As a child who was born in 1990, it was pretty much a given that I would be raised on Disney. As an adult, I have a huge appreciation for their animated films and how well they are made. This was less of a case when I was child, because this was the standard I was raised on and I was there for the adventure and humour, even if a lot of it went over my head. Even though films like Aladdin, Lion King and Beauty and the Beast being contemporary examples of things I saw in my formative years, I enjoyed a lot of the older films, Robin Hood, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp. I was also fortunate enough as a child to have Satellite TV and access to the Disney Channel, and watched a lot of classic Mickey, Goofy and Donald Duck cartoons and specials. Something I don’t remember watching, or if I did, I must have scrubbed from my memory… Was Fantasia. Fantasia was released in 1940, and was met with critical acclaim and by some it was called a masterpiece of animation. Child me probably would have hated Fantasia, beyond the sorcerer’s apprentice animation, I wouldn’t have understood what it was or how technically impressive the entire experience was, combining iconic classical musical movements with Disney’s animation prowess.
So, you might be wondering why I bring this up, I feel this context is important, perhaps not necessarily for me, but for the general wider experience of the Fantasia Game. Do not get me wrong, this game regardless of your sensibilities, is a pretty awful time, but I can’t imagine how much this would be a punch in the gut for those that enjoyed the film Fantasia. There is a myriad of gaming sins going on here, which create a symphony of disaster for this game. Let’s start with, what I can only assume is, the main draw for a Fantasia game. The music. Typically, I feel very unqualified to discuss gaming music from the 8 and 16-bit era, or music in general. My understanding of the limitations of the sound chips for consoles is non-existent. I won’t get too hyperbolic on the music, that has been done to death, it’s all bad from the strange almost farty noises you hear in the Pastoral or the donking of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, if you got this game because you appreciate classical music, you might be reevaluating your life choices. This being said, The Genesis is a console that has a pretty distinct sound and vibe to it where background music is concerned and I don’t know how well it would be able to replicate the orchestral sounds on its sound chip, this could very much be the developers doing the best with what they were given... Making a game, based on a film where the music is one of the biggest draws, I would say you need to make that element work above all else and this, almost hilariously, misses the mark. I’d be curious to see what people can do with the same tools and timeframes that infogrames had for Fantasia.
It is easy to harp on about how bad the music is, but it really is just the tip of the iceberg, there are so many more heinous things going on in front of you and behind the scenes. The game doesn’t control well for starters, it feels stiff, and Mickey also moves slowly. The latter part wouldn’t be so bad if other game elements moved at similar speed or in a consistent manner. Unlike a game like, Super Mario, each encounter with an enemy in Fantasia will be different. What I mean by this is that, in Mario, when you see a Goomba, you know how it will move and how it will react with the environment. Talking about Koopas is probably a better example. Green and Red Koopas are essentially the same enemy with a minor tweak to their behaviour, but when you see them, you know how they will react when they reach the edge of a platform. They move in predictable manners, allowing level designers to make challenges where you must use your understanding of these behaviours. Some of Fantasia’s enemies will move in very erratic patterns, contrary to how they might have moved in other instances. A good example of this is the flying enemies, there are plenty of instances where they move, slowly, in a straight line. But other times, t
hey might move in an odd figure of eight, and at a speed where it can be difficult or near impossible to react. It feels less like a well-designed challenge, and more like a being kicked when you are expecting a punch. You’ll know better next time you reach that specific moment, but until you are committed that to memory, you’ll keep getting kicked.
Staying on enemies for a moment, they are unreasonably spongy, even on the easy setting, and Mickey’s offensive capabilities in this game are very lacklustre. Firstly, you have magic spells, saying it like that makes it sound like you have an arsenal, no, you have two spells, a “small” spell and a “big” spell. They use 1 and 3 points of magic each. Getting additional points of magic requires you to touch flying books and you will get, what seems to be, an indeterminate number of magic points each time. I think it is consistent with each encounter with a book, but honestly it feels semi random, sometimes giving you 3 or 4 points and sometimes giving you 1. The spells themselves are pathetic in terms of damage output. You sometimes need to use multiple small spells on weaker enemies meaning you might accidentally burn through your magic points very quickly. You can also jump on enemies, and I suppose as a weird throwback to Castle of Illusion, you need to hold the down button the controller to jump on and bounce off enemies. In Castle of Illusion, you had to press the jump button in mid-air to do a jump attack, the difference there being that when you press the jump button a second time, Mickey’s sprite changes from a normal jump to one where he readies his butt for bouncing action. Fantasia Mickey doesn’t do this, and chances are you won’t know you need to do this, so first time you’ll jump into enemies instead of bouncing off them. Going back to their sponginess, you would be forgiven if you didn’t realise you were doing damage to the enemies by bouncing off them. Some enemies in the game require upwards of 5 or 6 bounces to defeat, and if that is the case you better hope their movement pattern isn’t one that moves upwards, as you might take damage as they rise underneath you after a bounce. I should note that the hit boxes in this game do not play fair either, they seem wider than the actual enemy sprites, and whilst this can be annoying, there are some instances where you can use this to your advantage. I didn’t notice that much hitbox jankiness, but I understand it is problematic and a common complaint.
It's not just enemies that have it in for you, platforming itself can be a very frustrating exercise, platforms also seem to behave in a similar way to enemies, in that the movements are not always smooth or logical, or they will just fall down soon after landing on it, not giving you the time to think about the next jump. I believe the game manual does say because you are in a dream, anything could happen, as if that is a good enough explanation for questionable decisions. The manual even says if an area looks inaccessible try jumping around for invisible platforms! Enemies and items can also be triggers to spawn platforms, or items, or even more enemies, it can all come across as somewhat random. In fact, an early broom enemy, if you let him walk to the start of the first level and kill him there, it causes things to spawn near the level start. If you kill him near where he starts and go back, those items won’t be there. I only know about this because I read it online and was regarding as one of the only “cheats” for this game, besides a 1-up exploit to max out lives early, and I would recommend doing that one as you will haemorrhage lives. The exploit involves doing a loop on the second section of the first world, allowing you to pick up a note, which gives you an extra life and a health boost too.
So, there are lots of design issues going on, but there is something that actually just left me speechless and confused. Now for context, I played this game as part of my “Master of the Mouse” challenge, playing all the Mickey Mouse games on RetroAchievements and getting all achievements. One of the achievements was to beat the levels on hard mode. Having seen some gameplay footage in the past, I knew that there was a condition that needed to be met to beat each level, but I couldn’t find much information online for it. I downloaded a scan of the instruction manual of the game and had a deep dive into that. So, to clear a stage in Fantasia, you need to hit a certain score during the level, you get points by collecting things and killing enemies, simple, right? Well, when you change difficulties, the score require gets higher, again, that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that the value of the pickups is different on difficulties. They are higher on hard than on easy, by a factor of three times. So an item worth 200 points on easy is worth 600 points on hard. The target scores for the difficulties are not scaled in the same way, meaning that on a higher difficulty you need to collect less items and make it to the end of the level than you would on easy. This makes easy mode harder to a certain extent, as you will need to go into some of the games more dangerous sub areas to get the items to gain the score you need. This isn’t to say that hard mode is easy, enemies have more health and do more damage and Mickey’s invulnerability frames after being damaged are seemingly non-existent, this means you’ll be leaking health and lives. The score modifiers are just a baffling alteration, it would be like having a Pokémon game where there was a hard mode that bumped up the level of trainer Mons, but gave a permanent EXP increase, thus reducing the grind time for major encounters.
Believe it or not, there would be more that we can say about the faults of Fantasia, as I haven’t really touched on the graphics and how foreground elements will hide things like items or obstruct your view whilst platforming, or how just unappealing the game looks. Some of the sprite work is somewhat humourous, the dinosaurs in the Rite of Spring level are some of my favourites. If the film Fantasia was called “An Aesthetic experience never to be forgotten” by Art Digest, or an “overwhelmingly ambitious orgy of colour, sound and imagination” by the Chicago Tribune. I wonder what we could say about Fantasia for Genesis. It certainly is an orgy of something, odd and poor design choices, and certainly an experience I will not forget. To some extent I wish this was a game that I could say that if you can stomach the poor music you’d be in for a somewhat fun ride. Though in that sense it probably would have gone by as a mediocre game, which in my opinion is a far worse rating for a game than excellent or terrible. This game is an experience, but in a similar way that fire is a good way to rid your house of spiders. There is little joy to find in Fantasia for Genesis and I can point to at least 30 other Mickey Mouse games I have played in the last 3 months that I would happily return to, and that includes the educational ones.
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