PasokonDeacon
No grail. Necropolis only. Mandate of Heaven.
Is there anything as amusing here as a Scooby-Doo chase around the map, with one deathball vs. a bunch of under-supplied riders? That's the average HoMM3 late-game on some maps. You learn to fuck with the AI as much as possible, just in case some pathfinding manipulation buys you time to restock troops. Maybe beelining for those magic artifacts—a 5th level spells hat, for instance—can turn the tide in battle. The final scenario in Restoration of Erathia had me playing cat-and-mouse this way. It got frustrating at times, but persistence pays off in any of these games. I sunk more than a hundred hours to stop a cursed king, and I felt redeemed.
There's much I could say about HoMM3 in general, one of PC gaming's evergreen staples. As for the base game's campaigns, I'll note how well the scenarios inch upward in length & complexity. The first three campaigns, with three missions each, covers much of the basics & common strategies you'll need to master. Juggling multiple town types leveling up your heroes to cover more ground (before creating that aforementioned deathball) is all crucial to later success. I just have to laugh at the actual tutorial since it teaches you relatively intuitive actions while the early-game gives you useful hints in a story context. The difficulty curve is balanced enough, at least in the Complete Edition, to ensure you'll get through the game's first half.
Things get nuts once you reach Steadwick's Liberation. The game knows you've learned how Castle heroes, troops, & buildings work. But now you'll be fighting your own kind turned heel, with way more resources & action economy than you can muster. It's here where I learned just how much of a numbers game HoMM3 can become. Trading makes or breaks your game, low morale can ruin your battle tactics on a whim, and unit upgrades only work so well when you're running out of gold for other things. I got used to taking my spellcasters anywhere they could fight & then restock MP, just abusing their magic attacks to compensate for having so few units.
Compared to its predecessors, base HoMM3 already has a more muted, aged aesthetic that clashes against the story's cheesy moments. It's fun to witness characters & concepts derived from the main Might & Magic games (themselves derived from many late-night D&D pizza parties) utterly destroying each other. New World Computing clearly loves the world they're working with, no matter how simple & blockbuster in scope. For lack of an essential AD&D Birthright game, this era of HoMM feels like the proper off-brand equivalent, a realm of enormous warfare contained in charismatic personages.
It's a shame, then, that the post-game campaign is such a whimper. I love the idea of people from Erathia & AvLee joining up to form their own equitable, sovereign country. There's just not a lot to really do in these last few scenarios, however. Learning how to dig up the Grail is nice and all, and nothing here ought to match For King and Country's harsh skill wall, but I'm not playing this game for a victory lap. Any chance to reach high-level spells & army crafting, then go ham on my opponents, is much more fun.
Still, I've been loving my time with HoMM3 so far. It's living up to the hype and then some. Excellent map design, meaningfully diverse units & character advancement...it's all here. I grew up with HoMM4 and will hopefully still enjoy it, yet I can already see why others consider that sequel such a downgrade. Here's hoping the upcoming expansions keep this up.
Is there anything as amusing here as a Scooby-Doo chase around the map, with one deathball vs. a bunch of under-supplied riders? That's the average HoMM3 late-game on some maps. You learn to fuck with the AI as much as possible, just in case some pathfinding manipulation buys you time to restock troops. Maybe beelining for those magic artifacts—a 5th level spells hat, for instance—can turn the tide in battle. The final scenario in Restoration of Erathia had me playing cat-and-mouse this way. It got frustrating at times, but persistence pays off in any of these games. I sunk more than a hundred hours to stop a cursed king, and I felt redeemed.
There's much I could say about HoMM3 in general, one of PC gaming's evergreen staples. As for the base game's campaigns, I'll note how well the scenarios inch upward in length & complexity. The first three campaigns, with three missions each, covers much of the basics & common strategies you'll need to master. Juggling multiple town types leveling up your heroes to cover more ground (before creating that aforementioned deathball) is all crucial to later success. I just have to laugh at the actual tutorial since it teaches you relatively intuitive actions while the early-game gives you useful hints in a story context. The difficulty curve is balanced enough, at least in the Complete Edition, to ensure you'll get through the game's first half.
Things get nuts once you reach Steadwick's Liberation. The game knows you've learned how Castle heroes, troops, & buildings work. But now you'll be fighting your own kind turned heel, with way more resources & action economy than you can muster. It's here where I learned just how much of a numbers game HoMM3 can become. Trading makes or breaks your game, low morale can ruin your battle tactics on a whim, and unit upgrades only work so well when you're running out of gold for other things. I got used to taking my spellcasters anywhere they could fight & then restock MP, just abusing their magic attacks to compensate for having so few units.
Compared to its predecessors, base HoMM3 already has a more muted, aged aesthetic that clashes against the story's cheesy moments. It's fun to witness characters & concepts derived from the main Might & Magic games (themselves derived from many late-night D&D pizza parties) utterly destroying each other. New World Computing clearly loves the world they're working with, no matter how simple & blockbuster in scope. For lack of an essential AD&D Birthright game, this era of HoMM feels like the proper off-brand equivalent, a realm of enormous warfare contained in charismatic personages.
It's a shame, then, that the post-game campaign is such a whimper. I love the idea of people from Erathia & AvLee joining up to form their own equitable, sovereign country. There's just not a lot to really do in these last few scenarios, however. Learning how to dig up the Grail is nice and all, and nothing here ought to match For King and Country's harsh skill wall, but I'm not playing this game for a victory lap. Any chance to reach high-level spells & army crafting, then go ham on my opponents, is much more fun.
Still, I've been loving my time with HoMM3 so far. It's living up to the hype and then some. Excellent map design, meaningfully diverse units & character advancement...it's all here. I grew up with HoMM4 and will hopefully still enjoy it, yet I can already see why others consider that sequel such a downgrade. Here's hoping the upcoming expansions keep this up.
Stale isn't strong enough a word. The content recycling is one thing, though disappointing given the years between this & Wild World. But the dialogue looping is inexcusable. The original Animal Crossing & its DS sequel both offered just enough variety in conversations across villagers to keep the game loop working. With your neighbors getting stuck on one damn thing so often in City Folk, the illusion's dispelled.
Then you see how, even with some added content like new holidays & collectibles, the city itself is just a demystified way to access previously event-only features. Sure, it's awesome that I can get my hair done anytime vs. the dumb unlocking method in WW. But why not simply give & tell players a way to get the hairdresser at Nookington's? Then you can stay in the village—you know, the actually relevant setting of the game. Instead of finding better ways to let players unlock & integrate new functions into the village, City Folk took the easy way out, and it's harmed it ever since.
The developers must have realized (or learned through market research) how badly they missed the mark on most players' expectations. New Leaf fixes so many of CF's omissions & questionable decisions. But for all the fun I can still have with this entry, it just has me pining for a WW decompilation so we can get proper content & mechanics mods for it already. I loved this as a kid, but would much rather play the idiosyncratic GC versions or WW for those neat villager hobbies & pictures. Even returning now with cheats & emulation niceties doesn't make a dent in CF's mediocrity.
I haven't even touched on dirt paths, barely improved online, using the pointer for typing, and other exhausting but well-trodden topics. All I can do now is ponder how much worse this could have turned out if not for the core developers' consistency in porting the working bits of GC & WW over. I'm just glad even the most mid of pre-New Horizons entries is still a little fun. (N64 is a glorified prototype, so I'm not counting it here.)
Then you see how, even with some added content like new holidays & collectibles, the city itself is just a demystified way to access previously event-only features. Sure, it's awesome that I can get my hair done anytime vs. the dumb unlocking method in WW. But why not simply give & tell players a way to get the hairdresser at Nookington's? Then you can stay in the village—you know, the actually relevant setting of the game. Instead of finding better ways to let players unlock & integrate new functions into the village, City Folk took the easy way out, and it's harmed it ever since.
The developers must have realized (or learned through market research) how badly they missed the mark on most players' expectations. New Leaf fixes so many of CF's omissions & questionable decisions. But for all the fun I can still have with this entry, it just has me pining for a WW decompilation so we can get proper content & mechanics mods for it already. I loved this as a kid, but would much rather play the idiosyncratic GC versions or WW for those neat villager hobbies & pictures. Even returning now with cheats & emulation niceties doesn't make a dent in CF's mediocrity.
I haven't even touched on dirt paths, barely improved online, using the pointer for typing, and other exhausting but well-trodden topics. All I can do now is ponder how much worse this could have turned out if not for the core developers' consistency in porting the working bits of GC & WW over. I'm just glad even the most mid of pre-New Horizons entries is still a little fun. (N64 is a glorified prototype, so I'm not counting it here.)
1996
The smell of tarnished metal...the steely iron clash. You're just one more pilot among them. Their fathers spoke proudly of serving the greater good, and their mothers saw the devastation lying ahead. It wages on into this 21st century of late-capitalist warfare, trading out cavalry for HIGH-MACS mechs. Nations conglomerate under defense pacts, water and other resources run scarce, and you're either going to survive a conqueror or become a statistic.
Gungriffon doesn't bash you over the head with its themes. Like similar mech action series (think Armored Core), it's about having a blast first & thinking of questions later. You can go from portentous briefing screens to hard-rockin' gunfights to a cheery high scores menu in a matter of minutes. The game combines a simple, fast, and engaging game loop with just enough worldbuilding depth to keep you hooked. As the first Saturn title I ever played & completed, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
This 1996 Saturn exclusive was something of a passion project for the late Takeshi Miyaji, one of Game Arts' co-founders. His fondness for Kee Games' '70s battler Tank, plus his work on previous successes like Silpheed, eventually led him & co-developers to make a 3D mech game pushing the Saturn to its early limits. In short, they saw the ailing system as a way to achieve something even more impressive. Game Arts had built their reputation on squeezing incredible audiovisuals & playability out of tricky platforms like the PC-8801. Even with the Saturn's faults, they could make something even the PlayStation would covet.
Rather than make either a strict simulation or arcade romp, Game Arts blended both approaches. Gungriffon isn't the easiest mecha game out there to learn, but it's on the easier end of simcade. Your face buttons handle everything from acceleration & deceleration to jumping & night vision. Movement involves a mix of the D-pad and holding down strafe. You can cycle through weapons quickly, turn only your turret while moving in a direction...there's a good amount of fluidity & skillful play here. Even if you're unused to first-person mecha action, the game's initial missions aren't that punishing, letting you get to grips with controls & mission progression.
Gungriffon consists of 8 main missions, 2 training sorties, and replay incentives such as end-of-level rankings & difficult modes. I wouldn't call it a content-rich experience, but what's here is quality over quantity. After a standard kill-em-all opening battle, your objectives branch out into escort jobs, stealth missions, & base invasions. The game ends on a tense, oppressive dive into a nuclear missile silo where you fight past other HIGH-MACS pilots of your caliber to deactivate a launch. You're able to simultaneously save in-between missions a run & redo missions for a higher score ranking. For its time, this was a player-friendly package.
Granular controls, well-balanced difficulty, a bevy of different foes, & mission variety are all well and good. But what sets this apart from MechWarrior 2, Thunder Strike 2, & other mid-'90s mechanized action classics is the aforementioned score aspect. Like other score-heavy Saturn greats (ex. NiGHTS), this emphasis on player skill & performance isn't just for earning bragging rights. The game wants you to play fast & aggressive, albeit with intelligence. Turtling is both harder & less desirable here than in Gungriffon's more sim-heavy brethren, but still viable when necessary.
None of this would be all that fun without the technical prowess needed for even early 3D military combat. I brought up Armored Core earlier for a reason. Both games wrought fast 3D graphics for the genre at key intervals in their systems' lifecycles. Gungriffon's solid draw distance, environment detail, & elevation in level design keeps it competitive with more ambitious titles later in the Saturn's life. You also get an aesthetically enticing but usable HUD mimicking that of cockpits from mecha anime & figher jets. With all the chaos happening on-screen, Gungriffon's a technical triumph for a console saddled with 3D woes.
Game Arts hardly skimped on the rest of the game's polish & presentation, either. Story scenes are efficient, painting a dire picture of a weaponized near-future forever embroiled in conflict. Sound design ranges from heavy clanking to atmospheric ambiance to the strident cries of your perishing comrades. Above all, the mercurial, genre-spanning soundtrack from ex-Shining composer Motoaki Takenouchi dominates the soundscape. I became a fan of his classically-tinged prog rock & ambient style here, finally shackled from FM synthesis & able to either rouse or discomfort any player. Were it remastered today, Gungriffon would retain its mystique through audiovisuals alone.
That's another thing it shares with Armored Core: an alluring combination of tests & tropes to keep you coming back. Mecha games struggle so often with presenting distant, sometimes alienating worlds of war in an entertaining fashion. They risk boring or frustrating players almost as often as they risk compromising the harsh worldviews they portray. Gungriffon succeeds at balancing the gravity of its story conflict with player agency & replayability. Much like From Soft's later take on the genre (just without the customization angle), Game Arts wants you to stay in high spirits even as you obliterate enemy camps & ace pilots like yourself.
Thanks to strong sales & critical reception, Gungriffon would become a small but notable series on Saturn, PS2, & Xbox. It dwindled away as Game Arts' other major IP, the RPG series Grandia, fell on hard times. The difficult move to HD game development ultimately pushed Game Arts and its properties into an identity-robbing merger with GungHo, but I hold out a sliver of hope for Gungriffon's return in my lifetime. At the very least, I'd love to see some developers create a throwback first-person mecha game in this vein, perhaps with more of an arcade bent to contrast the recent crop of Armored Core-like indies.
If you've got a Saturn or means to emulate it, Gungriffon's one banger of a system-pushing mecha classic. I've yet to try its Saturn sequel (which doesn't need an English fan patch, but could benefit from one), and the Xbox game's a blind spot for me also. I'll confidently recommend the PS2 entry, Gungriffon Blaze, strips away some of the sim-y bits while nearly perfecting the original's structure, adding analog controls & other modernizations. But I'll get into that later with a proper review. Until then, I hope the seminal Game Arts mecha FPS is now on your radar or higher up your shortlist!
(Shout-outs to Thexder & Veigues for paving the way. Those are much simpler mecha action titles compared to what Game Arts later made, but you can see the evolution towards Gungriffon within them.)
Gungriffon doesn't bash you over the head with its themes. Like similar mech action series (think Armored Core), it's about having a blast first & thinking of questions later. You can go from portentous briefing screens to hard-rockin' gunfights to a cheery high scores menu in a matter of minutes. The game combines a simple, fast, and engaging game loop with just enough worldbuilding depth to keep you hooked. As the first Saturn title I ever played & completed, I couldn't have asked for anything better.
This 1996 Saturn exclusive was something of a passion project for the late Takeshi Miyaji, one of Game Arts' co-founders. His fondness for Kee Games' '70s battler Tank, plus his work on previous successes like Silpheed, eventually led him & co-developers to make a 3D mech game pushing the Saturn to its early limits. In short, they saw the ailing system as a way to achieve something even more impressive. Game Arts had built their reputation on squeezing incredible audiovisuals & playability out of tricky platforms like the PC-8801. Even with the Saturn's faults, they could make something even the PlayStation would covet.
Rather than make either a strict simulation or arcade romp, Game Arts blended both approaches. Gungriffon isn't the easiest mecha game out there to learn, but it's on the easier end of simcade. Your face buttons handle everything from acceleration & deceleration to jumping & night vision. Movement involves a mix of the D-pad and holding down strafe. You can cycle through weapons quickly, turn only your turret while moving in a direction...there's a good amount of fluidity & skillful play here. Even if you're unused to first-person mecha action, the game's initial missions aren't that punishing, letting you get to grips with controls & mission progression.
Gungriffon consists of 8 main missions, 2 training sorties, and replay incentives such as end-of-level rankings & difficult modes. I wouldn't call it a content-rich experience, but what's here is quality over quantity. After a standard kill-em-all opening battle, your objectives branch out into escort jobs, stealth missions, & base invasions. The game ends on a tense, oppressive dive into a nuclear missile silo where you fight past other HIGH-MACS pilots of your caliber to deactivate a launch. You're able to simultaneously save in-between missions a run & redo missions for a higher score ranking. For its time, this was a player-friendly package.
Granular controls, well-balanced difficulty, a bevy of different foes, & mission variety are all well and good. But what sets this apart from MechWarrior 2, Thunder Strike 2, & other mid-'90s mechanized action classics is the aforementioned score aspect. Like other score-heavy Saturn greats (ex. NiGHTS), this emphasis on player skill & performance isn't just for earning bragging rights. The game wants you to play fast & aggressive, albeit with intelligence. Turtling is both harder & less desirable here than in Gungriffon's more sim-heavy brethren, but still viable when necessary.
None of this would be all that fun without the technical prowess needed for even early 3D military combat. I brought up Armored Core earlier for a reason. Both games wrought fast 3D graphics for the genre at key intervals in their systems' lifecycles. Gungriffon's solid draw distance, environment detail, & elevation in level design keeps it competitive with more ambitious titles later in the Saturn's life. You also get an aesthetically enticing but usable HUD mimicking that of cockpits from mecha anime & figher jets. With all the chaos happening on-screen, Gungriffon's a technical triumph for a console saddled with 3D woes.
Game Arts hardly skimped on the rest of the game's polish & presentation, either. Story scenes are efficient, painting a dire picture of a weaponized near-future forever embroiled in conflict. Sound design ranges from heavy clanking to atmospheric ambiance to the strident cries of your perishing comrades. Above all, the mercurial, genre-spanning soundtrack from ex-Shining composer Motoaki Takenouchi dominates the soundscape. I became a fan of his classically-tinged prog rock & ambient style here, finally shackled from FM synthesis & able to either rouse or discomfort any player. Were it remastered today, Gungriffon would retain its mystique through audiovisuals alone.
That's another thing it shares with Armored Core: an alluring combination of tests & tropes to keep you coming back. Mecha games struggle so often with presenting distant, sometimes alienating worlds of war in an entertaining fashion. They risk boring or frustrating players almost as often as they risk compromising the harsh worldviews they portray. Gungriffon succeeds at balancing the gravity of its story conflict with player agency & replayability. Much like From Soft's later take on the genre (just without the customization angle), Game Arts wants you to stay in high spirits even as you obliterate enemy camps & ace pilots like yourself.
Thanks to strong sales & critical reception, Gungriffon would become a small but notable series on Saturn, PS2, & Xbox. It dwindled away as Game Arts' other major IP, the RPG series Grandia, fell on hard times. The difficult move to HD game development ultimately pushed Game Arts and its properties into an identity-robbing merger with GungHo, but I hold out a sliver of hope for Gungriffon's return in my lifetime. At the very least, I'd love to see some developers create a throwback first-person mecha game in this vein, perhaps with more of an arcade bent to contrast the recent crop of Armored Core-like indies.
If you've got a Saturn or means to emulate it, Gungriffon's one banger of a system-pushing mecha classic. I've yet to try its Saturn sequel (which doesn't need an English fan patch, but could benefit from one), and the Xbox game's a blind spot for me also. I'll confidently recommend the PS2 entry, Gungriffon Blaze, strips away some of the sim-y bits while nearly perfecting the original's structure, adding analog controls & other modernizations. But I'll get into that later with a proper review. Until then, I hope the seminal Game Arts mecha FPS is now on your radar or higher up your shortlist!
(Shout-outs to Thexder & Veigues for paving the way. Those are much simpler mecha action titles compared to what Game Arts later made, but you can see the evolution towards Gungriffon within them.)
1983
WOW! YOU LOSE!! (by playing the downgraded Famicom port of a 1983 game?)
Bokosuka Wars was to Japan's real-time sim/strategy genres what Utopia, Stonkers, & Cytron Masters were to '80s Western PC RTSes. I'd argue this game was more important than them simply for its influence on Tecno Soft's Herzog series, which itself inspired Westwood developers who'd later make the seminal Dune II. That's a lot of words to say this isn't some throwaway footnote in the Famicom library. Japanese PC game conversions to Nintendo's machine were a big event in those early years, and Bokosuka Wars had a genuine wow factor that still matters.
ASCII published this lone creation by Koji Sumii (today a traditional craftsman & puppeteer) on cassette for Sharp's X1 micro-computer back in '83 to much acclaim. It got an expansion/sequel the year later and ports to other PCs before reaching the Famicom. Despite a modern sequel being well-received, the Nintendo rendition has gone down in kusoge history. After all, why try & play this experimental proto-RTS on its own terms when you can bumble into an early wipe & laugh at the game over screen? /s
Context aside, I still have a lot of fun with the PC original, which combines basic real-time strategy mechanics with a light RNG layer & simple to understand progression. Unlike the Famicom port where you start with no soldiers at all, the X1 original gives you a big starting squad. This lets you get used to the controls & your units' frailty before you dive headfirst into the front-lines. Learning how to make new units from trees, plus how to quickly reposition grunts in front of you to do battles, becomes second nature after a while. I wouldn't call this an easy game, but it's hardly as ill-designed or inscrutable as retro discussions make it out to be.
I'd mainly recommend playing this if you're interested in the RTS genre's history or would enjoy a simple, sometimes frustrating but ultimately compelling arcade wargame. The X1 version's not too hard to find out in the digital wilderness, but I wish it was officially accessible via a modern remake or even through Project EGG for PC users. It's an important & distinctive piece of software which paved the way not just for Herzog (Zwei) & Dune II, but other oddities like Kure Software's Silver Ghost & First Queen series.
Bokosuka Wars was to Japan's real-time sim/strategy genres what Utopia, Stonkers, & Cytron Masters were to '80s Western PC RTSes. I'd argue this game was more important than them simply for its influence on Tecno Soft's Herzog series, which itself inspired Westwood developers who'd later make the seminal Dune II. That's a lot of words to say this isn't some throwaway footnote in the Famicom library. Japanese PC game conversions to Nintendo's machine were a big event in those early years, and Bokosuka Wars had a genuine wow factor that still matters.
ASCII published this lone creation by Koji Sumii (today a traditional craftsman & puppeteer) on cassette for Sharp's X1 micro-computer back in '83 to much acclaim. It got an expansion/sequel the year later and ports to other PCs before reaching the Famicom. Despite a modern sequel being well-received, the Nintendo rendition has gone down in kusoge history. After all, why try & play this experimental proto-RTS on its own terms when you can bumble into an early wipe & laugh at the game over screen? /s
Context aside, I still have a lot of fun with the PC original, which combines basic real-time strategy mechanics with a light RNG layer & simple to understand progression. Unlike the Famicom port where you start with no soldiers at all, the X1 original gives you a big starting squad. This lets you get used to the controls & your units' frailty before you dive headfirst into the front-lines. Learning how to make new units from trees, plus how to quickly reposition grunts in front of you to do battles, becomes second nature after a while. I wouldn't call this an easy game, but it's hardly as ill-designed or inscrutable as retro discussions make it out to be.
I'd mainly recommend playing this if you're interested in the RTS genre's history or would enjoy a simple, sometimes frustrating but ultimately compelling arcade wargame. The X1 version's not too hard to find out in the digital wilderness, but I wish it was officially accessible via a modern remake or even through Project EGG for PC users. It's an important & distinctive piece of software which paved the way not just for Herzog (Zwei) & Dune II, but other oddities like Kure Software's Silver Ghost & First Queen series.
1983
Since the other reviews (so far) are only covering the very not good PC-88 & PC-98 ports, let's talk about the X1 original.
This isn't an amazing arcade shooter, at least not compared to Xevious or Star Force from the era. But it's a lot better than given credit, at least on Sharp X1 & MZ micros. I first got into playing this several years ago, each time warming up a bit more to how it plays. For comparison's sake, even the mighty Famicom wouldn't have any original STGs of this caliber & ambition until 1985 onward. Kotori Yoshimura built this turn-of-'84 tech showpiece all on her own, yet it's still fun if you like a more strategic open-range shooter. (I play this on an X1 emulator using cursor keys with no other enhancements or major changes.)
A big issue I see players having is keeping track of shots while landing your own, whether in air or on ground. Thankfully the game's soundscape, though sparse, makes enemy fire identifiable enough for quick dodging. Pay attention to the dull blips of enemy shots, and also keep a mental bead on where enemies are spawning. Certain foes will intercept you & lead shots better; they're usually a light pinkish-red in this version. I make sure to eliminate or avoid them as much as I can while bombing targets to find the real prize: the Dyradeizer bomb-ables.
It's possible to meticulously clear each stage, but the smart play for seeing more of the game (let alone clearing a loop) is to reach the stages' second phase quickly. Reaching the Dyradeizer side of each stage simplifies matters a lot since there's less dogfighting & more dodging turret fire. It's also simple to just destroy the Dyradeizer core ASAP if you're ready to proceed, rather than continuing to bomb out the rest. Getting through stages like this helps with learning movement & spawning behavior, which in turn makes playing for score much more manageable.
Enough strategy. What's the deal with Thunder Force on X1?! /seinfeld
I liken it to a long-lost pen pal of Raid on Bungeling Bay, but with more obvious Namco influences (ex. Xevious, Bosconian) and more impressive visuals. The X1 original uses the PC's built-in spriting hardware (the PCG chip) to handle stage objects & actors faster than any other PC STG of its time. This doesn't make it unplayable, but certainly zippier than you'd expect from a mid-era 8-bit micro. The simple control scheme, level progression, & enemy roster means it's easy to get started with Thunder Force. It's a very difficult game for sure, yet hardly a mystery. Maybe the enemy bullets could have been drawn more visibly, but they're readable enough after playing for 15 minutes.
The game's ports retain the solid game loop, particularly the scoring system & map/enemy variety, but massively lose out in other areas. (I'll exempt the MZ-1500 version here for being fairly close to X1 and arguably a better speed for some players who want to learn the game.) At that time, the PC-88 really couldn't handle this kind of game, even with the fastest pseudo-sprite coding in games like Kazuro Morita's Alphos. Surprisingly, even the more underpowered PC-6001 port feels better to play (and a lot more impressive) than that of its bigger cousin. And since the FM-7 release basically matches the PC-88 one, that makes for a poor but unsurprising showing. Yoshimura & her co-programmers had to make not just these ports in rapid succession, but tons of other quick ports during those pre-Mega Drive years at Tecno Soft. Rushed ports were common, and it's a travesty how many people get their first glance at this game via its less-than-representative versions.
One flaw that's always irked me is how the game handles shot collisions. You really have to commit to your own ground bombs, ex. not changing direction immediately while the shot lands, or else you risk not blowing something up. It's much less problematic with air fire thankfully, but hardly ideal. And there's the old problem of not being able to stop mid-flight, requiring you to manage your direction at all times. This leads to a lot of circular movement around parts of each stage if you're trying to destroy everything. Even I get a bit exhausted by this! But it's a matter of getting used to these weird physics & building your tactics around them. Pro tip: the game calculates enemy fire direction based on where you're flying when it's calculating their attacks. Use that to manipulate enemy fire away from you, then make your attack.
It's worth dealing with some odd collision detection & tricky enemy patterns for one of the best pick-up-and-play arcade originals defining the early J-PC software lineup. Yoshimura & her colleagues would proceed to form Arsys Soft a year or so later, where they made much better works like WiBARM & Star Cruiser. But games like Thunder Force showed her ability to evolve arcade-style play on a home platform—no mean feat at a time when Japanese PCs' hardware & developer support was more fragmented. Both as a history piece & a game today, Thunder Force on X1 is worth a shot if you like the rest of the series or want to experience how the early post-Galaga shooters began to evolve.
Also, I'm glad to say there's no quaint, irritating rendition of the William Tell Overture in this version. You can put on any music you'd like!
This isn't an amazing arcade shooter, at least not compared to Xevious or Star Force from the era. But it's a lot better than given credit, at least on Sharp X1 & MZ micros. I first got into playing this several years ago, each time warming up a bit more to how it plays. For comparison's sake, even the mighty Famicom wouldn't have any original STGs of this caliber & ambition until 1985 onward. Kotori Yoshimura built this turn-of-'84 tech showpiece all on her own, yet it's still fun if you like a more strategic open-range shooter. (I play this on an X1 emulator using cursor keys with no other enhancements or major changes.)
A big issue I see players having is keeping track of shots while landing your own, whether in air or on ground. Thankfully the game's soundscape, though sparse, makes enemy fire identifiable enough for quick dodging. Pay attention to the dull blips of enemy shots, and also keep a mental bead on where enemies are spawning. Certain foes will intercept you & lead shots better; they're usually a light pinkish-red in this version. I make sure to eliminate or avoid them as much as I can while bombing targets to find the real prize: the Dyradeizer bomb-ables.
It's possible to meticulously clear each stage, but the smart play for seeing more of the game (let alone clearing a loop) is to reach the stages' second phase quickly. Reaching the Dyradeizer side of each stage simplifies matters a lot since there's less dogfighting & more dodging turret fire. It's also simple to just destroy the Dyradeizer core ASAP if you're ready to proceed, rather than continuing to bomb out the rest. Getting through stages like this helps with learning movement & spawning behavior, which in turn makes playing for score much more manageable.
Enough strategy. What's the deal with Thunder Force on X1?! /seinfeld
I liken it to a long-lost pen pal of Raid on Bungeling Bay, but with more obvious Namco influences (ex. Xevious, Bosconian) and more impressive visuals. The X1 original uses the PC's built-in spriting hardware (the PCG chip) to handle stage objects & actors faster than any other PC STG of its time. This doesn't make it unplayable, but certainly zippier than you'd expect from a mid-era 8-bit micro. The simple control scheme, level progression, & enemy roster means it's easy to get started with Thunder Force. It's a very difficult game for sure, yet hardly a mystery. Maybe the enemy bullets could have been drawn more visibly, but they're readable enough after playing for 15 minutes.
The game's ports retain the solid game loop, particularly the scoring system & map/enemy variety, but massively lose out in other areas. (I'll exempt the MZ-1500 version here for being fairly close to X1 and arguably a better speed for some players who want to learn the game.) At that time, the PC-88 really couldn't handle this kind of game, even with the fastest pseudo-sprite coding in games like Kazuro Morita's Alphos. Surprisingly, even the more underpowered PC-6001 port feels better to play (and a lot more impressive) than that of its bigger cousin. And since the FM-7 release basically matches the PC-88 one, that makes for a poor but unsurprising showing. Yoshimura & her co-programmers had to make not just these ports in rapid succession, but tons of other quick ports during those pre-Mega Drive years at Tecno Soft. Rushed ports were common, and it's a travesty how many people get their first glance at this game via its less-than-representative versions.
One flaw that's always irked me is how the game handles shot collisions. You really have to commit to your own ground bombs, ex. not changing direction immediately while the shot lands, or else you risk not blowing something up. It's much less problematic with air fire thankfully, but hardly ideal. And there's the old problem of not being able to stop mid-flight, requiring you to manage your direction at all times. This leads to a lot of circular movement around parts of each stage if you're trying to destroy everything. Even I get a bit exhausted by this! But it's a matter of getting used to these weird physics & building your tactics around them. Pro tip: the game calculates enemy fire direction based on where you're flying when it's calculating their attacks. Use that to manipulate enemy fire away from you, then make your attack.
It's worth dealing with some odd collision detection & tricky enemy patterns for one of the best pick-up-and-play arcade originals defining the early J-PC software lineup. Yoshimura & her colleagues would proceed to form Arsys Soft a year or so later, where they made much better works like WiBARM & Star Cruiser. But games like Thunder Force showed her ability to evolve arcade-style play on a home platform—no mean feat at a time when Japanese PCs' hardware & developer support was more fragmented. Both as a history piece & a game today, Thunder Force on X1 is worth a shot if you like the rest of the series or want to experience how the early post-Galaga shooters began to evolve.
Also, I'm glad to say there's no quaint, irritating rendition of the William Tell Overture in this version. You can put on any music you'd like!