Fantasia (1991)

The tagline? "Walt Disney's 16-bit Feature Failure".

Fantasia, also known as Fantasia 1991 or Fantasia: The Game, is a side-scrolling platforming game for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1991. It was developed by Infogrames and published by Sega.

The game was loosely based on the 1940 Disney movie of the same name and made to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

## Development

Following the massive success of Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, Sega decided to make another game starring Disney mascot Mickey Mouse. They saw that Disney was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Fantasia by rereleasing in theaters that year and they wanted to make a game to capitalize on that event. They saw that the movie was going to be released on home video in November 1991 so they made the deadline to release the game then. Scott Berfield and Stephan L. Butler of Sega of America decided that instead of developing the game in house at Sega, they decided to hire French-based company Infogrames to develop the game for them. The team was pressured by the November 1991 deadline and the summer release of the original Sonic the Hedgehog to develop the game, and the game was rushed to meet the VHS release of the film.

## Gameplay

Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice must go through various side-scrolling levels in an attempt to collect musical notes that somehow went missing while he was asleep.

## Why It's No Hot Dog

1. The controls are delayed and sluggish, especially noticeable when attacking and jumping.
2. Unbelievably horrendous level design, many times it is impossible to evade obstacles, the enemies change patterns at random, and at other times it's insanely hard not to enter secret zones by touching fairies, and the level design gets worse as you progress.
3. Sometimes Mickey looks forward, but when you try to use the spell, he turns around and shoots backward.
4. Many times bonus areas throw you to the starting point of the stage.
5. The controls for underwater stages are absolutely abysmal: unlike in Castle of Illusion where you had to tap a button to quickly assent, this game makes you hold down the C button so Mickey can slowly ascent or descent, and to rub salt into the wound, every time Mickey turns around he lowers his altitude automatically, making avoiding enemies a nightmare.
6. Many of the notes are found by accident, and at worst you never know how many there are in every stage.
7. Many times the necessary items and platforms to progress are invisible until you collect another item, you jump to a specific platform, or kill an enemy.
8. The game requires very precise platforming, similar to The Wizard of Oz for SNES.
9. Awkward controls. For example, you have to press down on the D-pad to kill enemies while jumping on them. If you don't, you take damage.
	* There aren't even any indications that Mickey has successfully stomped the enemy.
10. The enemy behavior is inconsistent at times, worst yet it seems that sometimes standing in some certain spots can cause them to change their pattern.
11. No invincibility frames, which results in cheap deaths.
12. Dreadful hit detection, there are times when Mickey doesn't take damage even if he clearly made contact with an enemy.
13. Your main weapon is a shooting spell, but you run out of them quickly and the game is very stingy about giving more, it is also similar to The Wizard of Oz for SNES, worse yet most enemies take two shots or more to kill, making the small spell useless.
14. Every area is absolutely packed with enemies trying to kill you, even worse is their placement seems to be random.
15. Unholy graphical layouts: all because of the fact that they get in the way of players, not allowing them to see enemies or obstacles. At times they don't allow you to see part of the stage, and sometimes hazards like moving sand and impossible to differentiate from normal terrain, or in worst cases you don't realize what is a platform or what isn't.
16. There are only four main levels in the game, with about two or three extra bonus levels in each stage, making the game very short.
17. You have to collect at least an exact number of musical notes in each level. If you fail, you have to start the level all over again.
	* This is blatant padding designed to extend the game to make up for its short length. The game should only take about a half hour to complete, but forgetting to collect musical notes pads out the game in the most annoying way possible.
	* In fairness, there are games that are built around this like Super Mario 64 or A Hat in Time, but in those games, it's actually fun and challenging to collect the collectibles in Super Mario 64 and in A Hat in Time, in Fantasia, it's just tedious.
18. There are no bosses in this entire game.
19. Bad renditions of the classical pieces of music that were chosen for the film, which is inexcusable considering that the film has the single greatest soundtrack in cinema history, and there are Genesis games that have better renditions of classical music.
	* Toccata and Fugue in D minor sounds like an 8-bit music trying to be 16-bit. It makes Dark Castle's rendition of the piece sound like a masterpiece.
	* The Nutcracker sounds slower and is high-pitched ear rape.
	* The Sorcerer's Apprentice sounds lower-pitched and it sounds like electronic farts.
	* The Rite of Spring sounds like a bassoon being submerged in a bucket of water.
	* The Pastoral Symphony sounds like a bunch of darts being thrown on a electric keyboard.
	* The Dance of the Hours sounds like a plastic pipe being banged on a guitar string.
	* Night on Bald Mountain sounds like someone who has explosive diarrhea.
20. On the topic of the OST, the classical pieces were renamed to stupid names for no discernible reason.
	* The Sorcerer's Apprentice was renamed Castle Storage Room an the other part of the song was renamed Castle Lake.
	* The Dance of the Hours was renamed Greek Temple and Wreaked Ship: Twilight Zone.
	* The Pastoral Symphony was renamed Interdimensional Zone.
	* Toccata and Fugue in D minor was renamed Alternate Magma Chamber.
	* The Nutcracker was retitled Land of Mythology.
	* The Rite of Spring was retitled Prehistoric Jungle.
	* Night on Bald Mountain was retitled Underground Magma Chamber.
21. Beyond underwhelming ending.
22. The final level has dark sections where you cannot see the platforms.
23. To finish the final level you basically must do an enemy rush.
24. The game was rushed for the Christmas market and was left in a pretty unfinished state.

## Reception

The game was poorly received, with MegaTech magazine saying the game was "a massive disappointment. Poorly designed, bland and frustrating, with very little appeal." Mega placed the game at #6 in their list of the 10 Worst Mega Drive Games of All Time.

The game is also believed to have been a commercial failure as it sold roughly 5000 copies.

Joueur du Grenier reviewed the game in an episode and panned its terribly-rendered music, clumsy gameplay, awkward platforming, and difficulty. He criticised how Mickey's jumping is unnecessarily delayed just to show off the anticipation movement in the animation: "Ils ont niqué le gameplay, mais c'est pas grave, l'important c'est que la souris magicienne qui parle, là, elle saute de manière réaliste ! " He also complained about foreground objects that hide the screen and can make Mickey take damage, comparing it to inserting heads of audience members in front of a movie screen.

He considers it to be one of the worst games he's ever tried, having even ranked it in the highest category divine purge on his tier list of rotten games.

## Controversy

After the game was released, Infogrames, who developed the game, figured out that Sega actually didn't own the rights to the Fantasia name, because they were put off by licensing costs. They attempted to recall all copies, but not before Disney figured out and sued them. This lead to all copies being recalled and Sega was never allowed to produce more than the initial shipment of 1,000 copies. This is often believed to be the reason why Disney Interactive was founded.