Thunder Blade Review | Sega's Super Scaler Arcade

[Music] [Music] Sega was one of the Undisputed Titans of the arcade scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s they were renowned for its cuttingedge arcade Hardware which pushed the boundaries of what was possible in gaming at the time systems like the Sega xboard Sega y board and later the Sega model series the Sega arcade board utilizes its innovative supercal technology to Dynam ically scale hundreds of Sprites creating a pseudo 3d effect that immerses players in a convincing three-dimensional gaming experience one of sega's best arcade games called thunderblade made a significant impact when it was released in 1987 this thrilling helicopter shooter captivated players with its innovative blend of both top- down and third-person perspectives providing an immersive experience that was ahead of its time in this video I'll go over Thunder blade including an in-depth look at the game's scaling effects and a thorough review of its Levels by delving into its design and mechanics I hope to give you a thorough understanding of what makes thunder blade a standout title in its genre the game soundtrack consists of only three long tracks with the rest being short so I won't be covering them instead I'll play the songs throughout the review you are free to form your own opinion on the music one more thing I'll slow down the game footage to provide a more detailed review [Music] in Thunder Blade the player Pilots a helicopter equipped with both a machine gun and missiles the machine gun fires continuously in a straight line while missiles can lock onto and track enemy targets the helicopter can move in all directions up down left and right the helicopter animates so smoothly that it has many frames of Animation when swinging from side to side the rotor blades also animate very well [Music] every stage begins with the player stationary on a helipad the detail is excellent down to the four trees blowing in The Winds of the helicopter rotors if you stay too long enemies like this helicopter will attempt to crash into you after avoiding it I move to my right Sega went to Great Lengths to make this appear true in 3D even though it is not you can see the layers of Sprites attempting to form a wall around the vehicles Sprite detail on the cars looks great and is not overly pixelated indicating that the Sprites have a lot of detail when I pull up you can see small offices the detail looks good even zoomed out these buildings are made up of layers of Sprites to simulate a real 3D building the layers of buildings move independently as the helicopter moves giving the impression that you are passing a 3D building this is such a fantastic idea it demonstrates that Sega had brilliant designers on their team for this game if you look closely you'll notice even smaller buildings in the game later levels feature much taller buildings the detail on the rooftops is excellent showing air conditioning units you can also land on any rooftop but be aware that you will be shot down by tanks on the ground I also like how each building has a unique color scheme and rooftop details but I only see two distinct patterns on the building Street detail looks great I like how they use a checkered stripe design so it wouldn't look like a pixelated mess it looks clean and it doesn't distract from The Game's design the tank and car detail looks very good even when zoomed in all the way also I noticed that the layers of Sprites making up the building have a cutout in the middle I wonder why it couldn't have a solid Sprite maybe during the game's development they wanted to put people or Furniture inside the building another detail I noticed was the Sprite Shadows almost everything has a shadow and I'm not sure if it's a separate Sprite or part of the Sprite design so this section of the level feels great in top view and it gives you a sense of realism as you blast enemy tanks and helicopters through the city halfway through the level the perspective shifts from Top View to extremely detailed 3D view this is by far my favorite view you can see how the ground changes from a 2d top view to mode 7 looking 3D view the road looks amazing as I move from right to left you can even land in the middle of the road the sky detail is stunning taking advantage of the graphical capabilities of the machine the building appears as you slowly move forward when Sprites are scaled in or out you can see the jittery effect also known as shimmering why does it have this effect I am going to use pilot Wings on the Super NES as an example when a Sprite is scaled up or down the pixels must be adjusted to fit the new size this adjustment may cause aliasing in which pixels do not perfectly align resulting in a shimmering effect as the scaling changes trilinear or anisotropic filtering would have addressed this issue but the technology was not yet available the sky is flat in the beginning when the shift happens but after a few screens it switches into a parallax mode 7 type of effect it looks very cool in motion up close buildings have good sprite detail but because the Sprite is so so large adding too much detail consumes resources these machines had very little Ram CPU Ram had 256 Koby and video RAM was about 512 kiloby depending on the game in 3D mode the building includes layers of Sprites to simulate 3D these layers do not have any cutouts in the middle as in the top view mode I'm wondering why flying over the building feels great and gives it a 3D appearance tanks on the ground look great up close flying low to the ground feels incredible imagine if the Super NES or Genesis could do this even with an fx chip you couldn't do this unless it was ported to the PlayStation or Sega Saturn there are also artillery trucks with intricate detail then you have to deal with these pesky Choppers who will quickly take you down when you progressed through the this level it looked fantastic on the ground and with so many Sprites being scaled it was ahead of its time halfway through the 3D level you reach what appears to be a canal with a bridge then lots of trees appear in your view and they look great the level is quite long but once you reach the end you will switch back to a top view to destroy the boss of this level the water detail is nothing special I wish they had included a warping effect but I suppose the hardware is incapable of doing so the water appears to be warping but this is simply due to color changes this level's boss is a massive warship with intricate detail and multiple layers of Sprites the Sprites layers create a 3d effect as you move from side to side I particularly enjoy this effect the ship detail is fantastic but I wish the boss fight had been in 3D when you destroy it you gain access to the next level [Music] the desert serves as the setting for the second level it's fantastic that they didn't just copy and paste the helicopter Launchpad because it's slightly different on this level you can see barrels enormous tents and what appears to be a tanker truck in great detail the level retains the checkered stripe ground once in the air you will notice canyon-like layers of Sprites the canyon walls Sprite size is divided into smaller Sprites possibly due to Hardware memory constraints as you blast your way through this level you will encounter the same pesky copters as in the previous one as well as tanks on the ground before switching to the 3D stage view I forgot to mention in stage one how the layers of the Sprite adjust when switching since it's a 2d flat Sprite it scales out the layers giving it a cool effect the 3D section of this level is stunning especially the massive Mountain that appears in your view the setting of The Sky appears to be in the late evening and the colors are stunning but one thing I notice about this massive mountain-like Sprite the main Sprite in the front is that the designers should have hidden the edge of the Sprite or simply made it transparent I believe they simply did not notice the error until after the game had been developed the Cave's entrance is made up of multiple copies of the same layer giving it a 3D appearance once inside the Cave the checkered stripe floor color changes to match the level the Cave's roof lacks detail which is a good thing but it is covered in cave spikes as is the ground the cave repeats but now it has columns that extend from the ground to the ceiling which is fantastic because they didn't copy and paste one thing I noticed was that when exiting the Cave the top layer slides up and leaves the screen this is a weird effect after you exit the cave you will fly through a forest of trees which looks incredible some areas outside are dense while other times there are only a few before getting to the boss of this level the ground detail reminds me of capcom's Commando for the Nintendo 8bit system the desert level boss is a massive battle tank equipped with powerful cannons and heavy armor the tank tracks animate very well for its time the tanks cannons fire in patterns so learning the timing and movement is key to avoiding damage the graphics are amazing and the Sprite of this boss is huge just like in the last level after you destroy it it's on to the next level [Music] stage three helipad is exactly like stage two but quite different from stage one what is around the helipad is similar to Stage 2 with the same truck and barrels on the left side the tent has been replaced by military trucks with a bed to carry large equipment or people this means that this stage will be very similar to the last one stage two once I take off into the air you will see an ocean exactly like the stage 1 boss area but with a different color tone there is a cool looking bridge on the water and tanks are crossing it while at the same time trying to shoot you down you also have new Sprite enemies on the water like military boats there is also sea rocks scattered around the ocean the walls of this level are exactly copies of stage 2 canyon-like walls but with a different color tone when it switches to 3D mode you are in an Everglades likee stage it looks fantastic with so much foliage around I'm glad the water has no detail I'm not sure how pixelated it would have looked but I like the clean look I think this is my favorite Sky it ranges from light to dark and it appears that it will rain heavily in a few hours I forgot to mention that in stage one there is a scene with F1 Tom Cat Jets and they appear in this stage as well they don't show much which is why I missed it in the video for stage one there are some guard towers and broken structures on the water there are numerous boats on the water attempting to shoot you down so that you can pump more quarters into the game there are also what appear to be sandbags stacked up for protection and broken bridge structures the foliage goes on for miles and then some sort of Inca building structure appears in the background I'm not sure how this relates to this stage once you progress through this stage it's time to take on the boss once it shifts back to top view you are hundreds of feet in the air the cloud looks weird like it has a cotton candy kind of look to it I think they could have done much better here you keep going forward with what appears to be a SR71 Blackbird equipped with so much Firepower one thing that impresses me so much is how the vertical Wings have this 3d effect when you move from side to side creating a cool 3d effect using flat 2D Sprites the colors are spectacular here displaying hundreds of garage shaded Hues on the jet as you get closer to the Jet's front it looks incredible after destroying the front of the jet you can see the computer components inside following that the plane's altitude will decrease and you will have completed this [Music] stage stage four helipad combines stages two and three and adds some type of emergency lights it also includes three military Jeeps one of which is equipped with a military weapon and mounted on the passenger roof the buildings are similar to stage one but they all have the same pattern on the rooftop some buildings such as the two on the right side of the screen are so tall that the rooftop cannot be seen the majority of buildings are green in color with a few being blue once you progress The View switches like always from a top view to a 3D view but this time there aren't any buildings in the 3D mode more like a f Factory the background sky looks amazing you can see the stars at night I really love the color palette here this Factory section of this level to me looks like a water treatment plant it shows these huge tanks with huge pipes coming from the ground and another huge pipe connecting the two tanks you also see two huge tanks that have a ladder for any worker that can climb up and maintain the tank once you keep going avoiding enemy fire you will arrive at your final destination you will face the final boss but this time what I always wanted was to fight the boss in 3D I don't know why they couldn't do this to all the previous bosses this boss looks like a supercomputer even this game is telling us all that AI is the destruction of human civilization the computer doesn't seem too hard to destroy just avoid its fire the final Target is this huge eye once you destroy it you beat the game I really enjoyed this game I never beat it in the arcades it's a shame that we never got a perfect port back in the day because the home consoles were so behind with the arcade Hardware we have to wait until the PlayStation and Sega Saturn can catch up to the arcade Hardware the game is short I wish it had eight stages instead of four stages I give the game a seven out of a 10 for being short the technology behind this was the reason I made this video I really love the Sprite scaling it was ahead of its time the controls were too hard for me back in the day you had to use this single-handled controller called a yoke there were two types of cabinets for the game the deluxe type in which you sit down you get force feedback and the seat moves from side to side for a realistic experience it's like you were flying a helicopter it was annoying in my opinion then there was the brokan version called the compact economy upright cabinet I think this was better for me you didn't have to sit on a chair and swing from side to side which was annoying I hope you enjoyed this video remember to hit the like button I am PL alysis and I will see you on the next video [Music]

Channel: Playnalisis

Views: 1,209

Keywords: PLAYNALISIS, Retrogaming, Arcade, Video Game Music, Video Game Music Comparison

Id: nHgEOMJP25E

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2024