Thunderbirds (NES) - Full Run ALL Clear (First Attempt!)
20Full Run of Thunderbirds for the NES/Famicom by Activision. This was my first and only attempt playing the game and despite dying numerous times I cleared it on the first try. This was played on a real NES with real cart.
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
02:33 - North America Stage 1
04:45 - North America Stage 2
05:51 - North America Stage 3
09:16 - Indian Ocean Stage 1
12:04 - Indian Ocean Stage 2
13:37 - Indian Ocean Stage 3
16:46 - Indian Ocean Stage 4
19:35 - Asia Stage 1
21:25 - Asia Stage 2
22:56 - Asia Stage 3 (I die a bunch here)
31:11 - Asia Stage 4 (Even more deaths)
38:53 - Final Stage
42:10 - Final Boss + Ending
Thunderbirds is a vertical scrolling shooter that has been long forgotten to time, and one of those games that you never hear about. And there's a reason for it, there's just not much to talk about. The biggest thing it has going for it (I guess?) is that apparently is based on some TV show about a family of puppets fighting evil using spaceships or airplanes or something. How that translates into the game is with brief cutscenes where the dad talks to the kids and other characters about their missions.
The main concept behind the games likes in that you have a certain number of days (60) to stop the bad guy from throwing meteors at the earth and destroying everything. Yes, that is really the plot of the game. In fact if you lose all your lives (days goes to 0), you get the bad ending where you actually get to see this horrifying attack take place. It's actually a little unsettling since this seems to be based on some sort of kids show.
In this game you have the ability to pick which of the 3 different areas you want to play in any order. I just picked the default order everytime, which does seem to have a somewhat logical difficulty progression, so I assume that is how they wanted you to play.
In each stage you take control of 1 of 5 different ships that have different basic weapons and possibly hitboxes as well. You can powerup your main weapon a few times and also pick up 2 options that add extra firepower. The final powerups you get are special items that allow you to adjust your options in different configurations. These are mostly useless outside of a few situations. Also, dying takes away all of your powerups.
Speaking of dying, you get a ton of lives in this game. Each life basically accounts for 4 days lost in your mission. I believe each level you beat also takes a day off the counter as well. So it translate to something like 10 lives (i didn't really count) that you get to clear the game, which was plenty for me to do it on my very first try playing the game.
The final and most egregious thing about Thunderbirds is there is absolutely no score in the game, so there is little incentive to replay it. I guess the only thing you can do to try and better your level of play is to just not die and try to 1 life the game. I didn't really care enough to play the game again to try for that.
Other Videos By PEG
Other Statistics
Thunderbirds Statistics For PEG
PEG presently has 1,502 views for Thunderbirds across 1 video, and less than an hour worth of Thunderbirds videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up less than 0.56% of the total overall content on PEG's YouTube channel.