Thunder Force Spectacular

Here is a screenshot from the fabled first Thunder Force. Does it exist or is this just a fabrication of my over-worked mind from playing nothing but Thunder Force games for the past month?

This week I have a huge shooter review update as I present nearly all the games in the Thunder Force series. This formidable quest started when a new reader named James emailed us and suggested a review of Lightening Force for the Genesis. It was, in his opinion, "one of the best side scrolling shooters ever made." Well, I decided that Lightening Force would be my next shooter review, but when I was looking it up I discovered that Lightening Force was actually Thunder Force IV. This was news to me since I played more Super Nintendo than Genesis back in the day. I already owned and played Thunder Force II, III, and V, but had not yet reviewed them here. So I went back, started at Thunder Force II, and worked my way through all the progressive sequels and spin-offs. I thought that if I was going to review "one of the best shooters ever made" I better play through the others again so I can compare everything and see how the games stack up against one another.

In the end I wound up playing and reviewing six games. The Thunder Force games were made by Techno Soft and are their main claim-to-fame shooter franchise. Thunder Force II, Thunder Force III, and Thunder Force IV are all for the Genesis. Thunder Force AC and Thunder Spirits are essentially ports of Thunder Force III for the arcade and SNES respectively. Thunder Force V was originally released on the Sega Saturn, but only made it to the U.S. on the Playstation thanks to the beloved Working Designs.

You may be wondering why there is no review of the first Thunder Force. In my extensive enough research I discovered that the original is almost non-existent. It was only ever released on the Japanese Sharp X1 computer in 1984 and a few other old Japanese systems. It was never released in America and I couldn't even find it on any emulators. Techno Soft doesn’t even seem to know where it is since their two Thunder Force compilation discs for the Sega Saturn didn’t even contain the first game. If any of our readers do know where to find it please let me know. With that said you may as well consider Thunder Force II the starting point for the Thunder Force series.

This is from part five, but can you imagine 222 Thunder Force games? I'd be playing them for the rest of my life.

In my Thunder Force quest I also discovered that Techno Soft can't figure out how to spell its own name. I saw it spelled as "Techno Soft," "Techno soft," "Technosoft," and "Tecno Soft." Which one is actually correct? I don't know, but I'm just going to spell it "Techno Soft." They also had a similar problem when Thunder Force IV was being translated for the 'states. Sega decided to make an inane decision and renamed the game Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar. Not only was the title change completely ludicrous and unnecessary, it is widely believed to be (and most probably) misspelled. "Lightening" is really supposed to be "Lightning." Fortunately, the game didn't suffer from the ridiculous title change.

So read on, dear shooter fans. Find out how the games compare and if Lightening Force really is one of the greatest shooters out there.