Hi, I'm presenting a TAS of Fantasy Zone 2 for Sega Master System.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.7.4
In this game, the player's goal is to knock out all the stational enemies and access the red warp to fight the boss. However, unlike other Fantasy Zone entries, the stages are separated into few submaps connected with warp. As some stages aren't linear, backtracking is unavoidable and the player must consider the shortest path.
Another distinct feature of this game is that the shops don't have all the items in the first place. Each shop has only six of them; usually the higher the stage number is, the better. Sometimes there're more then one shop in the stage, so I had to visit them frequently on the way to upgrade the equipment.
Speaking of which, most of weapons and bombs in this game are useless because they have fairly short time limit and unlike Super Fantasy Zone, you can't buy and stock them more than twice. Also, if you're out of ammo, the game will switch your equipment to default even if you have better weapons in your hand, which means you have to waste more time on shop just to manually change the weapons. So only effective weapons are Big Shot that has no time limit and twice as stronge as default weapon, and Fireball that kills anything which it touches but has very short time limit (10 seconds).
A thing that bothered me the most in this run, though, is that this game's got lots of lags thanks to a number of objects on the screen. Thus, one must consider to shoot and remove objects to reduce lags, but not so many because it'll take too much time to do so.
"Over-scrolling glitch" is what I found during the production of this run. Basically, if you have Turbo Engine or faster one, going one way and briefly pushing the opposite direction makes the screen move too fast, eventually passing your plane. While this makes player teleport to other side of the screen, you have to wait the screen roll at least a second, which is quite a huge loss. So practical usage of it was only in stage Wolfin, where I have to pin at the edge of the screen to shoot one of the bosses in proper position.
Pastaria
A shop here sells Twin Bomb and Normal Engine that cost 3200$ in total. Enemies here drop 500$ bill, so shooting down six of them and collecting a coin from a flock of small ones barely makes the price (500*6+250=3250). The boss fight is pretty much a joke.
Sarcand
There're numerous lags on this stage and Normal Engine isn't fast enough to make object dissapear. Therefore, I had to kill enemies or collect money to decrease the lags.
The boss has six bodies to take off. Removing the upper part first is a lot easier to deal with.
Hiyarika
I visited two shops in this stage. In first one, I bought Jet Engine to boost faster and Laser Beam because it's less laggy and deals a little more damage than default. Later I exchanged this with Big Shot in hidden shop for it's better in the long term.
Interestingly, boss here has a health divided into 15 levels, which alters its graphic as it takes damage. Other than that, nothing special.
Bow Bow
Bought Turbo Engine for even faster speed. Lag management was quite awful here. The boss in this stage also has a health divided with levels, but massive shots and bombing killed him in a second.
Chaprun
The first stage I used Fireball because it has suitable enemies position to utilize it. What I did here is basically money grinding, shooting one Fireball and follow what it left behind on its way. The sum of money I collected here and leftover from previous stages is enough to purchase the best equipments in this game: Rocket Engine and Twin Big Bomb. Luckily, with this set, it's possible to take the boss down in one phase.
Fuwareak
There isn't much things to say here, just lots of lots of lag management.
Sbardian
Here I bought Fireball and increase the time limit with secret clock item, which allows me to carry this item to the last stage. Also, the boss fight here is a lot simple with Fireball.
Wolfin
This stage's supposed to be the last challange where the player must confront all the bosses without any extra HP recovery, but the existence of Fireball makes this stage unintentionally hilarious. Even the final boss doesn't stand a chance.
Special thank goes to Sonikkustar, whose Super Fantasy Zone speedrun made me interested in this series.
Suggest screenshot
3737
turska: Audience feedback is mixed with 8 Yes votes and 3 Meh votes. The levels, while fast, are somewhat boring, but the boss fights are great.
I think the highly entertaining boss fights with good stylistic decisions are characteristic of a Moons TAS, and outweigh the lesser entertainment of the levels. As such, I'm accepting this submission for publication into Moons.