It’s time once again for our weekly dose of nostalgic goodness with the Virtual Console, as we get Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa from the Sega Master System, the sequel to Sega’s bright colored shooter. Here’s what we think about it!

Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Original Release Date: 1987
Cost: 500 Wii Points.

Christopher Bowen: What else is there to say? If you like Fantasy Zone – and I mean, really like – then you’ll want this. Otherwise, if you’ve played one, you’ve played them all, and the original Fantasy Zone is on the Ultimate Genesis Collection for anyone that has any other system.

If you’re a Fantasy Zone fan, the $5 price tag is nice. But again: it’s getting a bit tiresome to be waiting a week, then getting just another sequel for the Master System.

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Mark B.: Woo!

Alright, let’s get this out of the way up-front: Fantasy Zone 2 is a MAJOR upgrade from the first game. It’s ultimately still a shooter in a colorful fantasy world, and it’s ultimately about a walking spaceship with wings, but it’s a far superior game to the first entry in the series. For those who are familiar with the first game, most of the basic mechanics are the same: you blow up monsters to earn cash, invest this cash into upgrades for your ship at shops in the level, and once you’ve killed all of the main stationary monsters, you go fight a boss.

Fantasy Zone 2 changes this up in a couple of notable ways, though. First off, some of the large stationary monsters you have to kill hide transportation portals that can take you to new locations in the zone with more monsters to kill, which can double or triple the length of some stages compared to the first game. Second, shops no longer float into the zone sporadically, but are instead stationary in some sections of each stage, so you can visit them whenever you want. Third, many of the items Opa-Opa used to have a timed amount of use of are now permanent until death, and there are a few more items to choose from for obliterating monsters, so there’s a little more to the actual “shooting things until they’re dead” formula from the first game.

Otherwise, the game is essentially similar to the first game, so if you didn’t like the original Fantasy Zone, you won’t like this, and I feel very bad for you. If you don’t own any versions of the game, this is pretty much the version to buy, though, and if you like Fantasy Zone, well, Fantasy Zone 2 is pretty fantastic.

Now here’s hoping we never, ever see Fantasy Zone 3: The Maze. Woof.

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Wii Ware this week features Water Warfare an FPS with a water pistol flair. Silver Star Reversi and Reel Fishing Challenge (Does it seem like fishing games are always coming out? I mean there are only three, but it seems like more. I don’t know.) round out the rest of the week. Whatever you choose this week, have fun with it!