Fantasy Land

Fantasy Land is Hard Head 2's slightly less deranged Italian cousin. Like Hard Head 2, you play an ugly little boy who must fight more and more perplexing foes in order to rescue a girl, though in this case you are at least a slightly deformed elf rather than a bald simpleton in overalls. With a variety of magic fireballs you must fight ooga booga tribesmen, leatherboys, killer plants and various other weird creatures as you go through seemingly random settings, from a typical fantasy forest all the way to a more modern city and factory. Despite some hideous character design, Fantasy Land has an appealingly different look and feel to its graphics, more like a gussied-up pc game instead of the usual colorful, rounded sprites of its japanese counterparts. The game also controls fairly decently and plays fairly, though frustratingly at points. At times it feels less than solid, in a sort of floaty Alex Kidd way. Overall, though, a fairly decent game, nothing too special but not as horrible as the ugly characters had me fearing.