Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disastrous"

I remember visiting a pizza place as a kid on a field trip with my elementary school class, having only a couple of minutes sitting in the Thunder Blade arcade machine (i.e. the mock video cockpit), flying through the first level like a chicken with its head cut off, and getting killed as a result of a suicidal head-on collision with a building I never saw coming. (Or was it an enemy fighter jet? I don't remember.) Ah, the memories of Thunder Blade. As a home conversion, however, Super Thunder Blade is a watered-down, sloppy and ill-deserved port of the arcade game that achieves absolutely nothing. It fails miserably in recreating all the hair-raising excitement of the original coin-op, which begs the question for the ages; what the hell was Sega thinking?

If you've played Space Harrier 2 for the Genesis (which, incidentally, is a VC download and a much better game) you can expect to find the same visceral 3D experience--only this time around you're an attack chopper fighting international terrorists sporting advanced war technology. Curiously, just like the arcade game, the view often shifts from top-down to full-blown 3D during specific sequences--such as when you're attacking an aircraft carrier or an aircraft carrier with tank treads. Controls are, at worst, wonky and unreliable, and you have the option of switching between normal or reverse depending on your preference. The graphics are nowhere near close to the arcade version, and because of painfully obvious hardware limitations, flight is choppy and archaic. In fact, because everything moves in such an arthritic matter, movement of your chopper suffers as a result, rendering it difficult to accurately and safely dodge missiles and bullets. Four levels shorten the experience--if not cheapen it outright.

Unless you're braindead, I hope you're smart enough not to be easily taken by the "Super" in this game's title, because there's nothing "super" about it. For Sega to screw it up this bad and then pander it as an 800 point download is not only atrocious, but infuriating. If you enjoyed playing Thunder Blade in the arcades as much as I have, and were thinking that this shoddy home conversion would duplicate the same thrills, you're best left with three alternatives: wait for Sega to come to their senses and release the original game on a compilation or as a download, find any one of the few arcades in existence that might still carry it, or locate the actual arcade cabinet on EBay or Craig's List and take out a bank loan to purchase it. Either way, you've made the wisest choice of all--not wasting your time or money on the Genesis port.