Super Thunder Blade

About Super Thunder Blade

Super Thunder Blade (1988) is Sega's Mega Drive sequel to the arcade Thunder Blade, a helicopter rail shooter that switches to a top-down view for its boss battles.

Super Thunder Blade in Depth

Although the war against guerrilla forces backed by Country S was won, many guerrillas survived, and the original Thunder Blade was lost in the fighting, leaving its pilot, Captain Lantz Goswork of Country A, injured. Country A develops a new combat helicopter, Super Thunder Blade, to face emerging threats, with Lantz once again at the controls.

Following the structure of the 1987 arcade game, each of its four stages features traditional rail shooting followed by a vertically scrolling boss battle. The helicopter fires guns and missiles and can air brake, gunning down military vehicles across different environments. As in the arcade game, the viewpoint changes: during normal play the camera sits behind the helicopter in a third-person view similar to Space Harrier, switching to a top-down view against bosses. ACE rated it 880 out of 1,000 and named it one of the five best Mega Drive games of 1989, and Computer and Video Games gave it 80 per cent, calling it the "best version" of Thunder Blade on "any" system.

Making Super Thunder Blade

Sega developed and published it for the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1988 as the sequel to the arcade Thunder Blade. It was well received at launch, but retrospective reviews in the 2000s were mixed. It was included in the Sega Genesis Collection for PlayStation 2 and PSP in 2006 and in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2009, and IGN lamented that it "just couldn't make the jump to console" from the arcade cabinet.