Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 14 hours ago

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Fantasy Zone is an arcade shmup created by Sega originally for arcades in 1986. It is known for having infinitely side scrolling levels like Defender and also for being one of the first ever "cute-em-ups". The game was ported to the Master System soon after by Sega. It would also be ported over to the Famicom and NES, by Sunsoft and Tengen respectively.

Every level in Fantasy Zone, with the exception of the final stage being a boss rush, involves destroying bases that spawn enemies and avoiding other waves of enemies and their bullets. After you take out the bases, you have a boss fight. During the stage, you'll also have the opportunity to go to a shop where you can buy weapons and engines with the coins you earned from killing enemies and bases. The more you buy items, the more the prices go up and there's limited stock for items.

The Master System version is a very solid port of the original arcade game. It controls well, runs well, and the graphics are quite nice for the 8-bit era. This version does have different bosses for Stages 4 and 6 and does not have a radar. However, it is pretty faithful to the original otherwise.

One important note about this run is that I did use the infinite weapons trick during this run. In order to do this, you need to buy all of the engines and then buy a weapon. If you buy the 7-way shot, you'll get to use it for as long as you want without the usual time limits that would apply otherwise. The 7-way shot is especially powerful with this trick when paired with external autofire, which I did use. This makes the game even easier than it already is, but you usually can't take advantage of this trick until around Stage 4 or Stage 5 when you have enough money to do it.

After you beat the final boss at the end of the boss rush on Stage 8, you get an ending and then, the game loops infinitely. The difficulty does not appear to get harder with subsequent loops. My run ended only because of dumb mistakes, not because it got harder on Loop 2. Also, this game can be counter-stopped as the score counter does not go higher than seven digits.

Played in RetroArch via the PicoDrive core. 20HZ autofire was used from my Brook PCB.

00:00 Intro
00:10 Stage 1
01:24 Stage 2
02:35 Stage 3
04:30 Stage 4
06:13 Stage 5
07:51 Stage 6
09:06 Stage 7
10:15 Shop Before Stage 8
10:36 Stage 8 (Boss Rush)
13:43 Loop 2

#sega #mastersystem #fantasyzone #opaopa #retrogaming #shmups #shootergames #shmup #segaclassics #1986 #80sgames #1980s #classicgames #classicgaming