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Thunder Blade Developer: Sega? Based on: One of those stupid '80s helicopter shows like Airwolf, but without the human interest elements. |
HO HO MORE LIKE CHUNDER BLADE AM I RIGHT EH???
Man, this is one of those games that was put together by people who feel very sad when they think about the prospect of someone having a good time. It's not that it's bad or anything, but it seems to have been designed to be impossible to enjoy. It's a shoot-em-up, with really big sprites and fast action. Which means that if you don't have a pretty good sense of where the enemies are coming from next, you're hosed -- hilariously artful formations of enemy helicopters will smash into you. Or maybe you'll fail to take out the super-copter within two seconds and it will trap you in the corner with a 360-degree stream of unavoidable gunfire. Fun stuff!
On the plus side, playing Thunder Blade doesn't represent a hefty time investment. You'll be lucky to last two minutes your first time out.
As for the gameplay, it's your usual helicopter-based top-down shooter with air-to-air fire and air-to-ground bombs. Not unlike Taito's Tiger-Heli, except even harder. In even-numbered stages, the action shifts to a fake-3D behind-the-chopper perspective which is retardedly hard. Since when do tanks fire shells that can arc in a parabolic curve to track you?
Like so many SMS games, this is one of those arcade ports targeting tragically underpowered hardware. I'm sure the arcade game was rad and all, but games like this seem sadly underwhelming on 8-bit hardware. I think I prefer the NES approach of completely remaking a game for home in recognition of the fact that the console version would be really feeble in comparison to the incredible sprite-crunching 16-bit arcade boards they were using in the late '80s.
I think my favorite part of the game is being shot down by tanks in the 3D stages. Not only do they knock you out of the sky, but once your chopper is a smouldering wreck on the pavement they keep blasting away. It's like the developers are spitting on your corpse before jumping up and down on it, and it takes the whole experience to a charming new level of viciousness.