Fantasy Zone Arcade FAQ/Walkthrough Version: 1.1 7/3/2010 Author: Chris Calabro Email: trinarytree@gmail.com This FAQ is copyrighted by me. Don't sell it, pretend you wrote it, nor change it a little and then pretend you wrote it, but spread it around for free all you want - as long as you include this copyright notice. The game and all of its content are owned by Sega. The names of everything not named in the game I just made up. ---------- 0 Contents ---------- 1 Intro 2 Game mechanics 3 Parts shop 4 Strategy 5 Walkthrough 6 Difficulty levels 7 Enemies 8 Trivia ------- 1 Intro ------- Fantasy Zone, made by Sega in 1986, is a tough side-scrolling shooter with trippy graphics, cute enemies, and cartoony weapons, such as a 16 ton anvil. This FAQ will cover only the arcade version. ---------------- 2 Game mechanics ---------------- There are 7 normal stages, each ending with a boss, followed by one stage where you must defeat all 7 bosses again, followed by a last boss. In each normal stage you must destroy 10 enemy generators to make the boss appear. A map at the bottom shows where the active generators are with red dots; the white square(s) shows where you are. After you destroy the generators, and there are no enemies, bullets, or coins remaining on screen, the boss will appear. If you destroy it, it will drop a bunch of coins which you have only 5 seconds to collect, like some gameshow where you grab for cash. The coins are pretty hard to collect and the money is needed desperately, so it really adds tension even after you've won. Each time you destroy a generator, it will drop a coin. the value of the coin dropped decreases by a factor of about 1/2 for every 20 seconds of play in that stage. The possible coin values are 10000, 5000, 2000, 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 20, 10. but regular enemies give a fixed amount. Stage Initial value of each generator Amount given by regular enemies ----- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- 1 1000 50 2 1000 50 3 2000 50 4 2000 100 5 5000 100 6 5000 200 7 10000 200 A shop balloon appears if you have enough money and one of the following holds: - It's the beginning of a stage. - You were just defeated, but not by a boss. - A beam weapon just ran out, but not on a boss, and you don't have another. How much money you need seems to depend at least on how many times the shop balloon already came. The first one comes at $2000. Also, I think you need less for it to come after you die. (If anyone can figure out how this works more exactly, let me know.) Touch it to go to the parts shop where you can buy extra lives and upgrades to your engine, beam, and bombs. There is also a rare "sel" balloon that lets you select parts if you have more than one beam weapon or more than one bomb weapon and the first one runs out, unless you have 2 beam weapons _and_ 2 bomb weapons and the bomb weapon runs out before the beam weapon, in which case the select balloon won't come (Sega just had to make things overly complex). Here is a table: 2 beams and 2 bombs beam runs out first shop balloon bomb runs out first nothing 2 beams or 2 bombs (but not both) one runs out select balloon E.g. if you bought a smart bomb and twin bombs, the instant you used the smart bomb, the select balloon will come to let you switch back to twin bombs. ------------ 3 Parts shop ------------ Big wings - $100 Just slightly faster than the small wings you start out with. Don't buy this unless you are really strapped for cash. Jet engine - $1000 The only engine I ever buy. It's cheap, fast enough to dodge stuff, but not so fast I run into stuff by accident. Turbo engine - $10000 10 times as expensive and just slightly faster. Rocket engine - $100000 10 times as expensive as that. After spending half of the game earning enough money to buy it, you'll enjoy it for about 1 second before you run right into something, die, and lose it. I have to admit that there was a bit of mystique behind the rocket engine when I was growing up. Few were good enough to earn it, fewer still could handle its raw power. Yet there it beckoned in the shop window. But it's a foolish purchase if you actually want to win the game. Laser beam - $1000 (increases by $800 each time) Shooting 2 wimpy bullets per button press gets tiring. This gives you about the power of hitting the button as fast as physically possible by just holding down the button. But beware, the beam is slightly wider than the twin shot, and so it will have a harder time getting between the protective spheres of the stage 2 and 6 bosses (Thermometer and Eye). Wide beam - $500 (increases by $400 each time) Cheap enough to buy just for fun, but not that effective compared to the laser. 7-way shot - $5000 (increases by $4000 each time) Powerful, but gets expensive fast, so buy it only when you really need it. Twin bombs - $100 (increases by $100 each time) Best weapon for the price. Always get it unless you intend to use a more powerful bomb in the near future. All the other more powerful bombs are consumed with one use, but this one doesn't get used up. This is the only weapon you need to beat the stage 7 boss (Chomper). Smart bomb - $2000 (increases by $1000 each time, hold 10 max) Hits everything on the screen. Kills small enemies, hurts generators. 5 of them take out the stage 2 boss (Thermometer), 3 of them take out the stage 4 boss (Crab). Fire bomb - $2000 (increases by $500 each time, hold 10 max) The generator destroyer. Like a normal bomb, but inert until it reaches the horizontal level of a generator. Then it splits into 2 fireballs that go left and right destroying anything in their path. This is only really useful on stage 4 where all the generators are on the bottom of the screen, but even then it's not that great. If you have the rocket engine, you can chase it a little, but it still outruns you too quickly to be useful. Doesn't hurt bosses at all since it only detonates when it finds a generator. Really any beam weapon is a much more cost-effective means for destroying generators. Heavy bomb - $2000 (increases by $1000 each time, hold 10 max) Drops an anvil straight down from the top of the screen where Opa-opa is. Kills any part of any boss in one shot except for the stage 6 boss (Eye) and the stage 7 boss (Chomper). It's very hard to beat the final boss without one. Extra ship - $5000 (then $20000, $50000, $100000 thereafter) The price increases so fast that you probably can't buy more than 3 or 4 of these. So effectively, you get at most 5 or 6 lives in the game. ---------- 4 Strategy ---------- If you really want to beat this game, you need some planning because the following things will make the game very hard if you don't: - You can't continue. - If you die, you lose all your items. - The prices of weapons and lives (but not engines for some reason) increase rapidly each time you buy them, so you can't buy very many of anything. - You get only a few seconds in the parts shop to buy items (30 seconds at first, then 20 seconds, then 10 thereafter; and only 5 seconds to switch weapons), so you'd better know what you need going in. - You can't switch weapons whenever you feel like it, only after you exit the parts shop or get a select balloon, so it is mostly (but not entirely, see select balloon strategy below) pointless to buy more than 1 beam weapon or more than 1 bomb weapon, especially when you consider the fact that you'd lose them if you died. It's generally better to just keep the value in the form of money until you actually need the weapon. Also, keeping too little money on hand may prevent the shop balloon from ever coming. - Beam weapons only work for 20 seconds so you have to move at a frenetic pace to exploit them. - The value of the generators decreases so fast, and the enemies are worth so much less, and the enemies get so hard and have such a high probability of killing you at almost any instant, and the items are so expensive, and you need them so much, that you have almost no choice but to kill the generators as fast as possible to get the majority of your cash. Spending any large amount of time on small enemies is futile, since you will invariably make a mistake and die way before you can possibly afford another life. The regular enemies increase in number and shoot more with time also. Do the math: on stage 7, a generator is worth $10000 at first and small enemies are worth $200. In 20 seconds, you could easily kill 4 generators. If you spend that 20 seconds killing small enemies instead of generators, you'd have to collect 200 coins from small enemies in that time to make up for the decrease in generator value. I don't think that many can even appear that fast. Also, in each stage, eventually only enemies that don't drop coins come, so there is a limit to how much you can get from them anyway. - Each boss drops a somewhat random amount of coins in a pattern specific to it. You don't have time to react, you just need to know where the coins will be. - Don't greedily buy extra lives as soon as you can afford them, because draining your cash can prevent the shop balloon from appearing. Instead buy them when you need them. - Select balloon strategy: You can buy a fire bomb, which increases in price the most slowly among the one-use bombs, and a beam weapon in a shop and equip the fire bomb but not the beam weapon to face the stage. Then just before destroying the last generator, use the bomb to make the select balloon come, then switch to the beam weapon so you have most of it for the boss. ------------- 5 Walkthrough ------------- Stage 1: Plaleaf ---------------- Kill the first 2 generators to get $2000 so that the shop balloon appears. Touch it and buy a jet engine and twin bombs. Kill the rest of the generators without buying anything else. Enemies: Slimer (from generators), Scissors, Space ship, Q-bert, Paramecium. If you wait long enough, only Space ships will come, and they don't drop coins. Stage 1 boss: Tree ------------------ Shoot him in the mouth when it opens. The ordinary twin shot works better than the laser here, probably because the laser is too wide. Stay about in the middle of the screen and go up and down, that way you are close enough so that the projectiles don't spread too much, but far enough so you have time to react. A heavy bomb kills the Tree in one shot, but it's so easy that it's not worth it. If you go too close or behind the boss, its projectiles will ricochet back at you. Like all other bosses of the game (except for the last one), if you take too long, it will just home in on you, so kill it fast. To collect the money, stay a little above the ground and a little to one side and move left and right a little. If you are lucky, you'll get all the coins that got to that side. If you are not that lucky, don't chase the coins you missed for more than 2 seconds since you need the remaining 3 seconds to get the coins that went to the other side. It leaves about $10100 total. Stage 2: Tabas -------------- The shop balloon should appear immediately. Buy a laser and an extra ship. Kill generators and get their coins as fast as you can. Ignore all else. Your beam may run out before you kill them all. If you get a 2nd shop balloon, buy nothing or a wide beam (for fun). 5 smart bombs would kill the boss easily, but it will drive up the price too much, and you'll need them later, so just deal with him with standard weapons. Of course you could hedge your bet and just buy a few smart bombs. Enemies: Bat (from generators), Boxing glove, Wisp, 5-circles, Worm, Slimer. Also if you wait long enough, only Slimers and Space ships appear, and neither drops coins. Stage 2 boss : Thermometer -------------------------- Shoot the 8 vulnerable spheres spinning inside the 8 spinning invincible spheres 5 times each. Only a thin weapon like the twin shot, or the heavy bomb will penetrate. But you can also get close and use the regular bomb. The smart bomb kicks its ass fast, but you'll regret it later when you have to fight it a second time and the projectiles come faster and you can't afford the smart bombs anymore. It volleys 18 projectiles up at a time and then they come straight down on you at random horizontal locations and somewhat random vertical separations from each other. Sometimes it seems like there is no way to dodge them, but there usually is if you are willing to weave through them. I.e. don't insist on finding one spot per volley where you can just sit, you might have to move left or right. As for almost all of the bosses, the projectiles get faster in time. When you win, about $14300 in coins emits rapidly from the center. Stage 3: La dune ---------------- Buy a laser and kill the generators as fast as you can. If you run out, buy another laser. Enemies: Walker (from generators), Fish, 3-circles, Swimmer, Space ship, Wisp. If you wait long enough, only Space ships and 3-circles come, neither drops coins. Stage 3 boss: Laser array ------------------------- Easy, even with no upgrades. It shoots lasers, starting from the top of the array of 9 and working down and up. You can easily bomb the upper 7 lasers, but the bottom 2 are destroyed more easily with your beam weapon. The lasers fire faster and faster, so if you want to switch from above the array to below or vice versa, you should destroy a few lasers first, then cross when those destroyed lasers would be firing. Since you want to be in front of the bottom 2 lasers to destroy them and are not required to be in front of any of the other ones, and since they will be firing very fast if you kill them last, it makes sense to kill the bottom 2 first. Stay at the bottom of the screen during its first sweep, it will miss you. After those 2 lasers are gone, go above and bomb the rest. Also, you can kill the boss in one shot with a heavy bomb, but it's hard to aim because the scrolling screen will make the bomb drop slightly diagonally. Get just to the upper right of its top fin and drop it. But unless you are speed running, why bother wasting the money when it's so easy with the default weapons? When you win, about $16400 in coins drops mostly vertically, so it's easy to get most of them. Stage 4: Dolimicca ------------------ The generators are all at the bottom. Buy a laser and stay on the bottom. Inch your way forward so that your beam is constantly killing generators but you are still effectively dodging projectiles. If you do it right, you need only 1 laser to kill all the generators. In fact the stage goes so fast it is almost pointless. Enemies: Bladed disk (from generators), Slimer, Testes, Plus signs, Drill, Parachuter, Square. If you wait long enough, only Slimers and Plus signs come. Stage 4 boss: Crab ------------------ Shoot each of the 11 parts of each arm 3 times while dodging the projectiles. 3 smart bombs kill this boss - you can just hold down the button and you win - but it's already pretty easy, so why waste the money? When you win, it drops about $19500. Stage 5: Polaria ---------------- Buy a laser. Kill some. Buy another. Kill the rest. Enemies: Space ship (from generators), Ufo, 3-eyes, Drill, 3-circles, Swimmer. If you wait long enough, only 3-circles come. Stage 5 boss: Penguins ---------------------- One of the hardest bosses of the game, if you fight it head on. It has 4 columns of penguins of increasing size, stamina, projectile size and speed, number of projectiles per volley, and bobbing amplitude. They are arranged as a full binary tree with the big penguin at the root. At first, only the forward-most column can be hurt and only the leaves of the tree will shoot; but if you wait 1 minute, they will all charge at you - slowly. At this point they all stop shooting, and all penguins can be hurt, regardless of whether you destroyed the preceding column. Use the following strategy and you'll win every time: shoot every other small penguin, so that 4 small ones remain but none of the penguins behind them shoot, wait 1 minute for them to charge, and then shoot at them like fish in a barrel. You can make dodging easier by shooting penguins 1,3,6,8 in the first column so that the top and bottom ones are gone. Then alternately go above and below the first column. Almost all of the projectiles will go harmlessly up (or down) and out of the screen, leaving the whole left half of the screen nearly projectile-free for dodging. Column #penguins Twin shots to kill each Projectile size (in pixels) ------ --------- ----------------------- --------------------------- 1 8 1 4 2 4 2 6 3 2 8 8 4 1 16 10 If you want to face the boss with a beam weapon, use the select balloon strategy or just crash your ship into the last generator to kill it and make the shop balloon come. A 7-way shot or laser can mow down this boss very fast, but it's still much riskier than the 1st strategy because the last 2 columns of penguins will be shooting at you for a few seconds. When you win, it drops about $20300. Stage 6: Mockstar ----------------- Laser. Laser (or 7-way shot). Enemies: Spinner (from generators), Boxing glove, Fish, Q-bert, Plus sign. If you wait long enough, only Plus signs come. Stage 6 boss: Eye ----------------- The Eye enters from the left side of the screen. If you happen to be there, you die. When he gets to the center of the screen, 6 rotating arms appear around it. If you happen to be where they appear, you die. Once it's in the center make sure you are to the left or right of the Eye to avoid those appearing arms. The arms rotate faster and faster until one of you or the Eye dies. Hit the Eye 12 times with any weapon to kill it. The heavy bomb is no more effective, and you don't need anything but your jet engine to win, so don't waste them. When you win, it drops about $24900 in coins in a shallow arc. 2 rows of the coins initially shoot through the center, so you can grab most of them if you start there. Stage 7: Pocarius ----------------- Laser. Laser (or 7-way shot). Enemies: Slimmer (from generators), Spinner, Bird, 3-eye, Worm, Scissors. If you wait long enough, only spinners come. In fact, they may get angry and start shooting multiple red projectiles at you. Stage 7 boss: Chomper --------------------- An angry face with teeth showing splits up into a 5 x 6 matrix of parts that home in on you. You and the face can only hurt each other when the parts are together. It chomps faster and faster each time it chomps. You can win with no weapons at all, but it's tough. Much more reliable is to have a jet engine and twin bombs. Make sure the face is chomping roughly in the middle of the screen and go to one side. Just before the parts come together, "hurl" 2 bombs towards it so that they are inside it as it becomes whole. By this, I mean move forward just while hitting the bomb button so that you don't move much, but the bombs move forward quickly and in a shallow arc. If you don't hurl the bombs, it is much harder to time when you throw them to coincide with when the boss is vulnerable. Also keep shooting your beam when the boss is whole. You can also win pretty easily with the laser, but why waste the money? When you win, it drops about $21800 in 5 rows that are far from each other preventing getting them all unless you have a fast engine, so just settle for getting a few rows of coins. Alternatively, if you feel cocky, you could buy a fast engine just for the fight and try to make up your losses by picking up more coins after the boss is defeated. The shop that comes just after will let you switch back to a slower engine. Stage 8: Salfar --------------- You must kill each of the 7 bosses again. You get to use the parts shop just before the stage and each time you die, which finally lets you re-equip when a boss kills you. Bosses that you kill stay dead. If it's your last life by the time you get to the Eye, it is almost impossible to win: you can only hold 10 heavy bombs, and heavy bombs seem to be no more effective on the Chomper than regular bombs. Beam weapons only last 20 seconds. You aren't going to get past the eye so fast that you'll have enough of your beam weapon left over to beat the Chomper with beam weapons alone, and you need 1 heavy bomb for the last boss, unless you can pull off a rather tricky strategy to be described in the next section. Fight the bosses the same way as before, with the following exceptions: the stage 2 boss (Thermometer) is much harder now because its projectiles start out fast. Even though it can usually be defeated, if you have a hard time with him just use 5 smart bombs. For some reason, the stage 5 boss (Penguins) is a little different. Now when they charge, all but the big penguin shoot at you. But it's still easier to fight them this way than head on because 1. The total amount of time you need to spend dodging the more difficult projectiles is smaller. 2. The way you dodge is much easier: you can just run circles around them without paying much attention to where they are shooting because they will always miss. 3. You don't need to aim because now they are all vulnerable. 4. The big penguin never bobs nor shoots at you. The remaining bosses are easy. The last boss ------------- This boss is the "father" of Opa-opa. Somehow, anvil-dropping, laser wielding spaceships with rocket engines can reproduce. Daddy Opa emits 6 blue puppy dog face-looking things (I'll call them racers) that chase you around, leaving a trail of lines that you can't pass though. Each successive racer takes more hits and moves in a faster, more annoying pattern. Here is how many shots each takes to kill. Racer Twin shots Regular bombs ----- ---------- ------------- 1 4 2 2 8 3 3 12 4 4 16 6 5 20 7 6 24 8 The first 3 are easy. To kill the 4th one, move up and down with it as you shoot. Then move to the bottom of the screen, under its line, and you can get plenty of free shots at it. Only the last 2 racers move adaptively, i.e. depending on where you move. The 5th racer will alternate between moving horizontally and vertically, moving all the way to the left or right, but choosing a vertical direction to get to you fastest. So make sure you are all the way at the top or bottom when it moves vertically to give yourself the most possible time. You can kill all but the last racer with the twin shot, but that last one is almost impossible without a heavy bomb. To kill it, get to the top left of the screen and wait for it. It will come out horizontally at first. As soon as it turns the corner to go vertically at you, drop the heavy bomb and move horizontally right out of the way (to avoid a double KO). It won't chase you horizontally because it wants to match your vertical position before turning again. So it will walk right into the bomb. If you don't have a heavy bomb, you have almost no chance with your current life - but not no chance! There is a way to beat the last racer with just the jet engine and twin bombs. No matter what engine you have, on the last boss, if you face left and sit still or fly straight up, your bombs will drop straight down, and you must use this accident of strangely programmed physics. In this strategy you will only hit the racer on the left side of the screen and only with the twin bomb - don't bother with the twin shot at all. 1. Go to the upper left corner and drop 2 bombs as he races up. 2. Go diagonally to the lower right corner so he chases you there. You must leave right before he gets there so that you don't die and so that you get as much breathing room as possible later. 3. Go diagonally to the upper left corner, dropping 2 more bombs straight down as you fly up. Repeat this pattern, dropping a total of 4 pairs of bombs and you will win, albeit with almost no room for error. If you die, don't bother trying to repeat this strategy, just buy a heavy bomb. This strategy is slightly easier with the turbo engine, but the preceding bosses are so much harder with it that it's better to take your chances with the jet engine. Congratulations, you beat the game. At the end, the philosophical Opa-opa wonders whether restoring peace to the Fantasy Zone was worth the price he had to pay for weapons, the slaughter of thousands of cute, cuddly creatures, and patricide to boot. After the end? -------------- Just like in Altered Beast, if you beat the game, you go back to round 1, only it's called round 9 now. You can keep your weapons but you lose your money and any extra lives you had. The shop balloon first comes at $20000 and the prices in the shop are what then were when you beat it, they don't go back down. The difficulty level increases, and for some reason, when you fight the bosses in the normal levels, you won't automatically face forward. This really cheapens the experience. Beating this game is a huge challenge and an emotional drain due to the constant fast pace, and if you actually do it, the game immediately disillusions you by taking away your trophy and sending you back to the beginning, only now it's much harder. At this point just walk away from the machine with your head held high and don't look back. If you manage to beat the game again (I can only do it with emulation cheating) the enemies get even harder, if you can imagine that, firing 2 red projectiles at once. If you beat it 3 times in a row, the enemies shoot even faster yellow stars at you. If you beat it 4 times in a row, the enemies just increase their rate of fire. I don't have the patience to beat it 5 times in a row to find out what happens after that. ------------------- 6 Difficulty levels ------------------- There are 4: easy, normal, hard, hardest. The only difference I see between them is that the normal enemies get aggressive and shoot at you sooner in the harder difficulty levels. Also, "easy" actually seems to be a little harder than normal, but not as hard as hard. --------- 7 Enemies --------- G = kill the group to get a coin I = each individual enemy drops a coin N = doesn't drop a coin Slimer (N) ---------- Moves up the screen in a wide S-shaped pattern. Scissors (G) ------------ Moves horizontally in a row of 2, 4, 8, or 10. Space ship (N) -------------- Moves up the screen in a wide S-shaped pattern in a column of 3. Q-bert (I) ---------- Moves horizontally in a column of 3, 4, or 5. Paramecium (N) -------------- Moves in a complex elliptical pattern. Bat (N) ------- Moves straight up. Boxing glove (G) ---------------- Moves horizontally in a column of 4, 6, or 8. Wisp (G) -------- Moves in a circle about a moving center point in a group of 4. 5-circles (G) ------------- Moves in a snake-like pattern in a group of 4, 6, or 12. Worm (I) -------- Slowly chases you. Walker (N) ---------- Drops to the ground, then walks and every now and then, jumps to shoot at you. Fish (G) -------- Moves in a square wave in a group of 10 arranged in a triangle. 3-circles (N) ------------- Moves up and down the sides of the screen in a group of 4, 6, or 7. Stays on the screen no matter how fast you move. Swimmer (I) ----------- Moves towards you in a square wave in a group of 1, 2, 3, or 5. Bladed disk (N) --------------- Moves up until it reaches your level, then it moves horizontally. Testes (G) ---------- Moves in a square wave in a group of 8 or 10. Plus sign (N) ------------- Starts at the bottom and moves up the screen shooting horizontally, but the first shot will aim right at you. Stays on the screen no matter how fast you move. Drill (G) --------- Moves horizontally in a group of 8. Parachuter (G) -------------- Drops down from the top of the screen in a canopy-shaped group of 8 or 12. If you are at the top of the screen at the time, you die. Square (I) ---------- Moves towards you in a group of 2, 3, 4, or 5. Ufo (G) ------- Moves in a line of 10 or 12. 3-eyes (G) ---------- Moves horizontally in a staggered column of 8. Spinner ------- Moves at you as they bob up and down - one of the hardest normal enemies. Bird (G) -------- Moves in a zig-zag in a group of 6, 9, or 10. -------- 8 Trivia -------- This FAQ took about a week to write. Level Music ----- ----- 1 Plaleaf Opa-opa! 2 Tabas Keep on the best 3 La dune Saari 4 Dolimicca Prome 5 Polaria Hot snow 6 Mockstar Don't stop 7 Pocaruis Dreaming tomorrow 8 Salfar (doesn't say) Last boss Ya-da-yo Ending Victory way Intro text ---------- Long ago, far away in space, there existed a "Fantasy Zone" where a courageous hero called Opa-opa (the player) fought in a valiant cause to rescue the "Fantasy Zone" from its enemies. Ending text ----------- Opa-opa (the player) has now destroyed the invading army and restored peace to the "Fantasy Zone". However, he has mixed emotions because his long lost father was the chief of the enemy forces. One burning question that will remain with him until his dying days.... "Was my victory really worth the price I had to pay?" The end