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サンダースピリッツ
©1990 Technosoft
©1991 Toshiba Emi
Release: 1991-12-27 (¥8600)
Cartridge SHVC-TH (TOPN-2001)
Shooter / Horizontal
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Released in America as
THUNDER SPIRITS
( SNS-TH-USA )
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Thunder Spirits is a horizontal shooter by Technosoft,
and is apparently the port of the arcade game of the a same name originally
released in 1990 (but anyone familiar with the Thunder Force series
for the Megadrive will most certainly feel like a sense of déjà vu,
Thunder Spirits being largely based on Thunderforce III).
The player takes control of a small fighter ship equipped with a
vulcan-laser gun. A total of five different secondary
weapon systems can be collected throughout the game : wave-laser (W),
Hunter homing-missiles (H), ground-missiles (F), laser-gun (L) and so forth...
Flying pods can also be collected and protect the ship from enemy fire.
Additionally, they can also fire the secondary weapon, thus instantly increasing its potential usefulness.
Another nice feature is the color-coded collisions, especially during boss battles - blue impacts indicate
that the player is not causing any damage to the enemy, but if they turn
red, then he knows that he is inflicting damage (and that he has most certainly found a weak point).
Thunder Spirits consists of eight levels.
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The first Thunder Force was originally released for Japanese computers
(such as the NEC-PC88 or Sharp-X1) back in 1984. It was a multi-directional
shooter and its core design is
much closer to Thunder Force II than any other games in the series.
Thunder Force II was then released for the Sharp X68000 computer
in 1988, and was later ported to the Sega Megadrive (1989).
It is rather interesting to
notice how this episode modified the original gameplay,
and slowly moved it towards the gameplay mechanics that made the series so
deservedly renowned.
Thunder Force II is split into two main phases; Over-head multi-directional
scrolling stages where the player must locate the enemy base, and
horizontal-scrolling stages where the level's boss must be defeated.
Thunder Force III, considered as the ultimate Thunder Force game in the series,
was first released for the Sega Megadrive in 1990, then surprisingly ported
in 1991 to an arcade game (unusual isn't it ?) and renamed
"Thunder Force A.C" for the occasion. That version
was then ported to the Super Famicom the same year, and
called Thunder Spirits.
Thunder Force IV then followed in 1992 for
the Sega Megadrive system and was renamed Lighting Force: Quest of the Darkstar
in America. A great feature of this episode
is the way how stages massively stretch up and down, covering-up many
screens. Worth noticing is the introduction of stage selection, giving the
player the ability to chose his first stage from a list of four.
Thunder Force V was released much later, in 1997, for the Sega
Saturn. It however came in two favors, a normal pack and a special pack
offering an additional music CD. A year later, the game was also converted to
the Playstation and called Thunder Force V : Perfect System.
Finally, Thunder Force VI was released for the Playstation 2
in 2008.
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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The good news? Thunder Spirits was the only Thunder Force game ever ported
to the Super Famicom system. The bad news? it is really average.
It lacks a lot of the ingredients that made its big brother,
Thunder Force III, such a big hit. Graphics are overall correct, but the
color palette is a bit too saturated to my taste, and I think the backgrounds don't look as good.
It also plays pretty nicely, well... the game flickers in some places and some area slow down
to a crawl. Granted, if taken out of
the Thunder Force context, Thunder Spirit could be seen as a good
and fast-paced shooter. But when compared to its model, it just fails to impress.
As a note, I think this version was programmed by Toshiba Emi
and not the guys at Technosoft, this may explain a lot.
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