Thunder Force III and IV

[toaplan_shmupfan]

This is actually the first I've ever known about a Shield in Ruins. I usually never bother to stray from the middle of the screen for the entire stage, which might explain why I never saw it before (I'm assuming it's stashed at the top/bottom of the screen somewhere).

It's actually an invisible shield. It's near the top of the screen just before the quick battle with the flying robot. Best chance of hitting it to reveal it is by using Snake.

There's also four or five items at the very top of the screen just before the boss on Stage 8/Wall. They are hidden in a walled off section at the very top of the screen but... if one has shield left (or is willing to lose a ship), go in there through the wall, start shooting immediately, and there's two or three weapons, a shield, and a 1up hiding in there to be collected (so if a ship was lost it's been given back by collecting the 1up). Note that getting out of there will cost one hit on the shield so there will only be two hits on the shield left for the actual boss fight.

[gameoverDude]

There's also four or five items at the very top of the screen just before the boss on Stage 8/Wall. They are hidden in a walled off section at the very top of the screen but... if one has shield left (or is willing to lose a ship), go in there through the wall, start shooting immediately, and there's two or three weapons, a shield, and a 1up hiding in there to be collected (so if a ship was lost it's been given back by collecting the 1up). Note that getting out of there will cost one hit on the shield so there will only be two hits on the shield left for the actual boss fight.

Willing to lose a ship? Not me. The first ship lost will actually set you back 2010000 (you blow the no-miss bonus). If I've got shield, I might go for it to try to snag another 30000-40000, including 10000 for another ship left at end of game.

[gs68]

Been playing Thunder Force IV and III some more.

TFIV is getting better for me. My opinion of TFIII hasn't changed much, and I honestly find IV easier, at least in the initial stages. I don't care if I get banned from these forums for running counter to everyone else's opinion.

[Makoto Sei]

Both TFIII and TFVI are way easier than TFV. At least the last boss in TFV puts up a fight.

Hee~~.... is that so ? i say TF V is the easiest is because on TF V there is nearly no natural obstacles
or wall that make our fight more difficult beside of just dodging the bullets. But i`m agree with you about the final battle. For me, that was the best final battle i ever know.

[Ed Oscuro]

You want easy try Thunderforce 6...if you can't beat that well...u might as we quit the shmuping hobby and perhaps collect bottle caps instead.

Well im sorry and surprised to say that your skills must be a joke if you cant even loop a 17yr old shump title. esspecially with the knowledge and experience you have acquired from playing todays techincally demanding shumps titles.

[gs68]

Since when was the age of the game and not the player relevant to its difficulty? By that same logic I should be able to 1CC Flying Shark right now regardless of my skill level.

[Riot Zone]

Always wonderd if there was a difference betweem Thunder Force III and Thunder Spirts for Snes?
I never did get around to buying the Genesis version and now it's sort of high priced on ebay. I didn't find Thunder Spirts to be all that difficult though.

[Rob]

Always wonderd if their was a difference betweem Thunder Force III and Thunder Spirts for Snes?

Thunder Spirits is a port of Thunder Force AC, which is TF3 with some odd changes. AC didn't correct the problem with difficulty despite being an arcade release and Thunder Spirits is a garbage port with tons of slowdown.

[Ed Oscuro]

Since when was the age of the game and not the player relevant to its difficulty? By that same logic I should be able to 1CC Flying Shark right now regardless of my skill level.

mills quote

[gs68]

AC didn't correct the problem with difficulty despite being an arcade release

And it removed fast autofire. Granted, it's designed for arcade machines where you can more easily mash the fire button, but my Saturn pad can't take it easy ;_;

and Thunder Spirits is a garbage port with tons of slowdown.

Of course it's suck; 64 less pixels of width and lesser processor speed.
And it REMOVED THE AWESOME CERBERUS MUSIC gg genesis-to-arcade-to-snes porting team

[Riot Zone]

Yeah it seems like a lot of side scrolling shooters had slow down problems for Snes. U.N Squadron was good though.

[Riot Zone]

Since when was the age of the game and not the player relevant to its difficulty? By that same logic I should be able to 1CC Flying Shark right now regardless of my skill level.

Speaking of Flying Shark, I remember some dude in Babbages once told me they were supposed to port that for the Genesis/Mega drive, but they decided to go ahead with Twin Cobra instead at the time? Anybody else ever hear of this? Man if this is true, I don't know what they were thinking! Because you figure, it probably would have been an identicle port of the arcade had they made it for the Genesis. Hard to believe such a classic game and it's only home port is that pitiful Nes version.

[gs68]

Yeah it seems like a lot of side scrolling shooters had slow down problems for Snes. U.N Squadron was good though.

Area 88 on the SFC/SNES was pretty good, though I'm more in favor of the arcade version. Less weapons to choose from, but you get much more of them (i.e. 140 Phoenixes or Falcons on this one stage), and more hardware power means more potential action.

[Riot Zone]

Oh yeah area 88 arcade is gold! Was just playing my friends pcb board a few weeks ago. He has the dip settings perfect too. Not to hard or to easy

[ED-057]

...

plagiarism

[toaplan_shmupfan]

Since when was the age of the game and not the player relevant to its difficulty? By that same logic I should be able to 1CC Flying Shark right now regardless of my skill level.

Speaking of Flying Shark, I remember some dude in Babbages once told me they were supposed to port that for the Genesis/Mega drive, but they decided to go ahead with Twin Cobra instead at the time? Anybody else ever hear of this? Man if this is true, I don't know what they were thinking! Because you figure, it probably would have been an identicle port of the arcade had they made it for the Genesis. Hard to believe such a classic game and it's only home port is that pitiful Nes version.

The other option would probably emulation using MAME or else Shark. However... the one time I tried playing Sky Shark/Flying Shark using the Shark emulator, the bullet speed seemed way faster than the genuine Taito/Romstar licensed arcade machine I had played a few years ago. I still looped the game, because I remembered the patterns and just used an extra bomb or two for the faster emulated bullet speed, but unless the arcade machine I had played was set on Easy or something (the extra setting was Only 100000 points), to me it would seem that emulation is making this game seem a lot harder than it really is due to the accelerated enemy bullet speed.

As for the Genesis version of Twin Cobra, it's decent, though it's only one player and uses a panorama type view of the vertical screen. The most important thing to know is that this game uses a stop-and-copy type of graphical write method in some places, so the game will literally pause for a moment in most places--even though it's a cartridge game--and will almost seem locked up somewhere past the middle during stage 9 (but it's really just a long pause, the game didn't actually lock up).

[Riot Zone]

Yeah, I noticed that with Twin cobra that it will pause a little when things explode. The ps1 port Toeplan shooter collection Twin cobra is hard as hell after about the 3rd level which makes it almost unplayable do to frustration.

PCB is how I get my Flying Shark fix, but man I would of loved a Genesis version so I could play with Rapid Fire and A game genie code with always Max Firepower
(Like I do with Fire Shark for the Genny.)

[gameoverDude]

Since when was the age of the game and not the player relevant to its difficulty? By that same logic I should be able to 1CC Flying Shark right now regardless of my skill level.

Speaking of Flying Shark, I remember some dude in Babbages once told me they were supposed to port that for the Genesis/Mega drive, but they decided to go ahead with Twin Cobra instead at the time? Anybody else ever hear of this? Man if this is true, I don't know what they were thinking! Because you figure, it probably would have been an identicle port of the arcade had they made it for the Genesis. Hard to believe such a classic game and it's only home port is that pitiful Nes version.

I guess he was probably thinking of Fire Shark, which came out maybe a little bit before Twin Cobra from the release dates that GameFAQs lists (late '90 for USA & Japan, then EUR in '91).

The NES Flying Shark is harder than the arcade- maybe a bit too much so. I had a score of around 1.5M on the arcade version, but couldn't get past 200K on the NES- let alone finish the first loop. IIRC the bullets are faster, like Genesis Twin Cobra (then again this could be because of the switch to Yoko for home versions).

[Riot Zone]

Yeah I'm pretty sure he specificly said Flying Shark. This was only about 7 years ago well after the genesis was over when I talked to this dude. He said they were supposed to release it as a launch game along with Truxton then it got pushed back, then they just decided to release Twin Cobra, Twin Hawk (datsenpu) Fire Shark instead. I love all those games but I would trade a Twin Cobra Genesis home port for a Flying Shark Genesis home port anyday! Especially since TC already had a PC engine port.

[gameoverDude]

Yeah I'm pretty sure he specificly said Flying Shark. This was only about 7 years ago well after the genesis was over when I talked to this dude. He said they were supposed to release it as a launch game along with Truxton then it got pushed back, then they just decided to release Twin Cobra, Twin Hawk (datsenpu) Fire Shark instead. I love all those games but I would trade a Twin Cobra Genesis home port for a Flying Shark Genesis home port anyday! Especially since TC already had a PC enigine port.

I see, it would've been done as a launch title. Shame this got canned. Flying Shark was a 1987 game and the Mega Drive debuted in 1988, so the game was definitely not too old to be brought over to MD.

I wonder how the TC port would've been if Toaplan did it theirselves, just like they did Fire Shark and Zero Wing. Treco did a fair version of it, but it's not quite a perfect one.

[Riot Zone]

Yeah it would be nice if a developer like that songbird productions could port it to the Jaguar or make a Flying Shark clone of some type for the Jag.

[stratos]

I think TFIII is a cool game but it proves to be too easy even on harder difficulties. I 1CCed TFIV last year, Normal Difficuly, and it was really enjoing. Also, if you switch to hard mode, the games become completely different. I think it is a good thing, because it is like to have many different games in one cartridge.


On Normal, you need to select a route that let you take a shield and a hunter weapon in order to clear first stages easily. Then, on the second half of the game, you need to be more skillfull and memorization alone doesn't prove to be sufficient. Then, after a week or two, you beat the game on normal, and it is a great satisfaction, so you want to switch to hard.


Well, it is a completely different game, in wich you can't rely on shields in the first stages so you have to develope a completely different strategy and route. Also, it requires a bigger amount of pure skill, because there are many more enemies on screen that will use completely different strategies.


Also, the game shines in graphics, details, character design, music, sound. A gem. I think if you like old school games you HAVE to spend a good amount of time in playing TFIV, it is probably one of the better games in the genere and one of the best in game history in general.


I can't belive there is people that can't understand the beauty of this game, I can't think about other games of the genere that coul'd show the same feature of TFIV, at least in the first 90's. It is not meant to be an insult, of course, but I want to encourage people to go deeper in this game to find out its beauty, longevity and challenge.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

The one thing preventing me from a 1cc on TF IV is the introduction of that annoying spinning thing in front of the flying robot ship that ducks away before the big engine looking gun fires. That didn't show up on Easy, and to be honest, seems to be a cheap way of increasing difficulty on Normal by adding that extra item.

But as for this:

I can't belive there is people that can't understand the beauty of this game, I can't think about other games of the genere that coul'd show the same feature of TFIV, at least in the first 90's. It is not meant to be an insult, of course, but I want to encourage people to go deeper in this game to find out its beauty, longevity and challenge.

If the player is unable to understand the so-celled beauty of the game, it is nothing more than a failure of the game's designers to allow the player to see such so-called beauty. IMHO, TF IV can be so focused on eliminating enemies and (in the last four stages) navigating narrower paths in maze-like levels, that there simply isn't time to see any so-called beauty even after a few plays through the game.

[Riot Zone]

Yeah Lightning Force (THF IV) does have some really awsome graphics, but like what Toeplan said, it is so intense it's hard to really notice some times. Gley Lancer and Gaiares are right there too when it comes to beautiful looking shooters on the MD.