Thunder Force III region diffs + Tecno Soft miscs

[BrianC]

I didn't mind the first overhead stage since the areas with a target are sectioned off, but the overheard stages where you have to guide the ship through a small area are annoying.

[BIL]

Derailed is fine, my favourite threads usually involve a healthy degree of meandering. As long as it doesn't turn into an "anime that reminds you of Thunder Force" thread or something.

I certainly like TFIIMD. Can't talk about it too in-depth yet, since I've not spent nearly as much concentrated time and effort on it as TFIII and EM. But from casual play, I dig how unforgiving and relentless it feels on max difficulty, very unrefined. It's all too easy to get hopelessly lost and swamped by enemies in the overhead stages, yet they can all be cleared ridiculously quickly once you devise good routes. The hori ones are super fast-paced and loaded with nasty traps that never feel any less treacherous once learned. Lots of brutal trial and error. At the same time, controls and hit detection are tight - it's lacking in player-friendly polish, but by no means a shoddy game.

Given that the fundamentals are solid and it has a distinctive style, I find its overall rawness more charming that off-putting. I could see others with less patience or affinity for Tecno Soft being turned off by that same quality, though. See also TS's other nascent MD effort, Herzog Zwei.

[louisg]

At the same time, controls and hit detection are tight - it's lacking in player-friendly polish, but by no means a shoddy game.

I agree there. It really has a 'computer game' vibe, which makes perfect sense. And I personally like a lot of uneven made-for-computer shmups myself, so enjoying TF2 is no problem. As far as those go, it's up there with some of the best.

Anyway, firing it up today, there's a lot to like about it, and a bit to not like. Some stuff, like the recklessly fast scrolling in stage 4, you never see again in a Thunder Force game, which is too bad. I was thinking about how since the art design is more coherent in later TF games, they didn't have the same kinds of backdrops. Like you got futuristic space colonies in TF4 and beyond but not cities with skyscrapers.

The art varies quite a bit too, with some sprites looking great and others looking like the programmer drew them. They really pulled it together for TF3 though. I can only imagine being a TF2 fan and having my mind blown when TF3 hits. They had awesome music right off the bat though

[BIL]

Aesthetically there's a really consistent progression in their MD stuff, from TFII/Herzog, to TFIII/EM and finally TFIV/Devil Crash MD. TFIII's presentation is leaps and bounds ahead of TFII, but TFIV is very nearly as huge an advance (just compare TFIII's detailed but still somewhat chunky Styx to TFIV's supercar-beautiful Rynex). DCMD may be based on Naxat's existing work, but the fine-pixel detailing of stone, chrome, exposed bone and pulsating flesh in TS's MD port is crazy. Jaki Crush (SFC) has nothing on that game.

It almost feels improper to compare TFIII and IV strictly on looks, though, with III running so much smoother on MD. Like The Hard Corps, it's the type of game I find fun to deliberately overload, it's so difficult to make it slow down. At a blazing 60fps on the Saturn, TFIV actually gives the vastly improved SS mode of Hyper Duel a run for its money (and its backgrounds destroy the vanilla AC version's).

Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 is probably the single best Tecno Soft release. TFAC is certainly good enough to stand in for TFIII, and you get 60fps TFIV. Magnum Opus! It's not especially expensive either compared to getting individual carts of TFIII + TFIV or especially (dun-dun-dunnn) Hyper Duel SS, which is a brilliant game with the small caveat of costing four or so equally good shooters these days.

[stryc9]

Yep, nothing wrong with the second Thunder Force game. Both the top down and the side scrolling levels are fun. More fun than I had with it back in the day even (I got the 60 Hz version these days, or to be more accurate, I play the game on a NTSC console - I think it's one of those early multi-region affairs we've been talking about IIRC). EDIT: Yep, on a Japan console it has MD on the title screen as well.

I actually like the gameplay in the top view levels, I mention this since I get the feeling there are not a lot of fans. I dig the mega twitchy reflexes you need to negotiate some of the faster moving parallax walls, and blasting thru stuff on your way to the goals.

The power ups in TFII are also cool, since some of them are unique to either the top-down or side-view sections. I like MEGAFLASH and that omni-directional blue ring shot... arhh what was that called again?

[BIL]

Nova, the predecessor of TFIV's Free Way. Awesome weapons which sadly became TFV's stupidly overpowered Free Range. I do like TFV but god damn did it fail at weapon balance... and presentation (though not atmosphere)... and living up to the prior three games' rich level designs. Elemental Master, Hyper Duel and Blast Wind smoke it too, even with the last one being on a similar "middling overall, gratifying nonetheless" tier (BW's a bit slow to get going, but holy shit does stuff explode violently in that game, and soon enough constantly... looove the sense of metal-shearing destruction in the blue ship's forward shot).

TFIII's Fire (bi-directional terrain-hugging missiles) becoming TFIV's Snake bombardier weapon, now that was inspired weapon evolution.

[stryc9]

Yeah that's right, Nova.

And totally agreed about Free Range, at least in the context of Thunder Force VI. to my shame I still have not played TF V on anything

I like Destroy on TFII as well, easier to bomb the bases on the overhead levels at the expense of anti-air protection. And the time based shield is unique within the series, unless TFI had it, anyway

[BIL]

That's a detail I always forget about TFII, no permanent shields! Pretty brutal in comparison to every other console shooter of theirs, they give you a three hit shield at least a couple times per run. Hell, even TFAC has them.

[stryc9]

I have still yet to beat the damn game, and it's been a few months since I made any serious attempt. I think I reached what was the last level of TFII but had my lives sucked away pretty quickly.

It isn't as hard as some have said once you have the top down level routes worked out.

PS you gotta love bombing a base, the power up carrier appearing and depositing one of the icons inside some of the parallax terrain

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah that's right, Nova.

And totally agreed about Free Range, at least in the context of Thunder Force VI. to my shame I still have not played TF V on anything

I like Destroy on TFII as well, easier to bomb the bases on the overhead levels at the expense of anti-air protection. And the time based shield is unique within the series, unless TFI had it, anyway

TF I had nothing, at least the original Sharp X1 version didn't. It really was 8-directional Xevious.

I liked the concept behind it though: take out the hidden generators and the whole stage transformed into the freaky Orn named alien ship thing which itself had components you needed to destroy. Imagine a game like Jungle Strike taking influence from that and transforming the entire stage on-the-fly to a freaky animated alien environment. :O