Sound Fantasy

Review by Nathan Eveland

An interesting, educational, and music-oriented game that never saw the light of day.

Sound Fantasy, due to arrive in a larger game box (the size similar to the EarthBound’ or Mario Paint boxes), was to come packed in with the SNES mouse and mouse pad. Developed by Nintendo, this interesting-looking title was probably scheduled to be released early 1992 (around Mario Paint, which debuted on May 12th of that year), but obviously Mario Paint was the one released. It would have been silly to have two separate games both with the SNES Mouse packed in, and I’m sure the Nintendo workers were wondering whether a musically-oriented game would sell on their 16-bit system.

It would appear that they decided to go with the more “general” (and mascot-endorsed) Mario Paint to launch the Mouse peripheral. Perhaps the musical elements we saw in that game were actually derived from Sound Fantasy?

The text contained on both the front and back covers of the would-be game box is small, very blurry, and nearly completely unreadable, so we’ll have to look elsewhere for information on this cancelled game. One of the few descriptions I could find of it was featured on rottentomatoes.com:

“Now you can unleash your inner composer thanks to Sound Fantasy for the Super Nintendo. Comprised of four unique games, this software package will have you creating beautiful music in no time, thanks to its intuitive interface and simple premise. Craft exciting melodies and interesting illustrations with Pix Quartet, play against the clock and beat out the music in Beat Hopper, create beautiful harmonies with the stars in Star Fly, and use Ice Sweeper to improve your coordination skills. No matter which game you choose, the power to produce original music is in your hands with Sound Fantasy.”

Interesting indeed. It’s a shame that Sound Fantasy was canned as the Super Nintendo never had any games in the music genre, and no other console truly saw a music game until Sony’s Playstation some years later. I would have really liked to give it a try.

As the title implies, it just might have been the Sound Fantasy we were all looking for.

The game was displayed at the fall 1993 Shoshin Kai.