OutRun, Super Hang-On, Virtua Racing; man, I sure do love me some old-school arcade SEGA classics. A plethora of gamers have a fondness for a lot of SEGA's earlier works. Whisper about any of the aforementioned titles and you're sure to get tales of how those games made someone's childhood. There was one much loved coin-op game I could never get into; Fantasy Zone, the brightly colored cute 'em up as these type of shooters are sometimes called.
I actually adore Opa-Opa's design and when I played Yakuza 0 three years ago, I spent far too much time on one of those crane games trying to get an Opa-Opa toy. Before that, Opa-Opa was one of my favorite characters to use in the first Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing before SEGA foolishly decided that they didn't need characters other than those that were Sonic-related. So while I thought Opa-Opa was a cool character (space ship, thingy), I just couldn't for the life of me get into the game that he came from and I
LOVE SHMUPs.
A couple of things about Fantasy Zone put me off. I tend to prefer my shooters to either be top down scrolling or scrolling to one side of the screen. Fantasy Zone lets the player scroll left and right freely whenever the player changes directions and that just felt so... unnatural to me. My unwillingness to try something different was definitely taking hold. And then there was the shop, with power-ups that were only temporary, requiring you to refill once they ran out or died. I also had no idea that you had to take out basses to trigger a boss fight and finish the stage. Yes, even in an age where information is a few clicks away, I never bothered to look deeper into Fantasy Zone to educate myself. I just thought Fantasy Zone was one of those games that was not for me.
Enter Black Bird. This game's very cool, dark visual style stuck out to me and after seeing a few videos of it in action, I decided to try it out for myself. It wasn't evident in gameplay videos but when I started playing, it hit me; Black Bird plays like Fantasy Zone. The left and right scrolling, the bases that you have to destroy to reach the boss. Black Bird doesn't have a shop and you get to hang onto your power-ups until you lose a life. The game also has a combo chain system, which is all kinds of fun to see how long you can keep going.
Playing Black Bird was a big "It all makes sense now!" moments for me, like a light bulb that appears above a cartoon character's head. All the things just seemed so foreign to me about Fantasy Zone seemed perfectly normal. It only took playing another game that was clearly inspired from it for my dumb brain to comprehend that.
When SEGA AGES Fantasy Zone released for the Switch, I was excited to pick it up thanks to my play time on Black Bird. I see Fantasy Zone in a whole new light. I know to destroy the bases, I manage my limited power-ups better and for the first time ever, I "get" Fantasy Zone! Finally, I see why the game is loved so much. I haven't beaten it yet (got to the fourth world and set some new high scores) but I intend to and I plan to play Super Fantasy Zone on my SEGA Genesis Mini and Fantasy Zone II on my 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection.
So is Fantasy Zone a new SEGA favorite for me? Hmm, yeah I think so. Oh and while Fantasy Zone and Black Bird are indeed similar games, the tone could not be anymore different. Fantasy Zone is bright and colorful with plenty of upbeat, catchy tunes. Black Bird is dark and grim. The titular character you play as was a little girl that was killed and came back as said bird and wreaks havoc on everything around her. Yyyyyyyuup.
