Thundercade (NES) Playthrough
139A playthrough of American Sammy's 1989 shooter for the NES, Thundercade.
Thundercade is an NES conversion of Seta's 1987 coin-op of the same name. A terrorist organization, AATOM, has built a new nuclear power plant, and they now "threaten the world with atomic terror." World leaders have selected you to head up their response, Operation Thundercade, and so you hop on your "combat motorcycle."
As the manual puts it, "The wind rages through your hair as your cycle charges into enemy territory." Said territory is split into four areas - City, Base, Wood lands, and Fortress - to blast through, and each concludes with a battle against a giant gunship.
Your motorcycle comes equipped with a standard-issue pea shooter, but you can upgrade your firepower by attaching canon-mounted sidecars. The sidecars vary in both their strength and firing angles, and you can mix and match them as you see fit. For when things get especially hairy, you also have a bomber that can be summoned at any time to deliver a precision airstrike.
Perhaps the best way to describe Thundercade is "Tiger Heli on a motorcycle." The bonus rounds and ledge jumping aside, this feels eerily similar. That's especially true on the NES, and it is likely a result of both games being ported over by the same developer. Micronics.
To be fair, Thundercade is one of Micronics' better NES games. Micronics seemed to think so, too, since they hid credits in the game. (Notice how short the game is relative to the length of the video? If you leave the game at the end screen for 55 minutes, a secret screen pops up with the names of the people who worked on it.) It runs at a better framerate and with less flicker than Tiger Heli, but it's very much the same to play. It feels cheaply made - it's not particularly smooth, the backgrounds are plain, the colors are garish, the sound is annoying, and the difficulty randomly hits extreme spikes - but overall, it's servicable. Dull and not much fun, but servicable.
Thundercade is gold star worthy work from a team like Micronics, but as far as NES shmups go, it scrapes the bottom end of what's generally deemed acceptable.
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