This was one of the first big, simulator style arcade games I can remember. With the whole helicopter control stick that rotated you in the seat, it was awesome.
This is a dual cpu game. MCD was probably a bit too weak to pull it off convincingly. A game that ran on comparable hardware was Night Striker and you can see how that port turned out.
We need someone to make a spiritual sequel to this game with similar game mechanics and switching viewpoints. Also like some other have mentioned the music is great, fits the groove of blowing up things with a helicopter really well! 😆
So the enemy arsenal includes T55s (T62s?) that from the rear are BMPs and from the top down T34-85s F14 Tomcats MD 500 Defenders F4U Corsairs M3 Halftracks PT boats USS McLargehuge (Arleigh Burke Destroyer on roids) The Jawa Sandcrawler Robotnik's Winged Fortress Zone Purple Aki's lair of death
I do not even know which one was first out there, but the helicopter matches pretty good the one seen in the Blue Thunder movie.Oh the days back then, played it on the C64.
Imagine if SEGA stayed true to their franchises through Saturn and Dreamcast! Along with Afterburner and Space Harrier just to make a few. We saw how good the Panzer Dragoon series was on Saturn.
As a kid, I was never able to finish the first stage, I would always seem to get shot out of the air or crash into the buildings dodging the bullets lol. It's really great to see this game finished and without losing a life.
I remember the sitdown cabinet from the arcades in the 80-90s. I had mabye 1 or 2 games. I remember being in awe of the graphics. It was SO cool. I died instantly though. Fuck I want the sitdown cab for this.
Which sit down cabinet, the stationary one or the hydraulic one? For the amusement, the hydraulic one is nice but the one without motion was better for playing the game.
I love the werd mechanical seat version of the coin-op--they somehow made a motion seat that works purely on your own controller yoke movements--no power needed.
The biggest miss is that home consoles skipped over the sprite scaling hardware and went directly into 3D polygons. These games are amazing. Imagine telling game developers today to make an engaging game with only 128 or 256 sprites on screen max. Would they come out with Space Harrier, Hang On, Out Run, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force, After Burner?
Being that I love the genesis version so much, this one is a real treat. Seems there's no consequence to momentum, super thunderblade adds some weight in that regard, otherwise arcade is superior in every way.
I remember seeing this at a seaside arcade and being absolutely blown away by the incredible graphics. And then a year or two later I got the Megadrive version and couldn’t stand it, it was so choppy to play and missing the overhead sections.
Sega System 16 hardware. I think it could do 128 sprites and 2 backgrounds with possibly a 3rd for text. After Burner could do 256 sprites. They kept upgrading hardware so sometimes it is hard to follow. Fun fact... After Burner hardware didn't have sprite rotation... figure that one out. ;)
@@mortenera2294 You're right, Thunder Blade is the X Board, along with After Burner. X Board has 256 sprites over the 128 of the System 16, and has 3200 sprite texels per scanline vs 800 for the System 16. I don't immediately see why the System 16 couldn't run Thunder Blade. The multi-layered sprites for the buildings are not all "full"; only the first sprite is; the others are thin and mostly empty, requiring no fill. You can see this when you fly close to them (seeing through the first sprite), or when the screen flickers @ 0:24). The game is well optimized, and this true in both perspectives. But it's possible the 128 sprite limit is exceeded in some areas of the game.
Thunder Blade Longplay (Arcade) [60 FPS]: Rain death from above in this fun, but exceedingly tough arcade shooter from Sega! Read the video description for my review!
@whiteorangatange yea. The arcade original here is on superior hardware compared to Genesis. It actually has real scaling while Genesis is more of an imitation scaling effect. Only improvement to Super is the simulation feel to the helicopter. The arcade moves very instantaneously while on Super for Genesis there is a sense of weight. You have to keep in mind your momentum while moving. Makes sudden movements more difficult/realistic. Also, Super flys foward much faster "except for the top down parts".. Otherwise graphically, Super was a big downgrade.
@@TonySpike I get it on a 4 in one cartridge: Super thunder blade, Ultraman (tough as shit), Shadow Dancer and Tiny Toons... my favourite cartridge as every games were awesome except ultraman
Ооо, рубился на автомате в Адлере в 1990м, это был отпад башни вообще, реальный вертолетный штурвал и качающееся кресло, убойный звук оружия и самого вертолета.
Sega should redo there classics on modern day consoles with beefed up graphics. Imagine outrun today. I’d love them to be a force again and I’d also love arcade games to come back in fashion
I miss games like these to be honest but atleast we can still play them....I hear that there's some kinda of V.R. Virtual Reality version called "Thunder Blade Dubai"?! And the interior is inside an attack chopper but that sounds more like a simulation to me than anything else?! I wish there were more games like this but then that's where all those pc attack chopper simulations kick in though. But Thunder Blade seems more simpler and intuitive. In the end all attack chopper simulations owe it all to the grandfather of Thunder Blade!!! Hard to imagine that this is 1987!!!!
you only had the real experience in the arcade cockpit model, back then I thought the music was real. I bet this was inspired by Airwolf, as well as Afterburner inspired by Top Gun and E-Swat inspired by Robocop, they couldn't get the license for the latter. edited: wow, even this short ending was missing form the Genesis conversion, which they names SUPER thunder blade, go figure.
How did you get the graphics to register so clearly? I am running MAME 0.226, yet my video is not that crisp. When I turn Bilinear Filtering OFF, video just becomes pixelated. What are your video settings? My setup: Ryzen i3 CPU, Gigabyte AB350N gaming motherboard, Gigabyte 1050 Ti graphics card. Thanks in advance for any assistance! Brent
Thunder blade is legendary with Spectacular graphics and STUNNING gameplay With levels that are 2Fast 2Furious and entertaining Boss battles This is a classic arcade game with a vengeance 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖
@@BakkerSamuel You're complaining about an arcade perfect port of Out Run being released? It's only like the third time since 1987 that's happened. If you wanna complain about Sega re-releasing the same games, complain about Sonic 1 & 2, or Bonanza Bros, or Shinobi III, or any of the other countless Mega Drive games they keep regurgitating over and over. There aren't that many options out there for Out Run. The Sega Saturn, 3DS and Switch are the only ones.
@@Jayce_Alexander and original Xbox! It comes with Outrun 2. Arcade perfect, analog and all. Also let's you adjust sound effect to music ratios, i know everyone loves the music but i get tired of it sometimes and just want to hear the engine and surroundings. But yea, I bought Outrun 2 specifically for Outrun. One of the very best games of all time! Also looks super crisp in component HD.
Nice but the Sega Master System was better inmho . Surely the cave level and the industry level + final boss was pretty hard if you played it for the first time . Here it feels slow paced dunno ...the music is up to par .
![Mega Drive Longplay [200] Truxton](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6iIG_ufZUzc/mqdefault.jpg)
![1987 [60fps] Thunder Blade Nomiss ALL](/img/1.gif)
Man, this game has impressive audio for the music for it being 1987.
And graphics for it's time. The one incredible feature it had was going from a vertical scroller to an on rail shooter and back again
This was one of the first big, simulator style arcade games I can remember. With the whole helicopter control stick that rotated you in the seat, it was awesome.
yeah, they had it in amusemnt park, do you know is it possible to be seen anywhere today?
@@proveramikrofona no I haven't seen it in 30 years! Man I'm getting old 🤣
Sega missed a trick by not releasing this on the Mega-CD. Would of been an awesome launch game.
No idea if the sega cd could run it just as well as the arcade but im sure it was going to be awesome port on the 32x if they tried !
This is a dual cpu game. MCD was probably a bit too weak to pull it off convincingly. A game that ran on comparable hardware was Night Striker and you can see how that port turned out.
@@Dr.MSC.W.Krueger what about Batman CD the scaling was really impressive in that game.
@@cstate23 Batman CD runs around 20fps or less and pushes the MCD to its limits. Also Batman pushes maybe 1/10 of what Thunderblade does. So... no way
An amazing back catalogue of arcade games,
That still haven't been released on next gen consoles or mobile platform.
Shocking.
@Philip Brocklehurst you and me both,
Even Hollywood thirty years later, have jumped on the sonic craze!!
i love the jazzy music
We need someone to make a spiritual sequel to this game with similar game mechanics and switching viewpoints. Also like some other have mentioned the music is great, fits the groove of blowing up things with a helicopter really well! 😆
So the enemy arsenal includes
T55s (T62s?) that from the rear are BMPs and from the top down T34-85s
F14 Tomcats
MD 500 Defenders
F4U Corsairs
M3 Halftracks
PT boats
USS McLargehuge (Arleigh Burke Destroyer on roids)
The Jawa Sandcrawler
Robotnik's Winged Fortress Zone
Purple Aki's lair of death
Loved this at the arcades, hated it on MD.
It’s always cool seeing early arcade games using sprite scaling and parallax to create a convincing impression of being in a 3D environment.
I remember the movie: Blue Thunder, 1983.
I do not even know which one was first out there, but the helicopter matches pretty good the one seen in the Blue Thunder movie.Oh the days back then, played it on the C64.
Shhhhh,
Don't tell the movie guys...
; )
After defeating the evil army, the lone helicopter skipped into the sun, due to the pilot's low intelligence stats.
Completely forgot about this game, then it came up in conversation and I was like, "DO YOUR THING, RUclips"
Imagine if SEGA stayed true to their franchises through Saturn and Dreamcast! Along with Afterburner and Space Harrier just to make a few. We saw how good the Panzer Dragoon series was on Saturn.
As a kid, I was never able to finish the first stage, I would always seem to get shot out of the air or crash into the buildings dodging the bullets lol. It's really great to see this game finished and without losing a life.
Great walkthrough and awesome skill! You have a new subscriber :D
I remember the sitdown cabinet from the arcades in the 80-90s. I had mabye 1 or 2 games. I remember being in awe of the graphics. It was SO cool. I died instantly though. Fuck I want the sitdown cab for this.
Which sit down cabinet, the stationary one or the hydraulic one? For the amusement, the hydraulic one is nice but the one without motion was better for playing the game.
This blew my mind as a kid..
I love the werd mechanical seat version of the coin-op--they somehow made a motion seat that works purely on your own controller yoke movements--no power needed.
My childhood game, play this a few times in the arcade, made me feel like a pilot
1987. Wow.
The biggest miss is that home consoles skipped over the sprite scaling hardware and went directly into 3D polygons. These games are amazing. Imagine telling game developers today to make an engaging game with only 128 or 256 sprites on screen max. Would they come out with Space Harrier, Hang On, Out Run, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force, After Burner?
Being that I love the genesis version so much, this one is a real treat. Seems there's no consequence to momentum, super thunderblade adds some weight in that regard, otherwise arcade is superior in every way.
Damn the genesis version was one of the shittest games ever produced!
@@AC_Milan1899 wrong
I remember seeing this at a seaside arcade and being absolutely blown away by the incredible graphics. And then a year or two later I got the Megadrive version and couldn’t stand it, it was so choppy to play and missing the overhead sections.
holy shoes
this graphic it’s amazing in 80’s
edit: i want to know the full capability
90s? Came out in the 80s.
@@chrisjohnson7038 crazy stuff and i fixed it
Sega System 16 hardware. I think it could do 128 sprites and 2 backgrounds with possibly a 3rd for text. After Burner could do 256 sprites. They kept upgrading hardware so sometimes it is hard to follow. Fun fact... After Burner hardware didn't have sprite rotation... figure that one out. ;)
@@JDoucette No way in hell this is the System 16, if only you'd actually bother reading the description...
@@mortenera2294 You're right, Thunder Blade is the X Board, along with After Burner. X Board has 256 sprites over the 128 of the System 16, and has 3200 sprite texels per scanline vs 800 for the System 16. I don't immediately see why the System 16 couldn't run Thunder Blade. The multi-layered sprites for the buildings are not all "full"; only the first sprite is; the others are thin and mostly empty, requiring no fill. You can see this when you fly close to them (seeing through the first sprite), or when the screen flickers @ 0:24). The game is well optimized, and this true in both perspectives. But it's possible the 128 sprite limit is exceeded in some areas of the game.
When the view shifts from top to chase view, that's when the real fun begins
Thunder Blade Longplay (Arcade) [60 FPS]: Rain death from above in this fun, but exceedingly tough arcade shooter from Sega!
Read the video description for my review!
Never heard of that game, but looks great. Especially the camera change.
Super Thunder Blade usually came with the Mega Drive 2, packaged in a 3 game cart along side Super Monaco GP and World Cup Italia 90
@whiteorangatange yea. The arcade original here is on superior hardware compared to Genesis. It actually has real scaling while Genesis is more of an imitation scaling effect.
Only improvement to Super is the simulation feel to the helicopter. The arcade moves very instantaneously while on Super for Genesis there is a sense of weight. You have to keep in mind your momentum while moving. Makes sudden movements more difficult/realistic. Also, Super flys foward much faster "except for the top down parts"..
Otherwise graphically, Super was a big downgrade.
@@TonySpike I get it on a 4 in one cartridge: Super thunder blade, Ultraman (tough as shit), Shadow Dancer and Tiny Toons... my favourite cartridge as every games were awesome except ultraman
This game has the best 3d effect I seen on 3ds no joke
This game should be called "Never stop moving"
I call Super Thunder Blade "fly in circles."
It's the key to beating Genesis Space Harrier 2 as well.
Circles will never let you down.
Or never stop cheating.
Fantastic looking game
Ооо, рубился на автомате в Адлере в 1990м, это был отпад башни вообще, реальный вертолетный штурвал и качающееся кресло, убойный звук оружия и самого вертолета.
Sega should redo there classics on modern day consoles with beefed up graphics. Imagine outrun today. I’d love them to be a force again and I’d also love arcade games to come back in fashion
Whooaah those fake 3D effects are stunning,especially for 1987.
Four stages only?
GG.
Inspired by Blue Thunder.
If by 'Inspired by' you mean 'stole screenshots of and used the exact same customised Gazelle helicopter'
Permanently borrowed
I miss games like these to be honest but atleast we can still play them....I hear that there's some kinda of V.R. Virtual Reality version called "Thunder Blade Dubai"?! And the interior is inside an attack chopper but that sounds more like a simulation to me than anything else?! I wish there were more games like this but then that's where all those pc attack chopper simulations kick in though. But Thunder Blade seems more simpler and intuitive. In the end all attack chopper simulations owe it all to the grandfather of Thunder Blade!!! Hard to imagine that this is 1987!!!!
Damn are those 3D building models?
MAYBE that's the maximum expression of 2D prospective games....and it was only 1987!
sigh my childhood =) sega masters system
Sega did release this game on the Nintendo 3DS.
I'm surprised my phone ran this game at 60fps on mame4droid very well
The sms version was 100% harder. I am surprised it was a direct port, somewhat. Good game play
Remember this
Project T.H.O.R will ultimately get all the funding it needs for Blue Thunder.
Master System 1988 PC Engine 1990 Sharp X68000 1990
you only had the real experience in the arcade cockpit model, back then I thought the music was real. I bet this was inspired by Airwolf, as well as Afterburner inspired by Top Gun and E-Swat inspired by Robocop, they couldn't get the license for the latter. edited: wow, even this short ending was missing form the Genesis conversion, which they names SUPER thunder blade, go figure.
How did you get the graphics to register so clearly? I am running MAME 0.226, yet my video is not that crisp. When I turn Bilinear Filtering OFF, video just becomes pixelated. What are your video settings?
My setup: Ryzen i3 CPU, Gigabyte AB350N gaming motherboard, Gigabyte 1050 Ti graphics card.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Brent
There's a sequel for the Genesis called Super Thunderblade
4 stages only?
Thunder blade is legendary with Spectacular graphics and STUNNING gameplay
With levels that are 2Fast 2Furious and entertaining Boss battles
This is a classic arcade game with a vengeance 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖
THE END ❤
With the sega ages on the switch I’m pretty sure we’ll have the classic arcades of Sega of course overtime just this month sega just released Outrun
Samuelito Ibarra Thunder Force 4/Lightening Force as well
Fucking outrun again?
@@BakkerSamuel You're complaining about an arcade perfect port of Out Run being released? It's only like the third time since 1987 that's happened. If you wanna complain about Sega re-releasing the same games, complain about Sonic 1 & 2, or Bonanza Bros, or Shinobi III, or any of the other countless Mega Drive games they keep regurgitating over and over. There aren't that many options out there for Out Run. The Sega Saturn, 3DS and Switch are the only ones.
@@Jayce_Alexander and original Xbox! It comes with Outrun 2. Arcade perfect, analog and all.
Also let's you adjust sound effect to music ratios, i know everyone loves the music but i get tired of it sometimes and just want to hear the engine and surroundings.
But yea, I bought Outrun 2 specifically for Outrun. One of the very best games of all time!
Also looks super crisp in component HD.
I
Super scaling at its finest.
Nice
So the arcade game is shorter but way more detailed and twice the layers of deep.
Genesis 1988/1989
If they had gave it scaling hardware as originally planned.
@@Lightblue2222if the Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive console had that technology it might or it would be too expensive
@@jasonlee7816 I highly agree if the Genesis had that technology at the time the system would cost more 189 back then.
Hard as ball's compared to sms version. I like SMS music better also.
So much better that the console game 🎮
今見ても凄いゲームですね。これを当時のゲーム機に移植しようとしても無理ですね。
SEGA´s "talent" for screwing up, their own games and console division, shooting on their foot all the time.
Nice but the Sega Master System was better inmho . Surely the cave level and the industry level + final boss was pretty hard if you played it for the first time . Here it feels slow paced dunno ...the music is up to par .
Such a cool way of faking 3D perspective.
Better than nintendos sorry ass
@@imcomingforyounigga1790 What a strange comment.