Past meets present: Thunder Force II

Sega didn't re-release the second entry in the Thunder Force series for decades, but they finally got around to it once more.

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Sega is usually excellent at keeping their older titles from the Genesis days in circulation, even some of them that aren’t widely considered classics. Which is how something like Fatal Labyrinth tends to be easy to find even if it didn’t set the world on fire either critically or commercially when it first released. Some games slip through the cracks, however, and don’t end up as part of either the Genesis Mini consoles, or as enhanced Sega Ages titles, or included in the various Genesis collections that Sega releases every console generation since their own exit from the space. Some titles like this have found life on Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion pack subscription model, at least, which isn’t the ideal way to go about things, but it does beat the alternative of not being available at all, especially for people who just want to play games they remember from their childhood but don’t want to check out the emulation scene to do it.

Thunder Force II is one of those games that hadn’t seen the constant re-release treatment, which is odd because it’s Thunder Force, which Sega often published back in the day and now owns the rights to following Technosoft’s demise as a studio and publisher. But it’s now part of Nintendo Switch Online’s premium tier, so it’s finally seen the light of day for the first time since it was included in a two-part Sega Saturn collection collecting the Genesis-era Thunder Force titles as a way to drum up excitement for the Saturn’s Thunder Force V, all the way back in 1996. And since that was only in Japan, really, Thunder Force II has been among the missing elsewhere since its release as a Genesis launch title in 1989.

Thunder Force II’s absence does make sense in a way, though. It’s only recently that Sega started including Thunder Force titles in their re-release plans, and the focus to this point has mostly been on Thunder Force III: the original Thunder Force III was included on the Genesis Mini back in 2019, and Thunder Force AC — a reworked arcade release of III — was included in 2019’s Sega Ages run for the Switch the next year. It hasn’t just been III, though, as Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar is actually only called that in North America: it’s actually Thunder Force IV, and that showed up in the Sega Ages line back in 2018, before either of the re-releases of III/AC.

Image credit: TCRF

Why the delay for what was a popular series, one that Sega published multiple games in, that was known as part of their platforms even if there was an SNES port in there and it got its start on computers? It might have just been a rights issue, as Sega didn’t fully acquire the rights to Thunder Force games until 2016. There’s no other sensible reason for Thunder Force to have skipped out on even the Wii’s Virtual Console back when that existed and seemingly everything popular and plenty that wasn’t getting put on it. Twenty-one Company held the rights to Technosoft’s catalog at that point, however; they were the ones who eventually sold Thunder Force to Sega in 2016. So maybe this is all a question to ask them instead.

Regardless of the prior situation, Sega has Thunder Force now, and has started to re-release them, albeit slowly, and, in the case of Thunder Force II, in a limited fashion you can’t buy. Hopefully the rest of the franchise that’s still awaiting a re-release gets better treatment, as it started to take off after II: the seeds that would eventually grow into classics like III and IV were planted in this first sequel, though.

The first Thunder Force game isn’t a horizontal-scrolling shooter, which, to anyone familiar with just the more popular Genesis-era Thunder Force titles, should come as a surprise. Thunder Force first released in 1983 on the X1 computer as a free-roaming shoot ‘em up somewhatin the vein of Namco’s Bosconian. Kotori Yoshimura was the creator of the series, but she stuck around at Technosoft just for this one entry and a second release of it, which incorporated level- and game-building elements on top of the base game. Yoshimura would exit Technosoft in 1984 (along with another former Technosoft dev, Osamu Nagano) and form Arsys Software in ‘85, which made some real technically impressive titles for the rest of the 80s, like the role-playing first-person shooter, Wibarm, which used 3D polygons and allowed for 360 degree movement despite coming out in 1986, and Star Cruiser, another role-playing shooter, that also incorporated six degrees of freedom movement and polygons all the way back in 1988.

Technosoft decided to do some innovating as well, though, not nearly with the kind of ambition Arsys was showing — granted, the list of companies pushing 6DOF and 360 movement in worlds full of 3D polygons at this point in time was real small, so, you can’t really fault Technosoft for that. Thunder Force II would be a free-roaming shooter, but only half the time: the other half, it would be a horizontal side-scrolling shooter. And this, of course, would be what Thunder Force would become all the time from then on.

It’s easy to see why, as well. The free-roaming levels — known as “top view” stages in-game — are fine. They’re a little aggravating on occasion, since you can ram into obstacles that will kill you, or not see an enemy until it’s right on top of you when you’re traveling around at high speeds, or just because foes are constantly respawning while you’re just trying to find the last building you need to blow up in order to complete the stage and move on to its horizontal cousin. These would be minor annoyances, really, if the entire game was made out of these “top view” levels, but the problem is that half the game is made up of noticeably better stages that are more enjoyable and more fun to play, and, most importantly, feel less like a chore. So, the top view levels suffer thanks to the quality of the horizontal “side view” ones, basically, since you play top view then side view then top view and so on until you’re done: it’s a real roller coaster, and not handled with the same kind of equal quality distribution as, say, Axelay’s switch between perspectives.

Thunder Force II is something of a bridge title, basically, between what the series was and what it would become. It’s where the horizontal gameplay the series would be known for showed up for the first time, and it’s where the weapon system that would be used from here on out — which lets you switch between a variety of weapons you’ve collected at will while also constantly upgrading them into more powerful forms — also first appeared. CLAWS, which are a little like options that you can’t control but serve both a defensive and offensive purpose as they block small bullets and fire their own, were introduced in Thunder Force II. And the kind of difficult bosses the series would also come to be known for — these huge entities that take a lot of punishment and fire just as much in your direction — are here, as well. It’s the Thunder Force you know, but also, not quite yet.

It’s maybe a little harsh to word it this way, but even though the things you know Thunder Force for are here, it’s a little held back by those top view levels, since all you end up wanting is more of the superior horizontal ones. Which you’d get, with Thunder Forces III through VI, but that doesn’t help you much if you’ve just got access to II. And again, they aren’t bad: they’re just noticeably worse and less fun to play than their horizontal partners. You end up flying around, not aimlessly, but a little lost a little too often, as everything looks very similar and enemy ships are always respawning, making it a little tough to gauge, on occasion, if you’ve already been to where you currently or are where you’re currently heading. And since you die in one hit, and there are always enemies, well, you can see the problem. It’s pretty annoying to use up your lives and continues because you can’t find this last of the structures you’re supposed to blow up in order to proceed, especially when you’re going to need them in the horizontal stages.

Thunder Force II certainly didn’t invent the idea of horizontal STGs, but it did take what was the industry standard set forth by Irem’s R-Type and Konami’s Gradius/Parodius and decided that those games needed to be faster. Keep some of the claustrophobic level design, fill the screen with bullets and even more enemies firing them, and also, crank the speed of it all up. And it’s this speed that does set it apart from much of the rest of the subgenre: Thunder Force is difficult and enjoyable in a different way than the games it’s built on, because it requires more speed, more honed reflexes, and quicker reaction times. Which is not to say that R-Type et al are slow or what have you, it’s just that Thunder Force is quick.

So, you have these intense levels where you feel like you need to learn the weaponry, the level layout, the best way to defeat various enemies and avoid dying, these large, powerful bosses that require you shoot them for what feels like forever as they get more desperate and even more deadly, and it all feels great because it all feels like something you can learn to improve at until you’re more dangerous than whatever you’re fighting. Meanwhile, in the top view stages, you’re fighting your own sense of direction, and the lack of a map, and the sameness of the environment, and respawning foes — the two just do not compare, and it’s completely understandable why Technosoft ended up going with horizontal only from this point forward.

Thunder Force’s weapons cover a lot of ground. You have default guns that can fire both in front of and behind the ship, as well as one that, because it’s not dividing its attention, can defeat foes in front of you quicker. These can be upgraded to fire off much wider spreads, or more powerful shots, or a continuous laser beam, and you can also add an array of new weapons to choose from, with some of them incorporating homing or just firing off these real wide waves that plow the road. The weapons in the top view stages aren’t necessarily showing up in the horizontal ones, and vice versa: you don’t really have a need for a beam that fires out of the bottom of your ship as well as in front of you in the top view, since everything in front of you, even when it is below you, is treated as if it’s at your height in the former. There’s a clear use for that kind of weapon in the horizontal levels, though, since it lets you take care of foes both in front of and underneath your ship at the same time.

Dying will reset your weapons and reduce you to your defaults, though, dying in a horizontal stage won’t cost you your top view levels, and the same goes for blowing up in a top view stage. You do get a healthy number of continues, but you probably wouldn’t need as many of them if not for the issues with the top view: that’s not to say that the horizontal ones are a cakewalk, because they are not, but the default option really is generous in terms of continues, and you get your first extend at just 20,000 points, so picking up an extra life nearly out of the gate each time out is simple, too.

There are some minor technical issues with the Genesis port: Thunder Force II originally released on the X68000 computer, with superior graphics to what ended up on the first wave of Genesis games, and the music isn’t quite as loud as you’d like it to be, with it being relegated a bit to the background. It’s there, but it’s not as front and center as it could be, which kind of goes against the spirit of Thunder Force’s reputation for hard rock soundtracks powering you through danger. Sound in general is kind of a problem, though, since the game sometimes has sound effects overlap in a way that completely cancels one of them out. For instance, when you’re shooting at a boss, you won’t be able to tell via audio cues if your shots are actually causing damage, because other sound effects have taken precedence.

These various problems are all on the small side, but they do add up to make Thunder Force II’s relative lack of popularity when compared to later titles in the series easier to understand. It’s not a technical showcase on the graphical or audio side, and every other level is noticeably less fun to play. It’s still a good game on the strength of those horizontal stages, and enjoyable enough overall, but it’s not the kind of classic that its successors are. Luckily, you can just play those if you get the appeal of II but aren’t totally sold on all of it, and those Sega Ages releases are almost always on sale at prices that feel almost wrong for you to be able to buy them at, anyway.

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