fantasy (thing)

Fantasy was an old arcade game released by Rock-Ola way back in 1981.

Rock-Ola was a jukebox manufacturer, they had been for years, and I am fairly sure they are still cranking them out today. I even have a Rock-Ola model 446 sitting in my living room (albeit a very dead, completely non-functional Rock-Ola 446). In 1981 arcade games were the hottest thing to hit the coin op market since the coin mech itself. Jukebox sales were down, and Rock-Ola decided to start making arcade games just to stay competitive.

Unfortunately they weren't willing to put out the cash to license the big name Japanese titles, and they simply didn't have the programming staff to create good titles of their own. So most of their games ended up being pretty darn bad (with the notable exception of Nibbler). This particular title was licensed from SNK which would have been the arcade equivalent of Hyundai at the time.

In Fantasy you are supposed to rescue your girlfriend from pirates. Now this is a fairly time honored concept that most gamers understand. I have found that the "Big Bad" in most games (and many novels) is motivated by lust for the hero's girlfriend. Poor Princess Toadstool has probably never gone more than a week without getting kidnapped, but Cheri from Fantasy wasn't nearly as inspiring and thus this is the only time she is ever kidnapped.

The game actually begins on Fantasy Island. Now I know you will probably be expecting to see Tattoo saying "De plane, De plane!!", but you will have no such luck. Instead you are greeted with a pirate ship that kidnaps Cheri and takes off with her.

So you must chase after her. Now I would personally take a hot air balloon if I had to chase a pirate ship. Apparently our hero feels the same way, and the first sequence is a terribly bad rip off of Lunar Lander where you have to land your balloon on the pirate ship. I ran out of men trying to pass this sequence, and so will you.

If you actually succeed at landing on the ship then you get to fight some pirates, and then watch your girlfriend get kidnapped by a giant bird. After that comes more balloon flying (where you must avoid flying birds and coconuts thrown by a Donkey Kong clone. If you somehow make it past that, then the game has rip offs of Kangaroo, Jungle King, and a bland shooter remniscent of King and Balloon to greet you (along with another unbelievable kidnap).

This game is Gorf gone wrong. They just ripped random bits out of other games and tossed them together. It almost worked when Gorf did it, but this is just a mess. Avoid at all costs.

The only saving grace of this game was that it came in the fairly attractive, and fairly generic Rock-Ola cabinet. This is actually one of my favorite classic cabinets.

The marquee to this title shows a monkey giving two thumbs up, along with a couple of hot air balloons. SNK really had a thing for hot air balloons, as they were featured in a lot of their early games.

The monitor bezel and control panel overlay just had some generic green graphics, the same ones used for all Rock-Ola titles.

This title used a blazing fast m6502 processor clocked at one megahertz.

You can play the original arcade version using the MAME emulator, but you won't want to, go play Robotron 2084 instead.

This game is not fun and I can't really recommend this one for adding to your arcade game collection. The gameplay quickly becomes is downright stupid, and you would probably find that your spanking new Fantasy machine would quickly begin collecting dust. Of course I would buy one if it was like $50 or something, as terrible games like this tend to be in excellent condition, so it would look good in my living room.