Thunder Blade
- $18.99
- Regular price
-
$21.99 - Sale price
- $18.99
- Unit price
- per
Box, manual and game — all original, all in the photos. Game condition guide →
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Item Condition
Complete in box: the cartridge, the manual and the box, all original; anything beyond that is included only if you can see it in the photos. For the specifics, look to the photos — they're of this exact item. Every cartridge's shell, label and board are checked for authenticity when it comes into the store, and it's tested before it's listed. It ships in a collector's bag or a hard plastic case.
Item Description
In 1987 the Thunder Blade arcade machine was a sit-down spectacle: a helicopter gunship flown through city canyons that Sega's super scaler hardware rendered with startling depth. Fitting that onto an 8-bit cartridge was a tall order, and the Master System version is most interesting for how Sega tried to pull it off.
Each mission splits into two very different halves. The opening sections play as a top-down shooter, the gunship sliding over enemy territory while tanks, gun emplacements and hostile choppers close in. Then the camera swings in behind the helicopter and the game turns into a forward-scrolling 3D run, with targets rushing toward the screen and a cave stretch that demands careful flying. The arcade's four-stage structure survives intact, though Sega reshuffled the order of the bosses for the home version.
Honest expectations help here. The behind-the-chopper sections are choppy, the overhead stages lose the arcade's control over altitude and speed, and much of the challenge comes from swarms of helicopters trying to ram you out of the sky rather than from elaborate attack patterns. Critics have never been kind to it. What you do get is a stubborn, old-school shooter built around a two-perspective design few 8-bit games attempted, carrying plenty of Sega arcade swagger in its presentation.
Thunder Blade also sits at an interesting point in Sega's family tree. The Mega Drive and Genesis launched with Super Thunder Blade soon after, and M2 later revisited the arcade original as 3D Thunder Blade on the Nintendo 3DS, but the Master System cartridge is the version that tried to squeeze the whole idea onto 8-bit hardware. For collectors following Sega's arcade conversions on the Master System, it is a real artifact of an era when every arcade hit had to find its way into the living room somehow.
Fast factsgame data via IGDB
- Released
- 1987
- Publisher
- U.S. Gold
- Developer
- Sega Enterprises, Ltd.
- Players
- Single player
About the game
A helicopter shoot-'em-up developed by Sega. The Arcade version made use of Sega's 3D super scaler technology to create city environments where the buildings would appear to have depth. The subsequent home versions sadly lacked this feature.
Summary from the IGDB community database — the condition and contents of this listing are described above and in the photos.
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Master System
Thunder Blade
$18.99
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Master System
Thunder Blade
$18.99
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