PixlBit

There comes a time in every reviewer's life when they have to push themselves to review a game.  It's not because the game is so near and dear to their heart that they find it difficult to be objective and honest. Nor is it because the game turned out to be unexpectedly challenging and keeps the reviewer on their toes. On the contrary, some games can be cringe-inducing because you can barely make it past stage one and they just aren’t very fun. Thunder Blade was such a game for me. I held off for months from reviewing this in part because it was so frustratingly difficult that I had to just walk away from it for weeks at a time. When I finally made it to stage two, my will was already broken.

The major hook in Thunder Blade is that it features two modes of play within the game. The first types are sections with vertical overhead scrolling.  Here, you lay waste to enemy helicopters and battle tanks guarding the ground. You are armed with chain cannons as your primary weapon for airborne enemies. You also have air-to-ground missiles that can destroy all ground targets.

 

Each stage also features a 3rd-person perspective behind the helicopter. In this mode, you basically do the same thing, but there's a higher emphasis on dodging ground-based attacks from tanks and river boats. You'll also be tasked with dodging obstacles in later levels such as trees and rock pillars in caverns. The stages are divided into three parts. The first section is the preliminary overhead scrolling area where you start combatting enemy forces. The second section is the third-person perspective area. The third section switches back to the overhead viewpoint, only this time your goal is to take down an enemy fortress. No matter which viewpoint you're currently playing in, they are all problematic.

Navigating in the overhead viewpoint is more problematic than it should be. It’s very easy to get killed thanks to the size of your helicopter.  While it is a thin craft, it's also a bit longer than your average fighter plane in a shooter game.  This makes it tricky when trying to maneuver around bullets and other enemies that pour in from multiple directions.  Adding to the frustration, other helicopters also fly towards you from weird angles which can be confusing when you think you have enough space to move around, only to into one of them.

The biggest offenders are the areas that are played from the 3rd-person perspective.  According to the instruction manual, your primary chain cannon weapon is supposed to be a "30mm automatic weapon of frightening destructive power". But judging by the slow rate-of-fire, the enemy forces don't have much to be afraid of. This is immediately noticeable when you face the first battalion of tanks in the second section of the first stage.

It's really hard to stay alive because, not only do they fire off more bullets than you can return, but they also shoot nearly simultaneously when attacking from both sides of the screen. It only gets worse in later levels as you get barraged with both ground and air attacks in rapid succession, making it difficult to anticipate the trajectory before it hits you. The game itself is only four levels in length, but most players would be fortunate just to make it beyond the second section of stage two.

 

The graphics in Thunder Blade are okay, but nothing spectacular. The overhead areas scroll along at a decent pace. The colors and backgrounds look pretty good for an 8-bit conversion of the arcade game. But it’s in the third-person perspective where, again, the game falls short. The scrolling animation of the scenery is a bit choppy. The lack of scaling environments impedes your sense of depth perception- something essential to getting a better idea of how close you are to approaching objects in a 3D environment.

This becomes especially painful when you approach the third-person viewpoint in the fourth stage. There's a part where you’re supposed to fly between a mess of pipes that you will almost surely crash into anyway. Add to that the fact that you’ll also need to avoid gunfire from the enemy and you have one nearly impossible situation. While playing the game, I could help but to notice that the Master System just wasn’t quite capable of providing a smooth 3D experience with this game. It felt like Sega was over-reaching with this one. They were better off omitting the 3D sections and replacing them with more overhead levels. This would have made the game more bearable to play through.

 

The music is alright.  For the most part, it gets drowned out by the constant sounds of gunfire and explosions. But when you can hear the tunes playing, they are pretty pleasant. It imitates the music from the arcade version fairly faithfully. The sound effects are also fitting for this type of game. I also found it amusing that your helicopter makes a whistling noise as it falls to the ground when shot down in the third-person sections. Of course, I didn't find it funny when I was actually playing it, but it does merit a humored smirk in retrospect.

It is with a clear conscience that I can say that this version of Thunder Blade is the most unfair, unbalanced, and underpowered arcade port I have played on the Master System thus far. I wouldn't recommend this one to hardly anyone, even if you're itching for a nostalgic 80's game featuring helicopters and such. Unless you're a hardcore Sega collector, I’d leave this one alone if I were you. The game was an interesting concept for Sega to bring to the Master System, but it simply played better in the arcade.