The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Thunder Force II MD
The English-language version of a Japanese PC classic debuted as a Genesis/Mega Drive launch title. It's still a lot of fun today!
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Technōsoft
BEST VERSIONS: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Highly playable
I suppose I should have included the 1983 Sharp X1 game Thunder Force and its X68000 1987 sequel Thunder Force II in the first volume of this series, but neither met my criterion of being games that have ever been readily available to English-speaking audiences. Thunder Force II MD, on the other hand, was a Sega Genesis launch title in North America and is a distinct adaptation of the 1987 game, and it’s probably the first place most gamers would have ever heard of the game. It also has the sensibilities and gameplay of a console game to the point that none of its later entries appeared on the PC at all. Suffice it to say I feel I’ve included it in the right place.
The idea behind Thunder Force II is that half of the game plays like Data East’s Last Resort, where you fly around large overhead stages and take out ground bases, while the other half plays like a more conventional sidescrolling shoot ‘em up. The top-down stages on the odd levels are definitely the more involved of the two since they are multidirectional and present you with levels constrained by barriers that you can occasionally take down or navigate through. Your job in these stages is to hunt down large bases and blow up their central nerve centers with bombs that autofire along with your air to air shots. Once you’ve taken them all out, the stage ends and you transition to the even stages’ sidescrolling perspective, which always ends in a big boss fight. There are only nine stages (four of which are top-down), but each will take you three to five minutes to complete.
Thunder Force II is also that rare shoot ‘em up where it’s OK to die - death merely takes you out of the action for a second, and you resume right away with a fairly long invincibility window as you find your footing. Saving up your lives for later levels is a viable strategy for getting through the toughest parts, and the game is good at providing you with frequent power-ups so you can upgrade your ship back to its former status. (Just be warned - the continue system will take you back to the home screen and erase your progress if you push anything but “A.” It’s quite frustrating.)
Both modes include their own set of selectable weapons that you pick up as you fly, and these include standard forward laser shots, front and rear shots, spread shots, cascading wave shots, ring shots and hunter shots. You can also find options called CLAWS that fly around your ship and shields that temporarily protect you. If you can stay alive, you can even power these weapons up and become quite formidable, but the game starts going out of its way to kill you by the fourth stage or so, throwing in all sorts of obstacles that you can only avoid if you know they’re coming and situations where you’re moving so fast that you have to constantly turn back and forth to dodge tight corners and encroaching enemies.
Fortunately, Thunder Force II is worth the effort if you can get through the toughest points on the fourth and fifth stages – the game has great bosses, fun and widely varied levels and a blistering sense of speed that’s quite a rush compared to make slower-paced sidescrolling shooters. You just have to accept that you’re doing to lose a lot of ships along the way - even with saved states at my disposal, I found the later levels formidable until I finally started allowing myself to die.
As I mentioned, the Sega Genesis version of the game is an adaptation of the Sharp X68000 original, which has more levels and lacks some of the annoyances mid-game. Honestly, that’s the version I’d seek out and play if you can since it has better graphics and shows a lot more onscreen during the top-down flying sequences. Even so, the Genesis version is decent on its own, and you can play legally it on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack or with an original cartridge and hardware. Otherwise, fire it up in your favorite emulator and take advantage of those saved states – they take a lot of the aggravation out of the game’s cheapest deaths.
For whatever reason, the subsequent Thunder Force games on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Saturn and PlayStation focused entirely on the sidescrolling element of the game, removing what I feel is Thunder Force II’s most distinctive and interesting element by switching perspectives. Even so, they’re excellent games that any shoot ‘em up fan should know and love, and we’ll cover many of them when we get to the 1990s.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!