actually, it is fairly unlikely that I will be online to update this on Christmas; go ahead and keep posting scores until I get around to it, hopefully sometime on the 26th. Please, no leeching! It is possible, in this game, to fly around endlessly on level 1, shooting enemies and never passing the level. Please do not do this! Keep moving through the game, we're competing on skill, not on inhuman endurance.

 

 

This week's scores:

61,400 Jess Ragan (+10 pts +1 pt for best tip)

52,200 darthkur (+8 pts)

24,000 LarcenTyler (+6 pts)

 

 

Twin Galaxies High Scores

 

145,800 Eric Cummings

 

 

Standings

 

1. darkthur (154 pts)

2. vdub_bobby (80 pts)

3. LarcenTyler (79 pts)

4. Wickeycolumbus (70 pts)

5. RJ (22 pts)

5. Jess Ragan (22 pts)

7. aikainnet (20 pts)

8. shadow460 (11 pts)

9. atari2600land (10 pts)

10. Atari5200 (8 pts)

10. figgler (8 pts)

12. Shannon (4 pts)

12. Jibbajaba (4 pts)

12. gdement (4 pts)

12. ClassicGMR (4 pts)

16. ratfink (2 pts)

 

 

Game Info

 

Coin-op original released in 1985 by Sega. Ported to the NES by Tengen in 1989. I always thought it rather odd that a bunch of Sega coin-op games (Alien Syndrome, Shinobi, After Burner) ended up being ported to the home console that was directly competing with Sega's console. I've never understood why Sega allowed that.

 

Other platforms: Game Gear, MSX, SEGA Master System, TurboGrafx-16, Wii

 

Prequels/sequels/spinoffs: Fantasy Zone II (1987 coin-op), Fantasy Zone: The Maze (1987 SEGA Master System), Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa (1987 MSX, NES, SEGA Master System), Super Fantasy Zone (1992 Genesis, Wii), SEGA AGES 2500 Vol.3: Fantasy Zone (2003 PlayStation 2)

 

 

Tips

 

Jess Ragan:

The only tip I've got is that the laser is way, waaay more powerful than the wide beam. It cuts through the normally resilient target enemies like butter!

* The largest amounts of money are dropped at the start of the stage, or after you leave a shop. When the stage begins, concentrate on farming money from the tiny enemies. Then when they stop dropping large coins, go about the business of hunting for the larger target enemies.

* Move the cursor to the rightmost side of the screen when you're in the shop to gain access to more weapons.

* Your ideal weapons payload is the Jet Engine, Twin Bombs, and Laser Beam. The other bombs in the shop have limited use, but you can drop Twin Bombs as much as you like without ever exhausting your supply. The Laser Beam is the crown royale of the main weapons, making short work of bosses. Jet Engine gives you just enough speed without making you too fast to precisely control.

* You slow way, way down during the boss fights. If you don't have a Jet Engine, you'll be at a decided disadvantage.

* When you start hunting for target enemies, go to the right and pick off each target in order.

Edited January 3, 2009 by vdub_bobby

[Lauren Tyler]

24,000

 

Man, those bosses are tough ones.

[Jess Ragan]

I earned about 40,000 points, but the blasted game doesn't keep track of high scores, and the window of opportunity for taking snapshots after you've lost your last life is very brief. Let me give this another try later today...

 

The only tip I've got is that the laser is way, waaay more powerful than the wide beam. It cuts through the normally resilient target enemies like butter!

[Jess Ragan]

In the immortal words of Florida Evans, "Damn, Damn, DAMN!" The difficulty of the game ramps up tremendously by the seventh stage... I wasn't prepared for it and lost all my lives in a hurry. The boss is stupidly hard... if you don't have a Jet Engine, you'll never be able to escape his attacks.

 

Anyway, more hints:

 

* The largest amounts of money are dropped at the start of the stage, or after you leave a shop. When the stage begins, concentrate on farming money from the tiny enemies. Then when they stop dropping large coins, go about the business of hunting for the larger target enemies.

* Move the cursor to the rightmost side of the screen when you're in the shop to gain access to more weapons.

* Your ideal weapons payload is the Jet Engine, Twin Bombs, and Laser Beam. The other bombs in the shop have limited use, but you can drop Twin Bombs as much as you like without ever exhausting your supply. The Laser Beam is the crown royale of the main weapons, making short work of bosses. Jet Engine gives you just enough speed without making you too fast to precisely control.

* You slow way, way down during the boss fights. If you don't have a Jet Engine, you'll be at a decided disadvantage.

* When you start hunting for target enemies, go to the right and pick off each target in order.

[darthkur]

52,200

 

[vdub_bobby]

43,200

 

 

 

Scratch that. I just realized that I spent the last half hour playing the Japanese version...grr. Actually, I don't know what this ROM is. It ain't the US version, though.

 

And I probably won't have time to play again.

Edited December 24, 2008 by vdub_bobby

[Jess Ragan]

How's the Japanese version, anyway?

[vdub_bobby]

How's the Japanese version, anyway?

Fine, I guess. I haven't played the US version (yet) so I can't compare. Everything is in English, so I didn't realize until I reread this thread and saw that you said the game doesn't track high scores. I thought, "Yes it does, right there on the title screen. Oh, wait..."

 

A little research at MobyGames.com revealed that I was playing the Japanese version.

[vdub_bobby]

We're done! Hope you had fun playing a Sega coin-op hit (?) on the Nintendo.

[BrianC]

How's the Japanese version, anyway?

Fine, I guess. I haven't played the US version (yet) so I can't compare. Everything is in English, so I didn't realize until I reread this thread and saw that you said the game doesn't track high scores. I thought, "Yes it does, right there on the title screen. Oh, wait..."

 

A little research at MobyGames.com revealed that I was playing the Japanese version.

 

From what I heard and tried, the JP version is better than the US one and closer to the arcade. Better graphics, sound, and 10 of those big enemies in each level instead of six or seven like the Tengen one.

 

Other platforms: Game Gear, MSX, SEGA Master System, TurboGrafx-16, Wii

 

The GG one is a different game, Fantasy Zone Gear (completely different levels and bosses). Fantasy Zone is also on X68000 (

), JP Saturn, and PS2 (SEGA AGES 2500 Vol.3: Fantasy Zone, which is also in the SEGA Classics collection, is a port with extras and "updated" graphics, not a sequel or a spinoff. There's also the SEGA Ages Fantasy Zone collection which has the original Fantasy Zone and a

, as well as the sequels, spinoffs, and a new version of Fantasy Zone II). Edited May 22, 2009 by BrianC