Team M2 and Sega are back with another great Sega Ages release on the Nintendo Switch eShop. This time it’s Thunder Force AC, a remake of Thunder Force III, which was originally released in 1990 on the Sega Genesis. The game was then tweaked into an arcade game and even saw a SNES release in ’91, though it was called Thunder Spirits then. History lesson over, I actually never played any of the Thunder Force games until this one, but Sega and the shoot’em (SHMUP) up genre have blended very well together through the years, so I was eager to see how this one turned out.
Though there is a backstory to Thunder Force AC, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in saying that for most people playing a SHMUP, they aren’t really concerned about the story as they are the experience. Briefly, Thunder Force AC sees the continuation of the war between the evil ORN Empire and the Galaxy Federation. The good guys are losing, but in effort to turn the tide of the war, a new fighter ship is created, the FIRE LEO-03 STYX. You are a pilot of one of these powerful fighter ships, and it’s up to you to repel the vast and powerful army of ORN. This is a perfectly acceptable narrative to this kind of game, and there is a little more backstory to it if you look around online.
Like most SHMUPs, especially from the late 80s/90s, gameplay is straight-forward but a challenge to master. Apparently, original reviews of Thunder Force III called it a game for the hardcore, and I can see that if you don’t use any of the extra lives or other adjustments M2 allows for with AC. Still, these kinds of games are all about recognizing patterns, distinguishing the right weapons for the job, and twitch reaction speed (and a little bit of luck).
Thunder Force AC includes the Kids Mode, which I preferred to play in, as it gives players an increase in continues from six to nine. Plus, your ship dishes out more damage per shot than normal, which is most ideal for mid-tier enemies and of course bosses which can sponge a lot of hits. I’m not interested in mastering the levels and all that, I just want a fun SHMUP experience that isn’t too easy and isn’t too hard, and for me, playing on Kids Mode helped make the eight levels far more enjoyable and doable than playing on the old school original difficulty. I might work my way to that original difficulty sometime, but given that there’s so many other games to play and that I could care less about the online leaderboard rankings, I’ll probably just stick to the easier Kids Mode.
Across the eight levels, there’s a lot of great presentation both in the art and sound departments as you can see in some of the screenshots. Plenty of cool weapons are to be had and switched between during play, including one weapon allows you to skim the top and bottom edges of the screen simultaneously: the “bullets” leave your ship and go directly up and down, and skirt along the edges going to the right (the direction you’re always flying in). This is perfect for those pesky stationary turret enemies that hug the edges of the screen.
For the Sega Ages release, in addition to the aforementioned Kids Mode, Team M2 also included some slick extras like HD rumble. This gives the game an additional nuanced, modern feel that was welcome. I also appreciated the inclusion of Autofire, though I admit it took a little getting used to since I typically mash the fire button in these games. Not having to do that with Autofire allowed me to focus more on avoiding contact, which is a challenge in itself in SHMUP games given the amount of ‘collide-ables’ there are in these games by design. In addition to the usual assortment of display options for various filters and aspect ratio, Thunder Force AC also includes additional ships. I wasn’t familiar with the origin of these, but one of them is from Thunder Force IV, which actually was previously released in the Sega Ages line. These extra ships make a lot of difference in how the game plays, offering a very compelling reason to pick up and replay the missions through again.
Like most (perhaps every) Sega Ages releases, Team M2 has done another great job. There’s an argument to be made for the lack of including the Genesis and SNES versions of the game given that they are a bit different than this arcade port, and seeing as how Sega Ages titles in the past have sometimes included the other versions of games, too… I suppose we maybe got a bit spoiled in having the best of all of the versions included in one release, but I did want to mention that this particular release is just the arcade one. Still, it’s a great game, arguably one of the better SHMUPs of at least the early 90s, and M2 has done another great job of making it available on the Switch.
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