The Sega Ages ports are going from strength to strength recently, especially on the Nintendo Switch. We’ve been treated to ports of Phantasy Star, OutRun, and Virtua Racing, to name a few.
As of today, that list has just grown with the addition of two quality titles, Shinobi and Fantasy Zone. I had both of these as a kid and, in fact, still own them both on their native consoles or at least one of the many they were ported to back in the day.
This won’t stop me from playing them again on the Switch, and you can expect to see reviews for them just as soon as I manage to put the console down for enough time to write something legible.
Should you wish to play for yourselves while you wait for my earth-shattering reviews, both games are on the eShop at the cost of $7.99 each. Just make sure to make some room on your memory card as the Shinobi download comes in at 72mb, and the Fantasy Zone one comes in at 81.
I almost had to decline these reviews as I didn’t have space.
Either game is a worthy addition to anyone’s collection and another feather in the cap of the Sega Ages series. Shinobi follows ninjutsu master Joe (I laugh every time) as he tries to rescue children from the evil ZEED crime syndicate.
The side-scrolling, shuriken throwing platformer has been a long-standing favorite for many Sega fans. If you found this game difficult in the day, don’t panic as there are several quality of life additions. None of which I’ll be using, but they will undoubtedly prove helpful for some.
Ages mode provides the player with extra health and damage, as well as giving options for the difficulty and a stage select. Plus, as is par for the course, you can rewind time, meaning there is now no excuse not to rescue the children.
On the other hand, you could always play Fantasy Zone. The first-ever cute-em-up. It’s effectively a nice and colorful shoot-em-up that I remember being fairly challenging back in the day. I’ll let you know soon if that still holds true today.
If the difficulty does prove too much, though, the Sega Ages version comes with a coin stick option to assist newcomers as well as a time attack mode that brings an extra challenge and additional bosses.
I’m fairly excited to play both of these and am looking forward to bringing you my verdict. In the meantime, let us know your memories of either game in the comments and be sure to let us know what games you’d like to see in the Sega Ages collection in the future.
