Why does everyone love Thunder Force series?

[ave]

II - 'looks like shit. Even by oldschool standards'
III - 'lots o'cheap deaths and bad controls'
IV - 'moar cheap deaths and bad controls'
VI - 'damn I'm sleepy'

I really want to get into TF, but looks like there's always something just preventing me to enjoy it! Please, can someone advise me a cure?

I second everything you said. Owning TF II, III, IV, V and having played VI I think I am allowed to say that I really don't like Thunder Force. The sound is great as well as some of the graphics, but I just hate the gameplay (and the SFX btw.).
Personally, I quite like TF V though. It has some interesting weapons to offer and great music. TF III is also nice, but nothing really special to me like i.e. the competing Gate of Thunder for PCE. Something I was always unable to understand is the big hype of Thunder Force IV. I think the graphics aren't too splendid and it has very annoying level design. This apart, the music is quite nice (again).

I really dig shooters like Gleylancer, Hyper Duel (!), Gate of Thunder, Gynoug etc., but never found out what's so nice about TF in particular.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

The main flaw about ThunderForce IV/Lightening Force is the slowdown. Ok, and maybe larger screens bring out some of the jagged edges inherent to larger graphics with some aliasing. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the exact problem with level design actually might be--the levels seem to be as well designed as any other horizontal shooter, except for the lack of actual terrain traps that would guarantee the loss of a ship.

For Stage 1 and Stage 4, note that the aerial enemies and powerups will appear in the exact same relative screen positions regardless of whether one is close to the top of the screen (clouds in stage 1, sky and dunes in stage 4) or close to the bottom of the screen (water in stage 1, bottom of the dust storm in stage 4). Stages 2 and 3 don't really have that much free motion copmared to stages 1 and 4, so everything is in about the same place.

Stage 5 has an odd gravitational pull at the very start that always makes the ship recenter, but that was also done in Stage 2 of Gaiares, and the TF IV gravitational pull is still easier to deal with since the shots don't also have a tracer effect. Plus, that gravitational pull resolves just before the large battleship, when fighting the small monster-like ship just before the battleship. (Hint: Use Free Way during the battleship battle and it is really easy--figure out the right spot and it's not even necessary to move the ship for the entire top portion of the battleship until reaching the very front of that ship.)

Stage 6 is a really good ice and water stage--can't find any real flaws but stay near the top for the shield and 1up. Shield + Hunter makes the smaller enemies go away quickly.

Stage 7 is very aggressive but has multiple branching paths up until the midboss. Biggest challenges are the rapid firing laser guns (just like in TF III but better aimed) and the items that will lock onto the upgraded claw units. Midboss and boss are relatively straightforward shoot and dodge battles.

Stage 8 is the one level where the cheap deaths can and will occur due to the branching choices and multiple midboss battles, plus the very difficult stage boss. Then again, it's the eighth stage of the game, so a ramped up difficulty is expected by this point.

Stage 9 is actually quite easier, up until the boss battle. Once the boss laser guns are eliminated, the challenge is greater but it is still beatable.

Stage 10 is the game ending stage. I can beat this and the final boss on Easy difficulty only, but I usually get at least as far as the flying robot and large gun battle point even on Normal.

[EinhanderZwei]

And you're playing these on original hardware, right?

I'll be honest and say no. I don't have live Megadrive (it's just impossible to obtain it in my country) and live carts, so I'm using the MD emulator for PSP. You may think that the graphics there should look even better than on original hardware - and actually yeah, all other Genesis shmups look & feel great - Gaiares, Battle Mania etc. But not the Thunder Force. That's the power it has

Something I was always unable to understand is the big hype of Thunder Force IV. I think the graphics aren't too splendid and it has very annoying level design. This apart, the music is quite nice (again).

That's right. As I've said a couple of lines earlier, Gaiares, Bio-Hazard Battle, Gley Lancer and Battle Mania 2 show off some cool pixel art. TFIV just blends in comparison, IMHO (actually, I should've put 'IMHO' at the end of my every post in this topic, hah). Also, Gate of Thunder was released around the same time

And concerning the speed adjustment control... Not that I hate it, but I just prefer the speed-up bonus like in... well, you all know where. Why? Because I rarely enjoy shmups where you should mash additional buttons to do smth else than firing and bomb (yeah, I dislike it even in almighty R-Type - also because detaching the Force allows you to do cheap... kills)

P.S.

I'd rather play Thunder Force 1 than FFVII At least TF1 is heterosexual

Square was really catering to the gay audience with Tifa.

Tifa looks awesome and sexy as hell in Advent Children, period

[toaplan_shmupfan]

Emulation will never capture the experience of the original game, ever. The graphics may be close, but may have scaling or color flaws. The quality of the sound effects may suffer a bit in quality, or even get changed. The control accuracy may also be significantly altered from that of the original system.

Other games have had issues with emulation, not just the Thunder Force series of games, consider just these among any others:

Phoenix, Taito Legends I for the PlayStation 2--entirely wrong enemy and shot sounds, very grating compared to the arcade original, plus the force field seems to have a 1/2 second window where the player can still get hit even when it was audibly and visibly deployed.

G-Darius, Taito Legends II for the PS2--reportedly plays faster than the arcade PCB, so that would mean looser controls and faster enemy/shot speed in general.

It's always better to play the game on the original hardware, even if playing using emulation afterwards, to be able to discern emulation flaws from issues inherent to the original game.

[BIL]

G-Darius, Taito Legends II for the PS2--reportedly plays faster than the arcade PCB, so that would mean looser controls and faster enemy/shot speed in general.

I've never had any control issues with the PS2 version of G-Darius. Compared to the PCB (and especially the PS1 port) it seems to run at a similar speed, only without instances of slowdown. Much like TFIV on Saturn.

[Zweihander]

I'd rather play Thunder Force 1 than FFVII At least TF1 is heterosexual

Square was really catering to the gay audience with Tifa.

Tifa looks awesome and sexy as hell in Advent Children, period

Now, if only Advent Children could have been a good movie, instead of fanservice, exposition, more exposition, more fanservice, belts, zippers, and one or two memorable fights which were partially ruined by abusive amounts of bullet-time years after the Matrix sequels and countless TV commercials drove the concept into the ground.

...

Oh. And an awesome bike with sword holsters.

Still didn't save that emo-for-the-sake-of-being-emo shameful spectacle of a movie.

[EinhanderZwei]

Emulation will never capture the experience of the original game, ever. The graphics may be close, but may have scaling or color flaws. The quality of the sound effects may suffer a bit in quality, or even get changed. The control accuracy may also be significantly altered from that of the original system.

True. But my point is that I've encountered no other shmups that could be made worse by emulation

Now, if only Advent Children could have been a good movie, instead of fanservice, exposition, more exposition, more fanservice, belts, zippers, and one or two memorable fights which were partially ruined by abusive amounts of bullet-time years after the Matrix sequels and countless TV commercials drove the concept into the ground.

I didn't say that it is a good movie. I've just said that Tifa looks good there

[Zweihander]

Now, if only Advent Children could have been a good movie, instead of fanservice, exposition, more exposition, more fanservice, belts, zippers, and one or two memorable fights which were partially ruined by abusive amounts of bullet-time years after the Matrix sequels and countless TV commercials drove the concept into the ground.

I didn't say that it is a good movie. I've just said that Tifa looks good there

I didn't say you implied it was good, either. I just can't resist taking a shot at that empty shell of a movie whenever the chance arises.

[ROBOTRON]

I don't like Cave shumps but I adore the Thunderforce franchise. go figure.

[EinhanderZwei]

Tried out the universally praised TFV again. Looks like the game designer at one point just said: 'Hey! Let's make it like R-Type, only gayer!'

[mesh control]

right...

[Sturmvogel Prime]

II - The vertical stages are a pain in the a.--s but the horizontal ones are decent
III - A little bit difficult
IV - It's a hard challenge, Expert players only
V - The gameplay is perfect for every type of shmupper
VI - This game sucks, bad controls (who the f.--k tought it was a good idea to slow down when you fire the overweapon?)

[TrevHead (TVR)]

ive never played a TF as of yet. After watching a you tube vid last week of a megadrive TF i noticed that yes there was lots of "cheap deaths" more i thought then r-type (compairing stage-1). Usually im not too keen on cheap deaths (which i can be ok with if the game is good enough) and after seeing that vid i thought of knocking it off my 'to play seriously in the future' list. But then i looked at it a different way, if i was to try to 1 credit any moderatly difficult shmup twitch based or not, i would have to spend alot of time to do it. Certainly enough time that i would memorise alot of it.

So in the end it doesnt matter if the game is a memoriser with cheap deaths or a full on cave like bullet hell since unless you can play like Satan himself (or Icarus from this forum ) and beable to beat a hard shmup after just a day or two of playing, then you'll be spending enough time with it to comit allot of the game to memory (plus you memorise the bullet patterns in a bullet hell anyway)

Allot of folk (sometimes me included) just want to just casually play a shmup for 10-20 minutes b4 moving onto doing something else, maybe thats where TF or any memoriser might be a bad choice of a shmup to play unless you know the game well having played it alot beforehand.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

I wouldn't judge only by a YouTube video, some of those are just the person playing the game and they may not necessarily be "good" at it and may simply be recording their own gameplay just to have content on their YouTube channel.

The thing about ThunderForce III is that the attract mode actually shows some of the cheap death locations of a stage. No need to even play yet, just watch the attract mode and memorize those few sections. This is especially important with the Haides stage (parts close and it will be a guaranteed loss of ship if one does not pass the area before it closes) and Gorgon (lava ball and lava beam traps that come and go at precision time moments).

TF IV, I soon learned that the best way to play is to keep the ship near the middle of the screen whenever possible, except for midboss and boss attacks. Behind the back attacks aren't all that frequent, but when they occur, the enemies that do attack from behind tend to be smaller and therefore not always immediately visible.

I still think both TF III and TF IV are much more fair games than something like Gaiares, primarily because of the instant respawn and there aren't as many tiny enemies attacking throughout the entire game. In saying this, keep in mind I still play and respect Gaiares for what it is--it is still a very good shmup on its own.

In Gaiares, getting hit anywhere between the start of the stage and the midboss reverts back to the beginning of the stage, getting hit between the midboss and the boss goes back to just after the midboss, getting hit at the boss goes back just before the boss but sometimes that means dealing with another midboss just before the boss. In TF III and TF IV, getting hit by anything while having the shield counts as one hit on the shield. In Gaiares, getting hit by terrain or a larger enemy can still mean instant loss of ship, and in the case of something like the homing missiles, those are lost permanently for the remainder of the game since it appears those can only be obtained in Stage 1.

[Ganelon]

Thunder Force is as much a shooter memorizer as Rockman is a sidescroller memorizer. If you want to knock the game out in 20 minutes, it doesn't sound like you're in the right genre. TF is something you can spend 1-2 hours a day on and 1CC within 2 weeks; none of the games are hard (well, not sure about TFI).

[The Coop]

My quick opinions...

TF- Not bad for the time. Tough to really gauge it when I've only gotten to play it on emulators that are in Japanese (and thus, I can't figure out how to get it set up better).

TF II- The overhead stages, while looking pretty good, are just pointless. Less than 60 seconds after you start them, they're over. The side view missions are where this games shines more brightly, and these should have been only type of stages. The music is good, the sound effects are fine, the graphics aren't too shabby for an early Genesis title, and the controls were without issue.

TF III- All side view! Better music composition, fun stages, good sound effects, and the controls are spot on. Really easy though, but still a great game. Much better than many shmups of the time.

TF IV- Kneel before this game. The best shmup on the Genesis (arguably the 16-bit era). Great graphics, fantastic music, spot on controls, a solid challenge on Mania, and very cool stages. The only crack in its armor is the slowdown.

TF V- About on par with TF III, but for somewhat different reasons. Great music, solid control, good challenge, and rather nicely done graphics that the Saturn "couldn't do". I miss the stage obstacles though. Not being able to slam into the scenery like you could in II-IV makes it play like a different beast.

TF VI- A bit disappointing, but not bad. The controls are fine, the music varies from very nice to "so-so", but the overweapon is WAY too powerful. It feels more like an homage to the series, than a real new entry.



In other words, I pretty much disagree with everything the maker of this thread has said about the series, and am left wondering if he played Chinese hacked versions. How they look is all opinion of course, but bad controls? Cheap deaths? Not in any TF game I've ever played.

[Zweihander]

Tried out the universally praised TFV again. Looks like the game designer at one point just said: 'Hey! Let's make it like R-Type, only gayer!'

.......if anything, TF is the polar OPPOSITE of R-Type... fast-paced, less about mazes and more about aligning yourself for high-speed enemy formations... I could go on... but you don't even know what you're talking about, and coming from someone like me, that's a very bad thing. If you want R-Type: Gay Edition, go play Last Hope, but please, leave TF out of this.

[mesh control]

Tried out the universally praised TFV again. Looks like the game designer at one point just said: 'Hey! Let's make it like R-Type, only gayer!'

.......if anything, TF is the polar OPPOSITE of R-Type... fast-paced, less about mazes and more about aligning yourself for high-speed enemy formations... I could go on... but you don't even know what you're talking about, and coming from someone like me, that's a very bad thing. If you want R-Type: Gay Edition, go play Last Hope, but please, leave TF out of this.

My sentiments exactly.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Thats the impresion i got aswell, less about dodging walls / mazes and more about dodging enemies and bullets, thats the thing that drew me originally to TF

[EinhanderZwei]

.......if anything, TF is the polar OPPOSITE of R-Type... fast-paced, less about mazes and more about aligning yourself for high-speed enemy formations... I could go on... but you don't even know what you're talking about, and coming from someone like me, that's a very bad thing. If you want R-Type: Gay Edition, go play Last Hope, but please, leave TF out of this.

Okay, okay, maybe I should just stop comparing everything to R-Type. Lesson learned

[Specineff]

Emulation will never capture the experience of the original game, ever. The graphics may be close, but may have scaling or color flaws. The quality of the sound effects may suffer a bit in quality, or even get changed. The control accuracy may also be significantly altered from that of the original system.

At the risk of deraling the thread, I have to call Placebo Effect on that. It's probably the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia what makes people "feel" the game to be "different". Granted, a VGA monitor will look super sharp VS the RF modulator on the Genesis, but that has no bearing over the gameplay if the speed, timing, and frame rate are exactly the same as the original hardware. And if we are talking about control, I'd rather play emulated SNES with an USB Saturn pad than the ultra-stiff original SNES pad.

Also, Protip: The PCE D-pad sucks. Big time.

[Thunder Force]

Emulation will never capture the experience of the original game, ever. The graphics may be close, but may have scaling or color flaws. The quality of the sound effects may suffer a bit in quality, or even get changed. The control accuracy may also be significantly altered from that of the original system.

At the risk of deraling the thread, I have to call Placebo Effect on that. It's probably the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia what makes people "feel" the game to be "different".

In this case, the OP mentioned they were emulating these games on a PSP, which last time I checked doesn't have software to emulate TF2-TF4 at 100% accuracy (depending on which PSP emulator used, either render performance or audio accuracy was compromised).

[EinhanderZwei]

I'm using PicoDrive emu

[TodayIsForgotten]

Wait, so the OP is basing all this on PSP emulation? I don't know about everyone else but I find a huge differnet playing emulation on a 4.3" screen vs a 16+ inch monitor. That's not really a fair way to compare a game. I've enjoyed the thunderforce series on PC emulation quite a bit. I never had any issue with the controls in any of the games up to 3. Haven't played the others. I thought the graphics were on par with the 16bit system of the time emulated or not.

[No_not_like_Quake]

I've played TF IV on a psp w/emulator. It was inaccurate, had control lag, frame rate issues and the sound was messed up.

[Ganelon]

At the risk of deraling the thread, I have to call Placebo Effect on that. It's probably the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia what makes people "feel" the game to be "different". Granted, a VGA monitor will look super sharp VS the RF modulator on the Genesis, but that has no bearing over the gameplay if the speed, timing, and frame rate are exactly the same as the original hardware.

It's not deluded when there've been numerous actual tests performed on emulated game sound and speed; these are 2 of the most notoriously difficult components to emulate. Go ask the SNES emulator designers; not a single one will guarantee you 100% accurate speed because they know it's impossible to replicate certain aspects of the original hardware. In the past, I've easily been able to distinguish a zsnes tune from a real SNES tune by listening to both versions unlabeled. And a lot of emulators have input lag that really hinders the mechanics.

Even worse is that many players don't even set the emulator on the most accurate settings. Sure, you can use filtering, bump up the sound to crazy frequencies, and use the system's internal aspect ratio (the last being a really sad attempt to increase accuracy while unknowingly making it more inaccurate). The fact remains that only playing on the original hardware can guarantee you a 100% accurate run of the game as the developers intended. Emulation is close and at times very accurate but thinking it's the same thing is the real sign of delusion.

[ZOM]

FWIW I think Thunder Force 6 is one of the best TF if played with any ship other than the default blue one. My question is: Why so much hate towards TF6?

Because it's boring and piss easy with any ship.
(Just my 2 cents)

[EinhanderZwei]

OK, to clarify: I've tried PicoDrive emu for PSP and Kega Fusion for PC. I've never had access to live Megadrive and will never do, so this is the only way for me to play not only TF, but all the Genesis/Megadrive games

[BIL]

If Saturn is an option for you, there's the two TF Gold Packs. Aside from some sound issues (first one uses streaming audio, second isn't quite accurate), they play fine. Arguably better in TFIV's case, since the more massive slowdown is gone.

[Mortificator]

The fact remains that only playing on the original hardware can guarantee you a 100% accurate run of the game as the developers intended.

That's never the hardware or the game that the developers intended. It's what they had to settle for.