Thunder Force III by Technosoft
liams
Thunder Force III is
a very special title to
me, it marked the
first
real
side
scrolling
shooter
that I had to have in
my collection. Sure
I had played Gradius, Life Force and many other titles
over the years leading up to my owning a Sega
Genesis but they failed to captivate me into actually
wanting to search them out and own a copy. Maybe it
was the level selection, maybe it was the enemies (the
bosses are quite memorable).
I am not sure what
that special intangible thing about Thunder Force III is
that makes me love it so much.
First up, the Sega Genesis version. Setup similar to a
Mega Man game, you are free to choose your starting
level and much like that Capcom classic series, the
order does matter. Graphically, this version is simply
beautiful for a scrolling shooter, they simply don't make
them like this anymore- literally. Each level has tons of
parallax scrolling but check out the
backgrounds of the Gorgon level- talk
about line scrolls out of control.
Flicker and slowdown are very slight on
the Genesis while they run rampant on
Words by Carl Wil-