Fantasy Zone
| Fantasy Zone | |
|---|---|
Japanese arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Designer(s) | Yoji Ishii |
| Programmer(s) | Shuichi Katagi |
| Artist(s) | Masaki Kondo |
| Composer(s) | Hiroshi Kawaguchi |
| Series | Fantasy Zone |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Famicom/NES, Game Gear, MSX, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, Sega Mark III/Master System, Sega Saturn, X68000 |
| Release | March 28, 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Arcade system | Sega System 16A |
Fantasy Zone is a 1986 horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Sega for arcades. It is the first game in the Fantasy Zone series. It was later ported to a wide variety of consoles, including the Master System. The player controls a sentient spaceship named Opa-Opa who fights an enemy invasion in the titular group of planets. The game contains a number of features atypical of the traditional scrolling shooter. The main character, Opa-Opa, is sometimes referred to as Sega's first mascot character.
The game design and main character have many similarities to the earlier TwinBee, and both are credited with establishing the cute 'em up subgenre. It also popularized the concept of a boss rush, a stage where the player faces multiple previous bosses again in succession. Numerous sequels were made over the years.