GAME CLEAR No. 242 -- SEGA AGES Fantasy Zone

SEGA AGES Fantasy Zone (2020, Switch)

Enhanced Port Of: Fantasy Zone (1986, Arcade [System 16])
Original Developer: SEGA
Original Publisher: SEGA
AGES Developer: M2
AGES Publisher: SEGA
Clear Version: Switch
Clear Platform: Switch 2
Clear Date: 7/12/25

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Why should I care?
Just look at Opa-Opa and listen to this soundtrack. What more do you need?

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Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get ready!

We got another M2 emulation product here, which means you know it’s gonna be good. The SEGA AGES games on Switch have all been great ports with tons of accessibility options, bonus modes, and other game-specific special features, and this port of Fantasy Zone is no exception. With the help of M2, I’ve at least managed to see all of the content in this otherwise brutally hard game.

For a little context, Fantasy Zone is a shoot ’em up in which you play as Opa-Opa, a sentient spaceship on a mission to save his eponymous home world (a system of several planets) from invaders called Menons. According to the manual, they’ve bolstered their forces with “misappropriated foreign currency” (?). You gotta blast that money out of them and use it to buy your own weapons and upgrade your ship (i.e. yourself).

You’ll do so by shooting up the various enemies and enemy-spawning bases on each planet you traverse. You navigate them Defender-style, in a horizontally looping world. Once you destroy all the bases, a boss will appear. Destroy him, and you’ll have liberated a planet and can move on to the next.

As you go, you must be prudent with your spending in the shops that appear in each stage. It’s tempting to buy up everything to have a supership, but prices on weapons go up each time you buy them, and you lose everything when you die. Thus, it is best to figure out the best weapon combo for each scenario so that you don’t get priced out of being able to afford anything in the later stages. This is a pretty clever system, but it sure makes an already hard game even harder.

The shooting gameplay is pretty typical stuff, but it controls well, and blowing up bad guys feels and sounds great. The weapons are similar to those found in other games of this ilk. There’s a wide shot, a spread shot, a high-intensity laser beam, and your somewhat-weak default weapon. You can also purchase engine upgrades to move faster. These are essential in later levels, but it’s also important to not give yourself too much engine in certain stages, since Opa-Opa will become rather difficult to control, and this is a one-hit-and-you’re-dead game.

That combined with no continues is what makes this game so fiendishly difficult. You simply cannot make mistakes with how few lives you get. You can purchase more at the shop, but they increase in price outrageously by the time you’ve bought two or three. You simply have to get good. Or do you?

Fantasy Zone was always a game I liked for its beautiful graphics, tight controls, cute protagonist, and bumping soundtrack, but it’s always been much too tough for me. It doesn’t allow continues of any kind, so I resigned myself to never seeing it all the way through.

Fortunately, M2 came through for me here. Like some of their other games, this version allows you to continue from the highest level you’ve reached. It also features a “coin stock” system, which banks all the coins you had when you reach game over. You can withdraw any amount from this to give yourself a little seed funding to quickly power up your ship. This is a huge boon and is, I’m quite sure, the only way I’d have ever made it through this game.

Normally, I kind of turn my nose up at options like this. I hate a rewind feature and never use a save state. Just not my vibe. Fantasy Zone, however, was a bit too much for me, so I’m not so proud that I didn’t take advantage of what was here — which I will say is a more clever implementation than the aforementioned features common in emulation products. Plus, although I think a true 1cc may never be in reach for me, using the AGES features to at least beat every stage and the final boss does make me somewhat more motivated to try to see how far I can get under the original rules of the game.

These little eight-dollar AGES games really nail it when it comes to porting old games in a way accessible and enjoyable to all. The only shame of it all is that there aren’t more of them. Do yourself a favor and grab at least one to see if you enjoy it; they go on sale for even less quite often. Maybe you’ll have a great time with a game you once thought was unapproachable.

I guess what I’m saying is play games however you like. Life is short, entertain yourself however you want.

I will never say this again.

(Unless I play another game that’s really good but also too hard for me.)