Lords of Thunder (Sega CD) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
286A playthrough of Sega's 1995 shoot 'em up for the Sega CD, Lords of Thunder.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Lords of Thunder was one of the incredible gaming feats of its time, and goes woefully unrecognized by most of today's gamers. This is probably in no small part to due to its initial 1993 release appearing solely on the TurboDuo. No matter how amazing the system was, there just wasn't much audience for the games - nobody owned one!
The TurboCD version is easily on par (and in my opinion, surpassing) the seminal Gradius and Darius games, but Lords of Thunder cuts the mustard its own way with a kickass soundtrack featuring wailing 80s style guitar solos with heavy synth backup tracks, an incredible number of colors and sprites on the screen given the modest specs of the host machine (seriously, how did they manage to virtually eliminate flicker with this much moving at once?! And on an 8-bit system, no less), and its sheer playability. R-Type never felt this smooth!
The Sega CD version is a nicely done port of Red's kickass original, though there are a few things that rubbed me the wrong way about it. The graphics took a fairly heavy hit in the transition from the TurboGrafx CD to the Sega CD: the on-screen color count is significantly lower, enemies no longer blink to let you know they are taking damage, and the boss entrance animations have been cut down. It's still a great looking game, but the polish it wore so well on the Turbo isn't quite as vibrant on the Sega. Especially when you consider the Sega CD port is two years newer.
The game play is pretty much the same, but the Sega CD version is a fair amount easier than the already not-terribly-difficult original game. There are usually fewer enemies on-screen and they tend to take less punishment before going down. The only other gameplay difference I noticed between them was the Sega version's irritating stun/freeze that happens when you get hit. That "feature" is a new one here, and I have no idea why it was included. It's very good at screwing up your rhythm when you aren't expecting it.
Finally, the soundtrack. Oh man, the soundtrack. It's amazing. Metal and video games just don't go together any better than they do here. The soundtracks are slightly different between the two different games - the Turbo version has a much more raw, edgy sound to it, whereas the Sega version is much more "produced" and "polished" sounding. They're both absolutely fantastic, but I have to say I prefer the character of the Turbo's soundtrack. It's got sand.
At the end of the credits in this video the "Game Over" screens have been cut in. The game returns you to the title screen at the end of the credits, but I love the Game Over "countdown" theme way too much to exclude it. Do yourself a favor, whether you've heard it before or not, and watch the final 30 seconds or so. Aural bliss, a la big hair.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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