Fantasia (Sega Genesis Review)

Fantasia
Platform: Sega Genesis
Developed by Infogrames
First Released: November, 1991
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Well, at least there’s only four levels. She said, staring off into the distance, her soul shattered into millions of pieces.

Boy, do I have a funny story for you. I nearly beat Fantasia unaware that there was a way to kill enemies by hopping on them. Now, on occasion, enemies would die from me landing on them, BUT I always took damage too. What I wasn’t aware of is that Fantasia has a butt stomp that’s activated by pressing DOWN when you jump. Now, I might be an idiot, but there’s no way I could have missed this at the start of the game. What I think happened was I tried to perform a butt stomp on the early enemies, only Fantasia’s legendarily horrible collision detection flipped a coin and awarded the victory to the enemy. I took damage and assumed there was no butt stomp. That’s on me for not reading the instruction book.

And when I say “I made it to the end of the game” I mean I was literally about to clear the final screen. This is where I accidentally discovered the butt stomp works. I think I deserve a little credit for making it this far while having to mostly avoid enemies while trying to round up enough magic to take out the ones I couldn’t manage to jump over, even after rewinding and retrying dozens of times. It’s why a game that took me around 45 minutes to beat the second time took me 8+ hours the first go around. Lots and lots of rewinding trying to avoid enemies with collision boxes the size of a galaxy.

The way I played Fantasia, where I had to spend several minutes just to be able to make it one enemy further along, was just about as unhappy a gaming experience as humanly possible. I had to start over, because otherwise my opinion on Fantasia would have been based on an incoherent series of swear words. So, I started over from the beginning, and learned that Fantasia isn’t the worst game ever made. It also meant that, technically, I played the first and third levels three times. See, the object of Fantasia isn’t to get to the end of stages. It’s to score enough points. If you don’t score enough points and reach the end of a level, you have to start over. Since I wasn’t killing very many enemies at all, I wasn’t finding hidden notes or scoring enough points.

Music notes, like the one pictured here, score the most points of anything in the game by far. AND they restore life. AND they give you temporary invincibility. AND they give you an extra life. Seriously, it does all that, all at once. Mind you, there is no extra life item OR temporary invincible item, so it’s not like the note combines four in-game items. That would be cool. The fact that this restores health AND does three other things? It’s just so random. This is like how an imbecile designs a video game.

And sometimes slaying enemies opens up hidden platforms or reveals items, including the insanely overpowered musical notes. Except, killing them with your magic almost never does it. Only the butt stomp works. There’s no bosses and the end of stages lack any climatic feel. The closest the game comes to that is having a wave of basic enemies spawn when you reach the final fairy of the final stage. The fairies are also haphazardly done. Sometimes touching one takes you to another part of the stage. Sometimes it means the door is AROUND where you’re at. Hell, on the first stage, I even collected one of the fairies.. somehow. I don’t even think it did anything, either. So, after putting in over two play sessions since last night in Fantasia, while Fantasia isn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, I feel comfortable calling it the worst game Sega has ever published. As for Atari, formerly Infogrames, seriously, go to your room. You’re grounded. I know nobody there today probably had anything to do with Fantasia, but I don’t really care. Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.

Any game with bad collision and spongy enemies should probably avoid spamming the whole screen with enemies. That’s Fantasia’s go-to move, and they always tend to cluster-up no matter where they start on the screen.

Calling Fantasia on the Sega Genesis “historically inept” doesn’t feel like it does it justice. It’s clearly a game designed with little more in mind than looking good in advertisements and disgustingly invoking the previous year’s incredible Castle of Illusion release. That game? Very good. Fantasia? One of the worst platform games ever made. A title that does nothing right except look the part. And the “looking the part” crosses the line into being genuinely morally reprehensible because it’s trying to imply a relationship or even sequel-status to Castle of Illusion. Castle of Illusion was fine-tuned to the point that it felt scientific. A literal “fun for all ages” release that could cast the widest possible net for the Sega Genesis while it was in start-up. If you looked at it and Castle of Illusion side-by-side, it sure seems like Fantasia is trying to appear be a direct sequel, does it not?

The object of the game is NOT to reach the end of levels, but to first score X amount of points AND THEN finish the level. Each stage has a minimum scoring baseline you must reach, or you have to start over.

I reject the excuse that Fantasia’s problems came from the holiday release window time crunch. It shouldn’t take that long for one person to raise their hand and say “this isn’t fun” or “why are the collision boxes so big that Mickey takes damage from enemies over a character length away?” I just checked this with a stopwatch. It takes three seconds to raise that objection. My apologies if someone did raise their hand, only whoever was in charge rejected it. That might have happened. The project manager hasn’t done a game since 1996. Good. Fantasia is nearly unplayable. From the “score X points” premise to the level design to the shockingly massive collision boxes to the way combat is handled to the enemy placement to the movement physics.. EVERYTHING is bad. Screw it. EVEN THE GRAPHICS AREN’T GOOD! It has decent sprite work, but when visibility is often a major factor, what good is a sprite clear enough to say “yep, that sure is Mickey Mouse.”

I really don’t get the whole “at least it looks good” bit. Castle of Illusion? Now THAT looks good and there’s no visibility issues. Here, I often couldn’t tell what was a platform and what wasn’t.

Fantasia is a laundry list of bad design choices. I’m going with the collision detection as the worst part, because it’s truly shocking. I’m talking about collision boxes so large they need to be measured in the percentage of screen they cover. They’re not consistent either. Sometimes jumping over enemies or ducking under them is viable. Sometimes they can cause damage by hitting the corner of your box just by being in your general vicinity on your side of the screen. Take a look at this:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And here it is in motion.

Since Fantasia relies on spamming the screen with enemies, this is sort of important. Even once I discovered the butt stomp, I was stunned by how the game typically programs enemies to deal with this. First off, enemies are INSANELY spongy. Some of them take several bounces to slay. Also, since most of them tend to sort of move upwards, when you butt stomp them and they keep rising up, you’re likely to take damage if you try to finish them in one motion. The only other options are limited magical projectiles, or “spells.” You can cast two tiers of spells: strong (which cost 3 magic points) and weak (which cost 1). They should really be labeled “weak” and “weaker” because even the ones that cost 3 points aren’t enough to finish the majority of enemies.

Oh god, I forgot to write about the movement. QUICK, CATHY! Six Flags is waiting!

Yea, I forgot to do a bit on the movement. Well, it’s sluggish and unresponsive. Turning around is a chore. This is further compounded by often having the platforms themselves have a little bit of give to them, like they’re unstable. You know, sort of like I am after playing this game. In a game that’s this centered around combat with enemies, many of whom move erratically, having just the act of turning around and starting to move be an exercise in patience feels like it wasn’t the wisest choice. After a certain point, I have to ask if anyone making this had even a tiny lick of fun, or were they just really angry at the world while they made Fantasia?

The magic books give you ammo, though even this seems inconsistent. Most of the time, I’d get 3 points from them, but sometimes I swear I’d only get 1. Same with the life refills.

The story goes that, after Fantasia the game was rushed out to make the 1991 holiday release, Disney apologized to Sega, saying that Fantasia’s license had been granted to Sega by accident. See, Fantasia, the 1940 motion picture, was Walt and Roy O. Disney’s baby. Roy E. Disney, son of Roy O. and gatekeeper of the Disney legacy, was dead set against Disney licensing Fantasia to anyone. Disney apparently gave Sega an extended deal as a make-good. Either way, the unsold inventory was pulled. Part of me wonders if that still would have happened if Fantasia had been a halfway decent game that got Castle of Illusion levels of critical acclaim.

I actually did finish Fantasia without cheating on NORMAL difficulty the second go around. My reward? This. That’s it. There’s not even a credit roll. It really screams of a rush job made by clowns. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to rush to this review’s conclusion so I can go ride roller coasters.

This is Disney game #18 on this marathon I’m on, and this is easily the worst. It might actually be the worst holiday release in gaming history. And, unlike some bad games, it’s not even worth fixing Fantasia. Even if they tweaked the collision boxes, the enemies are too spongy. Even if you removed the sponginess, the levels are boringly designed. After a certain point, so many things need to be fixed that you might as well tear it down and start over again. You’d think the one thing a Fantasia game would get right is the music, but these chip tune versions of the film’s famous orchestral arrangements are some of the worst in gaming history. The soundtrack sounds like a synthesizer is trying to die and it just can’t.
Verdict: NO!
I recommend Playing at the Next Level: A History of American Sega Games by Ken Horowitz. Among other things, it contains the history of this piece of crap.