May 2020 Shmup Club - Fantasy Zone

[Nefarious Wes]

Beat it for the first time ever last night on TG-16! And a no-death run, too! I spammed the hell out of the heavy bomb for the last two parts of the final boss and that did the trick. Funny thing is, when the second loop begins, you have zero lives, and I was on such a high from beating it that I died on the first stage. No biggie as I'm very pleased with my score. Gonna try and do it on NES now.

[MetalFRO]

Great work on the clear, Wes! I haven't managed to clear it on the TurboGrafx (or any version, for that matter), but I've come close a couple times. I just can't get to that final boss with my heavy bombs in tact. I'll get there, though, I just have to keep trying. How's everyone else faring?

[MetalFRO]

I did it! I finally got a clear, on the SMS version, of all things. I cleared the first loop, and managed to make it to stage 6 in the 2nd loop, so I'm pretty happy about that, as well as the score I managed to achieve. It's not as impressive as Wes's score, but for a first clear, and on a version with some pretty aggressive enemy AI/behavior, I'll take it! Final score was 5,693,900.

Here's the run - keep in mind, I'm coming off a frustrating run, so I'm a little salty in the beginning

[Nefarious Wes]

Awesome, man! Does the SMS version reset your lives to zero on the second loop like the TG-16 version? I tried the NES version the other day and got halfway through the boss rush.

[MetalFRO]

Awesome, man! Does the SMS version reset your lives to zero on the second loop like the TG-16 version? I tried the NES version the other day and got halfway through the boss rush.

No, you continue with the number of lives that you had when you beat the boss, so it has an edge in that sense, it would seem!

[douglie007]

Well, I didnt get a lot play time, so my first scores were still my best

[Duke.Togo]

Spent a little time with the Famicom version yesterday and here is my score:
[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/rLNPI0a.jpg[/img]

It looks really good, but the difficulty seemed pretty aggressive. Very impressive version for the hardware.

[dtungsten]

135,500 on Switch with default settings.

I have some foggy memories of this game from back in the day. I had a friend who had it on SMS circa 1990. I think I was aware of the golf game trick from him. I really enjoyed revisiting this game. I thought it came out for Genesis in North America, but I may be confusing it with Fantasy Zone 2.

[MetalFRO]

135,500 on Switch with default settings.

I have some foggy memories of this game from back in the day. I had a friend who had it on SMS circa 1990. I think I was aware of the golf game trick from him. I really enjoyed revisiting this game. I thought it came out for Genesis in North America, but I may be confusing it with Fantasy Zone 2.

Unfortunately, we didn't get anything Fantasy Zone on the Genesis on North America, aside from the unlockable level in Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf.

[zoydo]

I played another round last week and tried to shoot more enemies for points in the first two stages instead of going straight for the bosses. But it didn't work out too well, couldn't get a new PB.
 
As i mentioned Fantasy Zone just isn't my cup of tea.
I just don't get used to my ship being centered in the middle of the screen, so i always run into the enemies.
I still enjoyed the boss fights and the art style..... and the music will probably never leave my brains again.

Congrats on your 1cc's everyone!

[MetalFRO]

Thanks for the final thoughts, zoydo! Not all these games are for everyone, so it's okay to not like every game we play. That's part of why we're doing this - when you find the games you really latch onto, hopefully you'll be motivated to keep playing, and improve

I did a make-up stream tonight, since I was feeling a bit ill last night, so I did the thing where you unlock the Fantasy Zone mini-game in Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf, by hitting the ball 100 times on the first hole, w/o sinking it, which results in an instant game over. At the Game Over screen, you basically enter a variant of the Konami code, and you're taken to a FZ mini game, where you get one life, and a single screen with enemies constantly coming at you, and 2 outposts to destroy. The game stops once you destroy a certain number of enemies, but because your score is constantly rising while you survive, I found a safe spot after destroying one of the bases, and just hung out there and bombed enemies. Your bombs don't drop all the way down the screen, and you can destroy enemy bullets with them, so it's very rudimentary, but it shows promise of what a FZ conversion for the Genesis might have been like, at least in an early stage. Sadly, it was not to be. But here's my high score, just for fun!