Fantasia

• Title — Fantasia • Developer — Infogrames • Publisher — Sega • Designer — Didier Chanfray, Jean-Jacques Poncet, Philippe Agripnidis • Programmer — Richard Bottet, Thibault Lepoutre • Artist — Didier Chanfray • Composer — Frederic Metzen • Genre — Platform • Modes — Single-player • Series — Fantasia • Platforms — Genesis

The player controls Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice through various side-scrolling levels in an attempt to collect musical notes that went missing while he was asleep. The four levels are based on amalgamations of the segments of Fantasia, with each one themed around the elements: water (The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Dance of the Hours), earth (The Rite of Spring, The Sorcerer's Apprentice), air (Pastoral Symphony, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Russian Dance, Dance of the Hours) and fire (Night on Bald Mountain, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor). The player defeats various enemies by jumping on them or by collecting magical bubbles that can be used to shoot at enemies as projectiles. In each level, the player collects a certain number of hidden magical notes for the song to play once again.

Sega was inspired to create the game, by the success of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and by the 50th anniversary of the 1940 film Fantasia. Development began in January 1990. Sega producer Scott Berfield, and Stephan L. Butler, monitored Infogrames's development to ensure a faithful adaptation. The development team consisted of six people who lacked experience in developing console games. With pressure toward the holiday shopping rush and from the mid-year release of Sonic the Hedgehog, time to develop the game was tight. It was difficult to replicate the animation and music quality of the film to the 16-bit console. By May, Sega presented Fantasia at the Consumer Electronics Show and soon was showcased at the Tec Toy launch. With no time to tweak the gameplay, the game was shipped for the holiday season. Sega's head of product development Ken Belthaser noted that the publisher "need[ed] games in the pipeline, especially big licenses", but came to regret the decision of a rushed release, saying "the game was just simply unplayable" and the gameplay issues could have been solved with two extra months of development. The release of Fantasia was met with complaints by Roy E. Disney, who had made a promise to his uncle Walt that Fantasia adaptions would not be made. The licensing turned out to have been granted in error. Sales of the game were to stop, each of the approximately 5,000 unsold copies was to be destroyed, and every advertisement about the game was to be removed.