of a last remaining enemy, eventually that enemy will disappear without an award of points. If, however, Ptolemy takes too long to clear more than one enemy from the level, a flying devil, named Horned, appears to kill Ptolemy. The devil is invulnerable to Ptolemy's magic, and the only way to survive is for Ptolemy to kill all remaining enemies. Ptolemy's deaths are animated in different ways, depending on the enemy who kills her. She can sometimes collect some utility bonuses which increase her power and range of her magic for a short while or offensive bonuses that, most usually, result in the cake-ification and destruction of all on-screen enemies. At various intervals between levels, an intermission screen appears during the game showing Ptolemy riding on the back of a large, wingless blue dragon named Rodemy. A message appears on each of these intermission screens, either congratulating the player or warning of some hazard in the next level. Development and release The Fairyland Story was released by Taito in Japan in July 1985 and in North America later that year. It was designed by Hiroshi "ONIJUST" Tsujino, best known for designing The Ninja Warriors, with music composed by Tadashi Kimijima. While working at Taito's Yokohama Institute, Tsujino drafted an idea for a game where the player had to defeat enemies by crushing them under large cakes, which he claims to be partly inspired by his addiction to Namco's Dig Dug. Early versions of the game were said to have been "monotonous" and left Tsujino largely unhappy with the outcome — being inspired by Broderbund's Lode Runner for the Apple II, he gave the game a larger emphasis on strategy and memorization, featuring reworked stage designs. The game's final boss took a week to complete. Executives at Taito were against the idea of the game having an ending and demanded that the team remove it, however Tsujino ignored their request. Conversions An MSX port, developed and published by Hot-B, was released around 1987. This port featured new stages not found in the arcade version. The port also featured two new enemies, the Iron Golem, which is the same as the Golem enemy but immune to Ptolemy's magic, and Fleck, an enemy that can use the same magic as Ptolemy. Later, a Sharp X68000 port was developed and published by SPS, and was released around 1991. Unlike the MSX port, however, this