Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Opa-Opa is back, but he suffer from a evil self from himself, and he need to stop it.
| ||||||||||||||
|
Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa is a horizontally scrolling shooter for the Master System published by Sega in 1987. It was ported to the arcade, Famicom, and MSX2, and was remade for the System 16 hardware on a PlayStation 2 compilation in 2008. It was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in North America on June 29, 2009. Like the first Fantasy Zone, the player controls a sentient spaceship named Opa-opa who fights surreal invader enemies. Like its predecessor, Fantasy Zone II departs from scrolling shooter themes with its bright colors and whimsical designs. For this reason, it is occasionally dubbed a "cute 'em up".
Plot
In the past, the courageous hero Opa-Opa saved the Fantasy Zone from the invading Menon forces, but his victory came at a price as he was forced to fight his own father who led the invasion. It is now Space Year 1432, 10 years after that battle, and the Nenon forces are spreading chaos through the Fantasy Zone. Opa-Opa must once again fly into the Fantasy Zone to rout the invasion.
Gameplay
Similar to Defender, the player occupies a side-scrolling level that repeats indefinitely, and in which the player can freely travel left or right. Each zone contains several "bases" that serve as primary targets. New to the sequel are "warps" hidden behind certain bases that allow the player to travel between different zones. Each level has at least three zones, and when all of the bases have been cleared in all of the zones of a level, the player can travel through the warp to the boss
Why It Isn't Evil
- It takes everything that made the first game good and improve it and make the game even better and bigger, since now the concept is completely expended and is at it's best in the series.
- Once again, the controls are excellent and are even better than the first game, Opa-Opa will never ever feel unresponsive and stiff, and the controls also are fast, so at least it isn't slow paced, well except if you doesn't had upgrades on the jets.
- Awesome graphics that are even better than the first game, and look great for it's time (being released in 1987), especially on the Master System and Arcade remake version, since they are extremely detailled and once again colorful, in fact they are on par with a Sega Genesis game, which is impressive for a 1987 Master System game.
- The sprite work is even better since here, they got more detailled, especially Opa-Opa and the bases, also Opa-Opa sprite even look similar to his Super Fantasy Zone Mega Drive game sprite counterpart.
- The color palette also was well choosed, since the colors as said before are colorful, in a similar manner to the first game but instead of using lot of bright colors, it is even more vibrant due to having more vive colors than it's predecessor.
- The game formula was expended from the first game, having more room to play, and also had more contents overall.
- While at times the game might be way too hard, it is much more challenging than the first game, which itself was hard but fair, even though there is a lot of difficulty spike (See BQ#4).
- The story of the game is quite unique for it's time and even now, Opa-Opa suffer from a evil self, and he need to fight it and also fight the enemies that cause trouble at Fantasy Zone, the story is as good as it was in Super Fantasy Zone, and the story is one of the darkest in the franchise, which is surprising considering that the franchise is know for it's cute characters designs and graphics.
- The ending is somewhat emotional, which wasn't that present in the 1987 games or even the games released in the 80's in that matter, this is mostly due to the fact that Opa-Opa did get right of his evil self, and also because he is with his father, and the ending is one of the best in the franchise.
- Decent soundtrack that is never repetitive and fit the game, despite most of them not fitting the dark tone of the game (to be fair, most of the game doesn't have that much levels with a dark tone theme), most of the musics are catchy and are so good that you may want to stand in the levels to listen them longer.
- Fun gameplay that is a bit improved from the first game, this is because of being fast-paced and not that repetitive, despite being a bit repetitive at least due to different paths in the levels.
- While still short, this game is much longer than the first game, having more levels (8 in total) and the reason of being longer is because of the lot of places to go in.
- The bosses are once again great, since they are challenging and balanced, and most of them are pretty fun, despite some flaws, this howewer doesn't count for the final boss (See BQ#2).
- The upgrades are fun to use as usual with this franchise, due to you being more powerful or overpowered.
- It's remake in 2008 on Arcade is even better, and is easily the definitive version of the game, it is also a proper Arcade port, unlike the 1988 Arcade version that is just the Master System version with Arcade feel.
Bad Qualities
- The Famicom version, while not terrible, is a mediocre port because of lot of issues present in it such as downgraded graphics, awful soundtrack, being slower and because of being a bit more glitchy, despite that it is playable but not good enough to be in good media.
- The final boss, while epic and dark, is extremely terrible and is not only the worst boss of the entire franchise but also one of the worst final boss in a Master System game, this is due to being way too hard and other flaws, in fact it is so bad that there is a lot to talk about.
- The first flaw and the most notable is the fact that he move way too fast to the point of being almost impossible to dodge his attacks and also it is almost impossible to beat him without save state, not helping the fact that the game doesn't had a save feature, and even with a lot of extra lifes, you will die way too much to even get enough chances to beat him.
- Making matter worse is that you die in one hit, which is already a bad sign and if you consider that the boss had much more healths than you, it make it an unfair advantage for the boss.
- It is also extremely hard to hit him too, since his Al is absolutely atrocious and dodge nearly every attacks that you give, which is a serious problem and this make it even more frustrating, unless you try a trick and that you had enough heavy bombs to beat him.
- Also, believe it or not, the fight in the MSX version is even harder, since now, evil Opa-Opa is even faster and move horribly fast to the point of being nearly impossible to beat him, and even with save states it is almost impossible, in fact it is so bad that the cheats is almost necessary here, we kid you not.
- At time the game might be extremely frustrating, especially in the later levels that suffer heavily from difficulty spike to the point of making it one of the hardest game of the entire franchise.
- In the later levels, the enemies are horribly fast, and most of them appear in places that you will had trouble to dodge them, it is so bad that you may die from them, and it doesn't help that you lose of of your upgrades, speaking of this...
- When you die, you lose all of your upgrades, and while it add challenge, the game isn't designed with this in mind, while it's true that in franchise such as Bomberman you lose your upgrades if you die, it wasn't every upgrades, and you only lose all of them if you got a game over (expect in the Arcade installents), but in this game and also the entire franchise, you lose all of them no matter what, though if it's in the boss rush, you can thankfully buy them if you had money.
- No passwords or save features, while this isn't always a problem in games, here it is a big problem considering how hard this game is, and also because there are no continues, thus the only way to save the game is with save states.
- Some glitchs are present here and there, such as the scrolling not following Opa-Opa (when he stop appear in screen and he is invisible), which make it a huge problem in the last levels, especially if you had jet engines activated where it make the glitch easier to happen.
Reception
Much like the first game, Fantasy Zone II received critical acclaim, and is considered to be the best game of the entire franchise and one of the best Master System game ever made.
The game was praised for it's graphics, it's soundtrack, it's gameplay and especially the formula that was improved, but was a little criticized for it's short length and the difficulty being way too hard at times.
Trivia
- Fantasy Zone II DX was funded entirely out of the pocket of M2's CEO, simply because he always felt that II should have gotten an arcade release. They even went through painstaking efforts to develop it for period-accurate hardware rather than for a modern system.
- This is the first game in the franchise that was released on a home console first rather than on Arcade before.
Videos
Comments
Loading comments...