Fantasia | Retro Video Gaming

At my last retro gaming event a friend thought I should get a game called Gain Ground for the Sega Mega Drive. He said it was a great game. The only one I could find at that time on Ebay was a japanese version, so I bought it, and while I was at it I checked out the sellers other auction.. and then I couldn’t restrain myself!

I ended up buying 12 Japanese Sega Mega Drive games! :D And the packages arrived today ^_^

In the shopaholic-rush that I get sometimes.. I accidentally bought a game I already had.. Fantasia >_< which is stupid hard! Though this is the Japanese version instead of the PAL, perhaps it’s better.. but I doubt it! I also got Cyber Police ESWAT and of course the Gain Ground that I set out for ^_^

I also got Insector X, which I guess is a sequel to the Famicom game with the same name. I recently got the Famicom version and I liked that game so I just supposed it would be even better in 16-bit! :D King Colossus and Senjo no Oukami II also seemed interesting, I just watched brief youtube videos, and I basically buy anything that is platforming, puzzle or shooter ^_^

Magical Taruruto-Kun is a popular series on the Famicom, so bought it cause I recognized the name. Junction seemed like a cool arcade/puzzle game, kind of like Marble Madness but kind of different, I can’t tell whether it will be amazingly cool or just awful until I try it out though ^^ Phelios I had been wanting to get on several occasions and this time it was just reasonably priced ^_^

And last but not least Shiten Myooh, Midnight Resistance and Time Dominator. I just HAD to get Shiten Myooh because of the funny name and cool box art ^_^ and Midnight Resistance looked kind of like Contra, can’t wait to try that out! Time Dominator looked like a total ripoff from the Sonic games! Really fast and similar graphics and gameplay.. hmm..

Well I just wanted to share what was in the mailbox today, now I’m off to try them all out! :D and try to figure out how to capture those friggin’ screenshots with COLOR! ;P

Today I got more games!

Here’s the lot of Sega Mega Drive games, and one Sega Master System game:

Chakan, DJ Boy, Fantasia, Greendog, Last Battle, Rambo III, Rolling Thunder 2, Taz in Escape from Mars & Double Dragon.

I tried all the games briefly and got stuck playing a few of them. First off Fantasia which was really hard compared to other Mickey Mouse games like Castle of Illusions (looove that game!!!). You start off with a few shots (represented by the magic hat at the bottom) and they disappear immediately! Even if you die you don’t have new shots, you will have to collect them through a random magic book that comes flying (if you can catch it, Mickey is really slooow..) and even then you just get two shots. So you basically just have to avoid all the dangers by jumping, which is not easy since there’s enemies everywhere…

I made it to the second stage and then I gave up… >_<

Rolling Thunder 2 was nice, much like Rolling Thunder 1 that I have on Famicom and NES (where it’s called Code Name: Viper).

You can choose between playing as the male or female character, Albatross and Leila.

It wasn’t too hard if you took it slow and figured out where all the enemies came from, but you can’t rush through the game. One hit kills you. And you can’t jump and shoot, which is really annoying. It was the same in Rolling Thunder 1, but in the NES version (Code Name: Viper) they changed it so that you could jump and change directions and shoot while in the air.

I will try to finish this game later, I just managed to get to lvl 2 in my first attempt.

Then I played Last Battle.. and the first thing that greets you is a bunch of scrolling text. The Story. And it never ends…

It even scrolls just a little bit too fast so that it makes it hard to read, and you will miss a few rows here and there. What were they thinking?!

At least they made a nice title screen after the story…

Then there’s the gameplay.. it’s stiff… and slow.. and the enemies are easy, they die from just touching your toe.

The stages are really short and at the end you meet some person that tells you something and your character responds:

What?!?!?!?!?

Seriously?!?!?!?! Who wrote this???!

And after a 2 stages I must have taken a wrong turn on the map cause I ended up at some boss that I could hardly even get close to and that killed me in a few blows….

One life, that’s all you get! ò_ó

Chakan was really cool though, great story and nicely told, with music, images and good writing (compared to the shitty Last Battle way of doing things…)

Awesome…. ^^

So I tried out the four stages I could find in the room, and I couldn’t beat them. This game is really hard.. there’s flying enemies coming at you from all directions and almost unbeatable beasts on every stage. It was a good game though. I will have to practice and try it again.

This stage was unbearable! Flying shit and fishes everywhere and everything drains the life of this so-called “immortal” Chakan character >_<