Thunder Force III

About Thunder Force III

Thunder Force III (1990) is Technosoft's Genesis shoot 'em up, the first in the series to be purely horizontal, with a choice of starting planet and adjustable ship speed, ranked by EGM as the best shooter on the system.

Thunder Force III in Depth

The free-directional overhead stages of the first two games are gone, replaced entirely by horizontal scrolling, which became the series standard. The player chooses which of five planets, Hydra, Gorgon, Seiren, Haides and Ellis, to attack first, and after all five the game continues for three more stages into the ORN headquarters. The weapon system returns from Thunder Force II with changes: the enhanceable Twin shot and Back shot remain the defaults, some old weapons are reused or modified, and others are new. When the ship is destroyed on the default difficulty, only the weapon in use is lost, unless it is a default one; on higher difficulties every weapon is lost. Collecting the CLAW item now gives the full two CLAWs at once, and they fire the same weapon as the ship, like the Options in Gradius. The ship's speed can be raised or lowered across four levels at the press of a button.

Set about 100 years after Thunder Force and straight after Thunder Force II, the story has the Galaxy Federation struggling against the ORN Empire, which hides its base behind cloaking devices on five planets and defends itself with Cerberus, a system deadly to large ships and fleets. The Federation builds the FIRE LEO-03 Styx, small enough to slip past Cerberus but as powerful as a large starfighter, to destroy the cloaking devices and the ORN emperor, the bio-computer Cha Os.

Making Thunder Force III

Technosoft developed and published Thunder Force III for the Mega Drive in Japan on 8 June 1990. The Genesis version was widely praised: GamePro called it "a straightforward flying shooter with gorgeous graphics", noting its large, detailed enemies and intricate backgrounds but warning that it was extremely difficult and best suited to hardcore fans, and MegaTech praised its parallax scrolling, sound and gameplay. In 1997 EGM listed it as the 59th best console game of all time and the best shooter on the Genesis. Its success brought it to arcades as Thunder Force AC on Sega's System C-2 board, nearly identical graphically but borrowing enemies and stages from Thunder Force II; Game Machine listed it as Japan's sixteenth most successful table arcade unit in its 1 February 1991 issue. Thunder Force III was re-released in Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 for the Saturn in 1996.