Game of the Month: November 2025 - Fantasy Zone

[geise]

FANTASY ZONE

Yeah it's a Feka game, but it's pretty fun. I've always enjoyed playing Fantasy Star in the arcades and this isn't that bad of a port for the time.  The game plays kind of like Defender. It's a wrap around style level design that you play through. You shoot bad guys and collect coins to use and upgrade weapons in a shop that floats around the level. There's these main larger target base shapes on the levels you need to destroy in order to make it to the final boss of the stage. This is a nice quick pick up and play game like last months. Figured it would be good since people probably don't have a lot of time to sit and invest. December might bring the rpg's back. Hopefully this month you'll be able to enjoy the Fantasy Zone!

[Mathius]

This is another that I have a rocky relationship with. Being arguably the world's first cute 'em up the game is nice to look at and sports some good tunes (especially the arcade version's FM synth.) It's the Defender-style gameplay that gets rather irksome. Every time the ship changes directions the scrolling takes a sec to catch up usually leading to mid-air collisions. Furthermore, I know zero souls who enjoy the limited-time powerups.

[Alexei]

As a kid, I only ever played Fantasy Zone on Game Gear. I'll play it tonight!

[Naniyue]

I only had the Tengen NES version as a kid.   Not my favorite game, mostly because of the timer based powerups.

[majors]

FZ was never a fav of mine...maybe I just never "got it". I have a nasty habit of bee-lining Opa straight into the enemies for some odd reason. Maybe the scrolling delay when turning around that Mathius mentioned is to blame. The game definitely takes advantage of the turbo switches on the pad...having rapid fire makes the game playable IMO. Geise was correct with FZ being a solid pick for those that "don't have a lot of time to sit and invest". This is a good game to play on a handheld while sitting on the couch waiting for TV commercials to finish out.

Not that it's obey related, but the Master System port(s) is quite colorful.