Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force Game?

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Sengoku Strider
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Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force Game?

Post by Sengoku Strider »

AWSM stands for awesome, not some kinky sex thing, but I ran out of space. Whatever you do with your copy of Gate of Thunder is between you and the disc.

I got pretty deep into this game the past few days. I posted thoughts in the "what are you playing now" thread, the gist of which were "awesome but super easy (on normal), barely an inconvenience." But there's a lot more to say about this one than a general purpose thread can/should contain.

Gate of Thunder was an all-star production. Hudson contracted Red Company, the talented hired guns behind a ton of classics from Bonk to Sakura Taisen to Gungrave to do it for them. Red Co. in turn subcontracted Tsujikawa Osamu, designer of Thunder Force II & III, who had recently poached Fukuda Izumi, chief programmer on Thunder Force III at Technosoft. Nobody involved was even remotely shy about this being Hudson doing a Thunder Force game; if they'd called this Thunder Force 3.5 nobody but Technosoft's lawyers would have batted an eyelash. The weapons, weapon system. speed controls, vibe, music style, almost everything feels lifted right out of the Thunder Force series.

Upon reflection, looking at how hard Hudson went with this one I kind of wonder if NEC were planning for this to be the pack-in for the NA release of the Duo during development. It released in Japan about 8 months ahead of the North American Duo launch and was a direct shot across the bow to Sega, whose Sega CD also launched in fall 1992, showing the Duo could beat the Genesis at its own best shooter at the time. If so it might explain the default difficulty, wanting it to be accessible to a general audience rather than scaring them off on the first stage.

Pictured: NEC/TTI's marketing department accurately dunking all over lame Sega CD pack-in Sol Feace:

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It might also explain why they splashed out on expensive Westerners in SYN Sound Design for the music (not T's Music who did Lords of Thunder & Cotton, as many [including me before like 2 days ago] incorrectly assume). Nick Wood is credited with "sound design" in the credits, a Brit who started SYN in Tokyo in 1988 with Simon LeBon, lead singer of Duran Duran (SYN stands for Simon Yasmin Nick, Yasmin being LeBon's wife). I think it's fair to ask if LeBon was involved in the production of the soundtrack but left uncredited, because of how uncool video games - or commercial contract work in general for a name artist - were still perceived to be at the time (à la Michael Jackson on Sonic 3). I don't know if this particular question has ever been seriously explored elsewhere, but SYN did a ton of work for various Japanese and Western media in the intervening years.

Pictured: Hudson Soft contract temps acting like they're soooo much fancier than you:

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I did find a Kotaku article from 3 years ago linking a Reddit post claiming LeBon did the music himself, along with another French site also making the same assertion, both with no evidence to back it up beyond LeBon's involvement with establishing SYN. So yeah, nothing credible, but also far from impossible to believe. Being a coked-up international 1980s rock star fashion icon requires a LOT of steady income to seriously maintain. Especially when it's the 1990s now, Come Undone hasn't come out yet and people aren't taking you so seriously anymore and you hate your keyboardist even though he's not-so-secretly the most important part of the band.

Pictured: Synthesizer nerd struggles for his very life against carnivorous retirement home decor:

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- ANYWAY -

Back to the difficulty for a minute.

Hudson, in the midst of their Summer Caravan phase and quite plugged into what shmup fans wanted, may well have been self-conscious about the light default difficulty. I stumbled across a print ad they put out in Japanese magazines emphasizing the multiple difficulty levels:

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The text here reads:

February 21st War Will Be Declared!!

There are three modes: Normal, Hard, and Devil. Even if you are confident in your skills, it might be safe to start from normal. The one having painful thoughts will be you! The enemy is strong! We pray for your battle.


Although it might also just be flat-out wrong, maybe they made Simon LeBon write this too.

The thing with this game is that hard absolutely feels like the 'real' game. Normal has a ton of empty sections, enemies barely shoot during most of the game, bosses only have one or two attacks, I think there might also be enemies that don't even appear. Hard modes at the time were often just making popcorn enemies tankier, bullets faster, or adding revenge bullets. Whereas hard and devil difficulties here are very deliberately arranged, bosses have attacks and phases you don't even see on normal, and bullet spreads are all over the place, not just an idle dot or two floating past in the early stages. Going back to normal feels like half the game was just deleted.

Devil, despite its intimidating name, isn't even all that bad. Because it retains the game's built-in player advantages, it grants a lot more leeway than an average arcade shooter would: shields, your first power-up always granting you options (unlike Thunder Force, where the claw power-ups are sparsely spread out, not even appearing on every stage), extends in every stage, and every pickup becoming a screen-clearing bomb if the related weapon is already maxed out. It's still pretty ruthless, but arcade players won't run into anything they can't handle.

Lords of Thunder is the game from this team that stuck in the popular imagination, overshadowing Gate to the degree that I was pretty surprised how deep I got into it. I was going hard at devil difficulty last night, started getting tired and checked the time thinking it might be 2 already, only to see that it was suddenly 5am. There's so much more to say about this game, but I'm sure I've already well exceeded the amount of text anyone wants to read from me. But I did want to put a serious thread together, because searching here most of the discussion is way too sporadic for a title of this calibre, not to mention from like 2005.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by To Far Away Times »

Huh... never knew that about Duran Duran.

Gate Of Thunder is one of the very best 16-bit blasters. Either the best or second best shmup on the PC Engine in my book, and probably a top five shmup overall of that generation; in a generarion that was a fierce competition with no shortage of GOAT worthy shmups.

A must play for any shmup fan, imo.

The only other PC Engine shmup I'd put at that super high level is Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire, which was also worked on by Red.

And Thunderforce III is a legendary game of course. They may have made 3 of my top 5 from that era... Those guys sure knew how to make 'em.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

To Far Away Times wrote:The only other PC Engine shmup I'd put at that super high level is Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire, which was also worked on by Red.
Is it really at that "absolute best of the generation" pinnacle? Never having played it myself I hear praise for the visuals, but then people always seem to proceed to knock Kaminarimon (the ex-Technosoft guys' subcontracting venture went under a couple of names, I just remember that one because it literally means 'Thunder Gate') for not knowing how to do a proper vertical shooter.

It's crazy expensive these days. But TBH my game pile is already big enough to last me years, yet I know I'm not going to stop getting new stuff to try. So it kind of makes sense to me to consolidate my gaming budget into pricier 'crown jewel' type purchases that would be awesome to have, rather than buying a bunch of cheaper games and making it that much harder to dig in and really appreciate everything. I'd sidelined or asterisked Sapphire on the potential buy list because of how people talk about it, but it's really at the top of the best console shooter generation ever? (32-bit was great too, but it was characterized mostly by very direct arcade ports).
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by cfx »

With the disclaimer that I have trouble with games with a lot of screen flashing, I don't think Sapphire is anything special at all.

It has a lot of graphical gimmicks made possible by the game requiring the arcade card, but there's nothing compelling about the gameplay, and bullets are often impossible to see because of the huge flashing mess of your own weapon once it's powered up.

I don't think I've ever before seen it praised as one of the best on the system. Not that it's necessarily an indication of anything, but Famitsu gave it 4/4/4/4 back in the day, if I recall, and they tended to give shooters 7 and 8 scores back then.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Herr Schatten »

cfx wrote:I don't think Sapphire is anything special at all.
This.

Sapphire is all sorts of flashy, but it’s 100% style over substance. Gameplay is badly balanced and visibility is an issue. Besides, all the special effects haven’t even aged well. All that pre-rendered shit that makes it look like the PCE is doing 3D objects (which it doesn’t) may have been impressive in 1995, but today you’re just looking at poor artistic decisions.

If you want a vertically scrolling shooter with high production values on the PCE that’s also actually a good game, you’re much better off with Nexzr.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by moonblood »

Is Gate of Thunder available for any modern platforms? Man, they really should have included it on the PC engine mini..
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by pablumatic »

moonblood wrote:Is Gate of Thunder available for any modern platforms? Man, they really should have included it on the PC engine mini..
The PS3 is the newest device you can get a legit digital copy of Gate of Thunder on, and you'll have to make a Japanese PSN account to buy it.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

moonblood wrote:Is Gate of Thunder available for any modern platforms? Man, they really should have included it on the PC engine mini..
It's deeply bizarre to me that such a high profile title has been sidelined over the years. I had it on the Wii, but never saw it again anywhere else. Konami - who owns the Hudson catalogue these days - even skipped right over it for the Wii U Virtual Console, putting out Lords of Thunder instead. And as you mention, it was inexplicably left off the mini as well. It's enough to make me wonder if the music rights have something to do with it. SYN are credited on the title screen right under Hudson, but Red Co aren't. Maybe their contract just included the headline credit, but maybe there are royalties on the back end, or the music rights reverted to SYN after 25 years or something.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Jonpachi »

Just wanted to say thanks to Sengoku Strider for this amazing deep-dive. Fucking love this stuff!
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Creamy Goodness »

This one is on my on deck circle of games to play. It really pyts things into perspective when I found out the development team had staff that worked on TF3. And although I have played maybe 20 minutes of it, the stage 2 music is burned into my brain. Too bad the sound mixing kind of sucks with the music being way too low.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by To Far Away Times »

Herr Schatten wrote:
cfx wrote:I don't think Sapphire is anything special at all.
This.

Sapphire is all sorts of flashy, but it’s 100% style over substance. Gameplay is badly balanced and visibility is an issue. Besides, all the special effects haven’t even aged well. All that pre-rendered shit that makes it look like the PCE is doing 3D objects (which it doesn’t) may have been impressive in 1995, but today you’re just looking at poor artistic decisions.

If you want a vertically scrolling shooter with high production values on the PCE that’s also actually a good game, you’re much better off with Nexzr.
I hear people say Sapphire's gameplay is lackluster, but it seems perfectly fine to me? Maybe not as impressive as the visuals and music, but plenty of games with exceptional presentation and competent/solid gameplay are favorites in this genre and many others. What does Nexzr do gameplay wise that makes it so much better that Sapphire doesn't? Neither is really innovative. Sapphire does feature a scoring system beyond shooting enemies, a rarity among console games from this era.

Nexzr has that god awful stage 2 mid boss that traps you in a small area and point blanks you. Arguably the least fun and most frustrating type of cheap game design. Definitely something that feels like it was designed around combatting the game rental market considering its placement early in the game. Then the game gets easier after that. I'd say that single element is worse than anything Sapphire offers. Thay's not to speak ill of Nexzr, its a good game in its own right that does some good things, but not one I'd consider clearly better.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Jonpachi »

Sapphire falls into the old "tedious memorize-em-up" category for me. There's a certain satisfaction to mastering it, but there's no room for any improv. Not worth the time investment to really go for the clear without some nostalgia goggles strapped on.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by pablumatic »

Creamy Goodness wrote:This one is on my on deck circle of games to play. It really pyts things into perspective when I found out the development team had staff that worked on TF3. And although I have played maybe 20 minutes of it, the stage 2 music is burned into my brain. Too bad the sound mixing kind of sucks with the music being way too low.
If you're willing to play via an emulator, there's a thread here on how to adjust audio levels for Gate of Thunder and other troublesome PC-Engine/Duo games.

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=65968
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

To Far Away Times wrote:Nexzr has that god awful stage 2 mid boss that traps you in a small area and point blanks you. Arguably the least fun and most frustrating type of cheap game design. Definitely something that feels like it was designed around combatting the game rental market considering its placement early in the game.
I went and played Nexzr last night to refresh my memory. Maybe it's because I recently went through Soldier Blade, which has a much harder version of a similar thing at the end, but after he caught me by surprise the first time I found this guy super easy. A little bit of tap-dodging will see you through, he goes down in seconds. Now the third stage mid-boss who shoots the Sonic rings at you, he's been my roadblock so far.

I'm still on the fence with Nexzr as being an amazing game, but I haven't spent enough time with it yet. I will say, the version I have is the '93 Summer Carnival release, and I gave the caravan modes a serious go, and they seem pretty great. It's hard to really judge those things until you've spent a ton of time mining them for secrets, but I did get sucked in for like an hour until I had to pull the plug and pass out.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by To Far Away Times »

Jonpachi wrote:Sapphire falls into the old "tedious memorize-em-up" category for me. There's a certain satisfaction to mastering it, but there's no room for any improv. Not worth the time investment to really go for the clear without some nostalgia goggles strapped on.
I guess I've never been one to shy away from Memorizers...

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Sengoku Strider wrote:
To Far Away Times wrote:Nexzr has that god awful stage 2 mid boss that traps you in a small area and point blanks you. Arguably the least fun and most frustrating type of cheap game design. Definitely something that feels like it was designed around combatting the game rental market considering its placement early in the game.
I went and played Nexzr last night to refresh my memory. Maybe it's because I recently went through Soldier Blade, which has a much harder version of a similar thing at the end, but after he caught me by surprise the first time I found this guy super easy. A little bit of tap-dodging will see you through, he goes down in seconds. Now the third stage mid-boss who shoots the Sonic rings at you, he's been my roadblock so far.
I will have to drop a save state there and practice it, I remember even tap dodging being a problem. Could just be a lack of skill. :wink:
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Herr Schatten »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Now the third stage mid-boss who shoots the Sonic rings at you, he's been my roadblock so far.
He’s tricky if you fight him the way you’re supposed to, but he can be cheesed easily and consistently. During the first phase of the battle, stick close to either the left or right edge of the screen. The nose of your ship should overlap the wall ahead slightly. The rings won’t reach you there and you can let your angled shots do their work. (You can pick up the appropriate weapon right before the midboss.) When the first phase ends, use the brief damage animation to quickly slip past the midboss and get behind him. You’re absolutely safe there and only have to move down and get a few hits in with your side shots when he stops to open up and fire.
To Far Away Times wrote:I remember even tap dodging being a problem. Could just be a lack of skill. :wink:
I don’t think so. You’re probably just dodging in the wrong direction. If you try to dodge horizontally, like you intuitively would, you’ll be running out of space quickly. Instead, start the battle point-blanking the midboss right in his face and pretty much only dodge by moving up and down once the battle starts. As Sengoku Strider said, he goes down in seconds, and even if you do get hit, you usually just lose your shield. You brought a shield, right?
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Herr Schatten wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:Now the third stage mid-boss who shoots the Sonic rings at you, he's been my roadblock so far.
He’s tricky if you fight him the way you’re supposed to, but he can be cheesed easily and consistently. During the first phase of the battle, stick close to either the left or right edge of the screen. The nose of your ship should overlap the wall ahead slightly. The rings won’t reach you there and you can let your angled shots do their work. (You can pick up the appropriate weapon right before the midboss.) When the first phase ends, use the brief damage animation to quickly slip past the midboss and get behind him. You’re absolutely safe there and only have to move down and get a few hits in with your side shots when he stops to open up and fire.
Yeah, the first phase was a piece of cake, it was the second that was giving me a hard time. I got past it last night, I figured out that just wiggling back & forth very slightly in front of it during the damage phase will send the rings careening off to the sides leaving you untouched. But the method you've outlined sounds much safer than that.
Herr Schatten wrote:
To Far Away Times wrote:I remember even tap dodging being a problem. Could just be a lack of skill. :wink:
I don’t think so. You’re probably just dodging in the wrong direction. If you try to dodge horizontally, like you intuitively would, you’ll be running out of space quickly. Instead, start the battle point-blanking the midboss right in his face and pretty much only dodge by moving up and down once the battle starts. As Sengoku Strider said, he goes down in seconds, and even if you do get hit, you usually just lose your shield. You brought a shield, right?
That pattern was another one I figured out last night, lol. I was just reaction dodging before that. Yeah, you only need to tap dodge down a little bit past where the the bullets will intersect: \x/. The next two shots from the sides will then target your new position, tap down again. Once you hit the bottom of the screen, just continue kiting the bullets and getting out of their way by tapping up. It should be pretty much done at that point anyway.

Continuing on what I was saying above though, I think I might like the caravan (okay, 'carnival') modes a fair bit better than the main game. I wound up "one more try!"-ing it for like 1-2 hours yesterday. It has a lot of structural difference from the main game, in that doesn't checkpoint you, an element that's made kind of brutal by the fact that there's zero bullet sealing and shots tend to be fast, and you aren't. The score modes not being built so much around avoiding enemy fire as scrambling to keep up with everything before it leaves the screen allows the whole thing to feel a lot faster and more free-flowing than the main game. I was a little surprised that searching didn't reveal any kind of high score list for the caravan modes here.

But that's personal preference. Those changes make it feel less unique and more like another Aleste/Soldier-like, so it does lose something in that sense. I also played a few games of Kaneko's Aero Blasters for comparison. What struck me was how similar the ship movement felt to Nexzr, despite being a hori. The very deliberate ship speed with zero speed ups seemed to be a Kaneko design preference.

Quite unlike something like, say, Gate of Thunder for instance.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

Yep, Turbo Technologies Incorporated (TTI) did include Gates of Thunder as a 4-in-1 Super CD-Rom2 disc pack-in (with the cool hidden game of TurboGrafx-16 Bomberman as a bonus) if you bought a brand new Turbo Duo console back in 1992-1995 stateside. Back in Febuary of 1995, some U.S. Toys-R-Us stores that had remaining Turbo Duo console stock were still selling 'em at the original MSRP of $299.99 usd (when it was being sold elsewhere for a mere scant $99.99 usd back in late 1994 if you knew where to find 'em at that cheap-ass discount pricepoint).

With a proper easter egg code, it was possible to play the original PCE version of GoT (complete with the 1991 copywrite year) with the TTI version of the same name game pack-in (of course, TTI never knew about this particular GoT easter egg though). It can be activated through trial 'n' error -- that is a given.

GoT really shines if played on a candy cab setup as it feels equally right at home at a game center/arcade joint as a uber-awesome stg experience not to be missed.

TTI did setup their own Turbo Duo demo kiosks running GoT in retail stores like Toys-R-Us back in 1993 to let folks try it out/get the word out that it's an ace stg game. What's really rare is to see a TTI Turbo Duo demo kiosk out in the wild nowadays (I've never seen one outside of a retail store setting since then).

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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I got through the 1CC of normal mode last night. One thing that jumped out at me was how the billing went in the final credits:

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Red Kaminarimon - the subcontracted former Technosoft guys - get a "created by" credit. And then "presented by," the final credit that stays on screen as the U2-in-space end tune plays, gives SYN first billing, followed by Red and then finally Hudson Soft.
PC Engine Fan X! wrote:GoT really shines if played on a candy cab setup as it feels equally right at home at a game center/arcade joint as a uber-awesome stg experience not to be missed.
I like the cut of your jib, sir.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

It's doable to play both Gate of Thunder & Lords of Thunder with a Krikzz Turbo Everdrive Pro flashcart setup on a PCE GT/Turbo Express handheld gaming setup "on the go". How cool is that? Can't do that with a plain vanilla v2.5 Turbo Everdrive flashcart setup though.

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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by To Far Away Times »

So Gate is a 9/10 and Lords is a 7/10, is that reasonable?

The higher challege of Gate puts it over the top for me, Lords is a little too easy to be memorable.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

To Far Away Times wrote:So Gate is a 9/10 and Lords is a 7/10, is that reasonable?

The higher challege of Gate puts it over the top for me, Lords is a little too easy to be memorable.
Where do Genesis Thunder Force III & IV fit in your ranking for context?
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by To Far Away Times »

Thunderforce III is among my favorite games I've ever played. 10/10 in any genre. Peak feel good blasting. Perfected weapon damage, aggression, and destruction at levels that wouldn't be seen again until Mushi Futari some 15 years later. Not my first 1CC, but an early -formative one- so it really stuck with me and shaped my tastes for years to come. A few of my friends recommend it to me as an inexperienced shmupper 20 years ago :shock: , so it has a special place in my heart. I've also cleared it several times and can play a few of the songs from the OST.

With IV, I am a bit conflicted. I bought the cartridge at pretty high price (no regerts) but the game balance is less polished than III. It is the difference between an above average game and a great game.

Gate of Thunder is probably somewhere inbetween the two, quality wise, and that's not a bad place to be. We're talking degrees of excellence, with Gate being among the best games on the platform.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I only have Lords in Virtual Console form at present, which doesn't typically seem to be a great representation of how the real thing plays. So I'll leave that one aside.

I can only reach stage 5 in TF IV at present, so I won't pass judgement yet on that either. I'm not as down on it as you seem to be, though.

In the case of comparing Gate and TF III, I personally think Gate edges it out in pretty much every dept. except level variety; Gate has an overabundance of "line-scrolling techno hallway" scenery. I've also explained elsewhere why I prefer AC to III. I get why someone would look at III as a benchmark for the genre, though.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Despatche »

Gate of Thunder is considerably better than every existing Thunder Force game, every canceled Thunder Force game, and every list of ideas for a Thunder Force fangame.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by MintyTheCat »

GOT and LOT were the first PCE CDROM titles that I bought and were highly recommended back them in the late 90s.

I got my hands on them both I think 2001 or so when I bought a PCE. I had to wait a few more years though before I could play them as I didn't have a CDROM add-on.

GOT is very much so a Shmup that plays like TFIII but wasn't as much of a punisher I felt to play as TFIII.

Some very good music all round, and the fantasy theme in the artwork for WOT is fantastic.

I like the SF aesthetic that they went with in GOT and some of the bosses really were decent; the yellow robot that takes a few different forms I quite liked looking back.

They weren't hard to get hold of titles, and it kind of all went towards my belief that the PCE was 'THE Shmup Machine' back then.
I was also getting into the Saturn around the same time having completely missed it, and finding out just how many Shmups were on each platform, well, that makes the machines both 'keepers forever' in my book.

Some excellent design in both and whilst playing GOT I always think of TFIII and Soldier-Blade : TFIII for the play style and S-B for the overall look and feel.

Well worth playing if you like horis.
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by Sengoku Strider »

MintyTheCat wrote:I was also getting into the Saturn around the same time having completely missed it, and finding out just how many Shmups were on each platform, well, that makes the machines both 'keepers forever' in my book.
Yep. If I could only hang on to two retro machines, those would be the ones. Mega Drive comes in at third. It's got a lot of great stuff, but the PCE has an equivalent for most of its best shmups (sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit behind) and more than 100 of them, about double what the MD has.

I had a TurboGrafx-16 growing up, but only after it had been discontinued, and no CD player. So I've really only been discovering how amazing the PCE is the last two years. A lot of the shooters are more approachable than the ones on the Saturn, so it's kind of monopolized the OSSC as primo shmup console for me. I don't think it would be unfair to say the Japanese Saturn's overall library wins out though, it has nearly twice as many games and a lot of definitive ports from its era. But even still, the PCE has a lot of individual personality that I've always loved.
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MintyTheCat
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by MintyTheCat »

Sengoku Strider wrote:
MintyTheCat wrote:I was also getting into the Saturn around the same time having completely missed it, and finding out just how many Shmups were on each platform, well, that makes the machines both 'keepers forever' in my book.
Yep. If I could only hang on to two retro machines, those would be the ones. Mega Drive comes in at third. It's got a lot of great stuff, but the PCE has an equivalent for most of its best shmups (sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit behind) and more than 100 of them, about double what the MD has.
Tbh I think that the SNES had the better library than the MD, but for Shmups, well, the SNES has some good Shmups but the MD and PCE just have far more. MD was a good general purpose platform, SNES too but had so many RPGs, which I do like but I never had the time to play them all that much.

The Saturn is simply quality: fewer titles in the library compared to the PS1 but overall better average quality title wise and so many Shmups.

I would have to include the NeoGeo as one of the keepers for the sheer standard of the games.
Sengoku Strider wrote: I had a TurboGrafx-16 growing up, but only after it had been discontinued, and no CD player. So I've really only been discovering how amazing the PCE is the last two years. A lot of the shooters are more approachable than the ones on the Saturn, so it's kind of monopolized the OSSC as primo shmup console for me. I don't think it would be unfair to say the Japanese Saturn's overall library wins out though, it has nearly twice as many games and a lot of definitive ports from its era. But even still, the PCE has a lot of individual personality that I've always loved.
Oh wow: yes, you have many, many titles to choose from on the PCE :)
PCE is more of its era and had Shmups from before it and the sub-genres that it could handle. Lots of traditional hori Shmups and many in the Caravan vertical genre. I always found the PCE to have some extremely well polished and presented Shmups.
GunHed and Soldier-Blade along with Nexzr are some of my favourite vertical Shmups on the PCE.

Saturn was a 'coming of age' moment in Shmup history and got many decent ports. The PCE for its time had some outstanding ports such as R-Type and Forgotten Worlds, but the power different and capabilities were quite far apart in comparison for it to be a fair test :)

Not sure why, but I always feel quite happy when using the PCE, it has a great design, has the aesthetics, the capability and was host to some amazing games. The Image-Fight port alone is worth owning a PCE for.

So many decent games that you just have to keep coming back to it.

I didn't really get into the PS2 or the 360 but I do own a few games and in time I Will branch out a bit :D
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Re: Gate of Thunder: Secret Duran Duran AWSM Thunder Force G

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

Sengoku Strider wrote:I only have Lords in Virtual Console form at present, which doesn't typically seem to be a great representation of how the real thing plays. So I'll leave that one aside.

I can only reach stage 5 in TF IV at present, so I won't pass judgement yet on that either. I'm not as down on it as you seem to be, though.

In the case of comparing Gate and TF III, I personally think Gate edges it out in pretty much every dept. except level variety; Gate has an overabundance of "line-scrolling techno hallway" scenery. I've also explained elsewhere why I prefer AC to III. I get why someone would look at III as a benchmark for the genre, though.
For Sengoku Strider,

Just burn a CD-R of Lords of Thunder/Winds of Thunder and be prepared to be blown away by the real deal on a PCE with a CD-Rom drive -- pure 44.1kHz redbook audio at it's best & in glorious stereo to boot. It doesn't get any better than that, folks. T's Music provides the awesome bgm tunes to jam/thrash to.

Many moons ago, I bought the TTI variant LoT brand new for my Turbo Duo & was stoked. Came across a fellow shmupper selling a used copy of PCE WoT and bought it right away. I like how the WoT instruction manual (with it's uber-cool manga overall presentation) unfolds into a cool mini poster (perfectly suitable for framing purposes if you'd like and for posterity). How cool is that? Can't do that with an original TTI printed LoT instruction manual though (it's more akin to the classic & traditional old-school PCE/TG-16 manuals of lore). With WoT's manual, it's quite a special exception to behold/marvel at, indeed (not to mention you get the original M.Shiro created uncensored artwork to gloss over as well -- a plus in my book).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
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